It's great to celebrate love on Valentine's Day, but sadly many women will spend today - and every day - in fear of an abusive partner. For women who manage to leave their abusive partners, coming to Refuge can be the first step in a brave journey. This Valentine’s Day Refuge will be supporting over 2,000 women and their children as they escape domestic violence and rebuild their lives, helping them to regain their independence.

Refuge would to thank everyone who’s already contributed to our  ‘Bears & Squares’ campaign.

The charity has received more than 100 teddies so far, as some children’s clothes and gorgeous blanket like the one pictured here, knitted by Simply Knitting reader Sue Watson.

Fundraising is also going well, too, though we still have a long way to go to meet our £10,000 target. 

We know some of you are wondering what happened about our Refuge Knitting Design competition, so we’re thrilled to finally be able to share the results with you!

What a talented lot you are! We received some truly fantastic entries, making it very hard work for our judges when it came to choosing our winner and runners up.

Our judges were completely in agreement about our winner – Mrs Christine Norton from Chaldon, Surrey. Christine’s wonderful Mouse and Christmas Tree design is playful, festive and fun, with plenty of sparkle! 

We’ve been truly touched by the efforts our readers are going to for our Refuge ‘Bears & Squares’ campaign. Take  Lorna Abrahams from Bath, for example. She started knitting bears for us and just couldn’t stop!

“I started knitting a couple of years ago, and find bears a lot nicer to work on than squares (my first knitted squares never came out square!),” Lorna says. “The basic bears take me a couple of days to knit and sew up, and the crochet one (the one wearing a dress) took a couple of days longer than that.”

We get so excited when we come across people chatting about our #KnitforRefuge campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s just so lovely knowing our readers are out there, knitting away and spreading the word about this great cause!

Recently the following tweet from Jo Simmonds aka @TeaToastJam caught our eye: 'I'VE FINISHED MY REFUGE BLANKET for the @SimplyKnitMag comfort blanket campaign! Yay!'

We were really excited to receive word from South Hampstead High School in London that more than 50 of their pupils teamed up to support our Refuge Comfort Blanket  campaign last year.

Altogether they knitted nine blankets and raised £280 for the domestic violence charity! We’re so impressed by their efforts, which amounted to knitting 250 (!) squares which were sewn into nine blankets, equivalent to 58,500cm2 of handiwork.

We're so excited to bring you the new issue of Simply Knitting, crammed with patterns, ideas, tips and details of some of the season's best knitting events!

At the start of the new season, it seems the perfect time to be able to bring you our very first yarn gift! Last month we went to visit family company Bergère de France at their HQ in eastern France. It was absolutely fascinating to see their factory – clean, quiet and highly efficient. It was amazing to see the journey yarn takes from its start in life as fluffy fibre through to being the pristine, tightly-wound balls we’re used to buying in the shops.

We’ve worked in partnership with Bergère de France to bring you a high quality ball of yarn (made up of 75% acrylic, 25% wool) to enjoy. This yarn is so soft it’s perfect for babies as well as adults – turn to pages 9, 21, 49 and 57 to knit something for baby or for yourself. And don’t forget, we’ve included a pair of 3mm needles too, so you can get started on your knitting right away!

We also have a special baby accessories set by Jane Burns on page 57 – your ball of yarn will be just enough to knit either the bonnet or the booties.

We know that lots of you are knitting away furiously for our ‘Bears & Squares’ Refuge campaign, and we’re really grateful for that! We’d love it if you could help us to spread the word and enthuse others to knit for Refuge.

If you are in a knitting group we would love it if you would download and print out the special ‘knitting groups knit for Refuge' poster – either click on the link or on the image to the left.

And if you run or work in a yarn or craft shop, we love it if you would download and print out the special ‘craft shop knit for Refuge poster' – just click on the link.

Just two months into our Refuge ‘Bears & Squares’ campaign, and we have some very good news to share with you. With your help we’ve raised £1,000 already!

As you probably know, our aim is to raise £10,000 in total but this is a great start.

Thank you so much if you have made a donation to Refuge via our Justgiving page, and have knitting a teddy bear or blanket to be given to a child staying at the charity’s ‘safe houses’.

Be inspired to knit for Refuge with our charming teddy bear pattern and our exclusive blanket square design in Simply Knitting 96.

We launched our ‘Bears & Squares’ charity campaign for Refuge last month in Simply Knitting and our sister magazine, The Knitter, and we’re delighted to be able to tell you that many readers (you may be one of them!) have already picked up their needles to start work on their cot blankets and teddy bears, to be given to the children staying in Refuge’s ‘safe houses’.

You can download our teddy knitting pattern, kindly provided by Val Pierce and Search Press, in return for a small donation to Refuge.

We’re bringing you new blanket square patterns to inspire you – you can see our latest design from Julie Ferguson in Simply Knitting issue 96 – and you can get hold of our blanket square e-book from the JustGiving page.