Its not easy being green....but it might save you some cash!

Am still trying to get the scarf off my daughter for long enough to take a picture to upload!

But have been busy the past couple of weeks making a baby blanket. Am not knitting a rennie mackintosh style cushion - have had a go at charting the design myself from a picture in a book - but its going to need some tweaking before I can share it as a pattern.

Has anyone tried getting yarn off Ebay or Freecycle? Its a great way to pick up interesting yarns and see what you can make with other people's stash leftovers. I got a great bag off Ebay today - all sorts of 3 and 4 ply yarns, some angora and some very interesting mohair type in a dark blue with some interesting coloured "blobs" woven into the yarn.

Freecycle's a good way of picking up free yarn, needles, hooks - its not uncommon to have someone who wants to declutter - maybe they're moving house or have lost the knitting bug!!!! So are "Scrapstores - you usually pay a small membership fee and then can buy your scrap for £1 or so a bag - its interesting what you can find in them sometimes - we've had all sorts from yarns, nice fabrics, paints to paper and stickers - you just have to dive in and hunt! For both ways of getting your hands on what you need, they're cheap - a small fee on top of either a short car or bus trip.

Am also an avid hunter round the charity shops. I try and "recycle" as much of my materials as possible - have done a bit of experimenting with carrier bags and fabrics made into a ribbon type yarn but that needs alot more work re needle sizes and ideas for what I can do with it, apart from the ubiquitous "string shopper".

Ok - here's a pattern for a scarf I've just knitted for my daughter - photo to follow!

I used 200g of rainbow effect bobbly yarn using 7mm needles but the pattern can be adapted to any yarn - you'll just need to adapt the number of stitches according to the width you need. It knits as a diagonal scarf and if knitted in a standard yarn with have a pattern to it - it'll show up better than it will on the one I made too! I did the pattern on this one to stop me getting bored :-). My scarf ended up being 6ft long!

Cast on 35 sts on 7mm needles

work 6 rows garter st

row 1: k2tog, k to last st inc1
row 2: p

repeat these 2 rows 3 times all together (6 rows)

row7: k2tog k to end, inc 1
row 8 k

repeat these 2 rows, 3 times altogether (6 rows)

row 13: k, wrapping yarn round needle twice to end
row 14: k, slipping extra loop off

rows 15 - 20 as for rows 7 & 8

repeat from row 1 until all your yarn is used up or you reach the desired length.

It would be good if anyone wanted to share a picture of their finished scarf :-)