Bield’s Grants Bank development in Dunfermline is pulling out the knitting needles to do their bit for the Seven-Mile Scarf Challenge for Children’s Hospice Association Scotland.

Grants Bank volunteer Betty Morrison and Bield employee Martha Strachan have been meeting each week since April with four older people from the development – which operates as both a care home and sheltered housing service – to make a contribution to the Fife-based charity effort.

Together they hope to make six scarves 1.5 metres long using plain knitting techniques, with donations of wool coming from other service users and staff.

The Seven-Mile Scarf Challenge was devised by Gateside retired teacher Sandra Farrer – it represents the distance between Gateside and Rachel House the Children’s Hospice in Kinross.

The challenge will reach its climax with a 24 hour ‘Stitch-a-thon’ of all the individual 1.5m long scarves in October.

After the scarves – which are being made in communities across the world – have been stitched together, they will be taken apart and sold to charity, with some of the more extravagant scarves being auctioned at a charity dinner.

Kathy Crombie, Bield Communications and Marketing Manager, said: “We love to see our Bield people – especially service users – get involved in community and charity events such as this. We know the great sense of achievement they feel making a valuable contribution to society.”

Bield – a registered charity in their 41st year of business – has grown from humble beginnings, opening its first housing development in Bo’ness to become a major supplier of a wide range of housing and services for around 20,000 older people across 22 local authorities.