Oakham Book Swap has branched out this summer, encouraging residents to make blankets for a national charity working with grieving parents and aiming to save babies' lives.

Run by Lisa Batty, Oakham Book Swap collects donations and runs a raffle in aid of a different charity each month, all while running a regular book box outside her family home when the weather allows it.

Each month, the local group swap and exchange books while raising money for a range of good causes, and this summer the locally-led group has taken on a creative challenge to create and send handmade blankets to Sands, a national stillborn and neonatal death charity.

Sands supports parents who have lost a child as a stillbirth or to neonatal complications, and work in the lab and in hospitals towards preventing the death of babies.

To support their work, members of the Oakham Book Swap have been crocheting and knitting blankets for the charity, which are used in memory boxes for bereft parents.

Organiser, Lisa Batty, said: "Thank you to everyone who has dropped off hand-knitted and crocheted blankets for Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, which we supported earlier this summer.

"I have packaged them up to send to Sands for memory boxes for parents.

"If you like to knit or crochet and would like to make one you can find the pattern and requirements on the Sands website.

"We are happy to be a local drop-off to collect the blankets and send them on to Sands on your behalf - bring them to our monthly events or get in touch if you need to arrange a different drop-off time."

Oakham Book Swap is a community-led project that hosts a pop-up book swap box on Tyne Road, Oakham. Residents are invited to pick up a new book or drop off unwanted books to share with other readers.

The swap contains fiction and non-fiction books for anyone aged 3 - 93, and is open to all. It opens when the weather permits and the team host regular 'Book Swap' events to raise much-needed funds for local and national charities.

Join the team this weekend for the Oakham Big Book Swap on Tyne Road, Oakham, and follow the team on Facebook for more information about the charities they support and upcoming bookish events.