Rainbow-licious Scarf & Frugal Living

I’m finding it kinda interesting, all the low-cost cooking/frugal living websites that are springing up. Even the corporate biggies like Kraft are adding “Budget Menus” to their newsletters. Sign of the times, I guess. But I am totally addicted to them. I spend all kinds of time, cruising these sites for recipes (and some of them are very good), tips, and how-tos.

Some of the articles are useful, some not. I’m probably never going to bake all my own bread, even if I only have to get up early one day a week to put the dough that’s been proofing overnight into the oven. I’m probably not ever going to switch to reconstituted dry milk, either.

But I am planning on a larger vegetable/herb garden this year than in previous years. I think that’s just practical, though. Every time you turn around, you read some story about tainted food. I just feel like I have to take control over some of this.

You know I always grow a lot of tomatoes (my method of combating the unseen Tomato Consortium, which causes tomatoes to cost $3.99/lb in season!) and a lot of peppers. This year, I am thinking of growing some other veggies, too, leaf lettuce, green onions, pole beans. I’d like to attempt strawberries again, too, but those have not been successful crops for me in the past.

Also, I’ve been fascinated by all the recycling projects. Sure, I love the market bags and the reclaimed sweater projects. But I love all those take-something-old-and-crappy-and-make-it-new-and-cool crafts, too. I love the light bulb bud vases like you see here, but I have switched to the "green" bulbs, so those don’t lend themselves to that.

I have also been seeing all these great stash-busting scarves on Craftster, which are pretty cool. Not that I need or want to bust my stash. I do, in fact, have a scrap afghan going right now, so it’s not like I’m overrun with bits of yarn. But, like I said, I’m fascinated by these crafts.

So, here is my Rainbowlicious Scarf, modeled by Achilles, who is not normally this calm, but has completely worn himself out chasing all the other cats. It’s your basic lengthwise garter knit. I used #9’s and cast on about 120 stitches. I left about 7 inches at the beginning and end and just knotted them as I went, creating the fringe.