SALE on selected garments and accessories with up to 50% off- plus FREE UK mainland postage on all deliveries until 31st January 2012

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all at Toft- we hope you had a good one.

To celebrate the beginning of 2012 we are offering FREE* delivery on all parcels from 9am Boxing Day until 2pm 31st January.

The SALE also continues online with great savings on garments and lots of accessories.

*on all standard delivery UK mainland parcels

Christmas Holidays & Yuletide Greetings!

As you may have guessed from our last post, we were feeling fully festive as of last weekend and the Toft Christmas Decoration Workshop, so today, on Christmas Eve Eve, that feeling has more than tripled! 

On Wednesday Carrie braved Coventry went along to the Christmas party at BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire's Afternoon Show with Vic Minnett and a whole host of her lovely (if slightly random) guests who have featured on the show throughout the 2011.  Vic's red reindeer jumper was a treat for the eyes (!) so much so that it was all too much for her to resist a beautifully homebaked gingerbread cupcake, so she didn't, it went down very nicely with a good cuppa.  She even had a quick chat with Vic about the completed Knitivity, the characters of which stood proudly in a specially commissioned stable. 

Yesterday was Christmas lunch day at Toft towers and what a feast it was!!  All thanks to Shirley who made a delicious meal for us all complete with crackers and cranberry sauce, plus black forest gateau for pudding - yum!

So today is the last, last minute shopping day in the shop.  Until 4pm this afternoon we'll be serving those who live life on the edge with their Christmas shopping and we have a lot to offer, so pop in and we'll fix all those present emergencies.  After today however the on farm shop will be closed and we'll see you again on 3rd January 2012 - you can of course order online and we will aim to get your parcels out just as soon as we can in the midst of all those bank holidays!

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Fully festive

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The tree is up, the lights and music are on (much to Kerry's dismay) and we all feel that we've already had a few too many mince pies, but what really starts Christmas at Toft? A felt bauble Workshop of course and what a great time we had at said workshop yesterday. Shirley treated us all to one of her walks and the chilly sunny views were to die for.

Once back at the farm the knitting and of baubles, hearts & candy canes commenced, ready to be felted during lunch. Everyone was very creative with their needle felting. We had spots, stripes, stars & hearts adorning the fluffy alpaca decs, great effort ladies!!!

We may be busy but we can always find time for a Knitivity!!

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When approached back in late October by The Afternoon Show on BBC Cov and Warwick Radio about a potential 'Knitivity' we may have thought we were busy- we were wrong.

Since then we have been posting hundreds of kilos of our alpaca yarn out across the UK (and global) and now the Christmas grip has really taken hold there's no stopping us. Despite a ram packed work schedule including three shows in November- we managed to get on with our task of creating the animals for the charity Knitivity. Due to our range of natural colours we seemed perfect donors for the four-legged attendees of the cattle shed. Using only our finest dk yarn and of course alpaca fleece stuffing we set to task knitting up the animals. It was very much a joint effort- non of us having ever knitted toys of any form before. I think it was a bit of an eye opener how long these things take to sew up- and how much difference a wonky eye can make!

The weeks continue and the giant to do list gets longer- so we outsource to many hands including Shirley (Toft Alpaca Stud) to turn her hands to knitting for the first time in thirty years.

Then Carrie went back onto the radio last week to boast of our progress- and she couldn't help but take up the challenge to teach a total newbie to knit the baby Jesus! So on piles the pressure...Toft is now providing more than the brown extras...the main man! Following a great afternoon masterclass in knitting the tiny oatmeal baby took shape. I think it nay well be the first time an alpaca Jesus complete with fudge hair, steel eyes and a chestnut smile has existed- I may well be wrong, but putting it out there.

Carrie will be back on-air this Thursday at 2pm to discuss the process of knitting up this fun project. The full Knitivity will be auctioned off for Charity later this month (we'll keep you posted). We hope to help raise some money with the softest Knitivity yet made!

So thanks to the help of many a knitter we have finished with our three sheep, a donkey and the ox (that's the bog brown thing!), and of course the man himself.

It's hard to lock the Christmas spirit out!