If you fancy knitting one of these beautiful bags by Amanda Jones, then you'll need a pair of funky bamboo handles to finish the look – and we've got just the thing for you as your free gift with issue 64 is a pair of bamboo bag handles!

Issue 64 is on sale on Thursday 28 January 2010 and each issue comes with one pair of bamboo bag handles, as well as four more patterns to use them with, giving you eight bag patterns in total.

We first printed the patterns for these four beautiful bags in issue 54 but we thought they'd be perfect for our new set of handles. Cast on today and you'll be ready to add the handles when you pop to the shops next week!



Download your FREE pattern for Amanda Jones' four knitted bags (PDF)

As the new handles are a U rather than an O shape, we asked technical editor Kirstie McLeod for the best way to attach them to Amanda's bags. "Instead of leaving the hem at the top open, as for the O-shaped handles, place some ribbon or stiff fabric between the two layers to make it firmer and sew it shut," she recommends. "You can then sew the handles on easily, attaching each leg of the U to one end of the ribbon."

If you'd like to see the handles in action, you can get a sneak preview of the three bag patterns by Emma King we'll be featuring in issue 64 now.

This pattern is available to download as a PDF document. It won’t open unless you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can download this program from the Adobe website for free. If you have Acrobat Reader and it’s still not working, try right-clicking the link and clicking “save as”. Save the document onto your computer – make sure you can find it again! – and try opening it from there.

Today is Apple Day, celebrating the diversity of British apples so don't forget to pop to the shops and pick up an apple. And if you don't like your fruit covered in pocket lint, keep it safe with Stringativity's Fruit Sock knitting pattern.

There are more than 2,000 different kinds of apple, so there's a flavour to suit every taste. Common Ground organised the first Apple Day in 1990 as a response to the rapid loss of British orchards. From their website:

Data from Natural England shows that the orchard area throughout England has declined by 63% since 1950. Wales lost 94% between 1958 and 1992. For some counties the impact is devastating. Devon lost 89% of its orchards between 1946-2003 and Kent 92% during the same period.

In 2007 we imported nearly 70% of our apples (Defra Basic Horticultural Statistics 2008).  Apples from the southern hemisphere and other far away places fill our supermarket shelves – even in autumn, the height of our apple season.

Anyone can organize an Apple Day event – perhaps next year there'll even be some knitting related ones!

You can find out more on the Common Ground website and there's a good article at The Ecologist titled How to celebrate British apples which breaks it down into bite-size chunks.

"An adulterated, neglected anti-icon has infected the globe. Lets reclaim its potential as a structure, through individual creativity and local production, through a global community," begins Yuvinia Yuhadi in the 'About' section of her website, The Knitted Chairs.

"You know the chair I’m talking about," she continues, and we do: it's white or sometimes green, rickety, stackable and plastic, and quite destinctive, if you look at it twice, which we rarely do. Chairs like this are found all over the world, creeping into holiday snaps and wedding photos, lurking in basements and garages and doing duty in all sorts of ways.

Turning this emblem of mass production into a unique and handcrafted item is a definite challenge. Yuvinia's blog is devoted to creating unique knitted cosies for these plain chairs, and chronicles her expeditions with her own flock of dressed chairs, as well as showcasing chairs dressed by other crafters.

As knitters, we find the project fascinating and in many ways it's a great symbol of modern creative knitting. Western mod cons like central heating, rain coats and mass production have ousted knitting from its traditional role. Our lives – like plastic chairs – are perfectly servicable without knitting, but risk suffering from a certain bland sameness. One way to break the mold is to pick up sticks and string, get creative and add an extra dimension of colour and cosiness to your chair – or your life!

Sporadically updated, the blog is well worth adding to your list as the creations showcased are varied and interesting.

You might even have a chair or two of your own and whether they're lurking in some forgotten corner or doing sterling duty in all weathers, they could probably do with a fresh look for the new season.

Yuvinia has created two free patterns for chair covers which are available to download from The Knitted Chairs blog.

Links to the patterns are in a grey box on the right hand side. To see the second pattern, click the down arrow at the bottom of the box. Click on the title to start the download, which is a PDF.

No, I'm not giving away dandelions. They're all that's holding my lawn together. Anna, the designer of the awesome toys over at Mochimochi Land, has a free knitted dandelion pattern on her blog.

Anna also sells patterns for larger toys. If you've never seen Anna's designs before, they're all very cute, although some are also slightly sinister. Stackable Cats and Pile-able Pups? Cute. Sleepy Snake? Also cute. Sleepy Snake eating Mischievous Mouse (one toy fits inside the other)? Just a tad sinister, but I like that! In fact, Sleepy Snake and Mischievous Mouse show off another great feature of many Mochimochi Land toys; they are interactive. You can push some inside each other, flip one or two inside out to reveal something else, and others are designed for stacking. When you're knitting toys for a child, it's always important to consider how much fun they'll be to play with (as a child I had some on which the arms and legs were stitched to the body; needless to say they were my least favourite knitted toys because they just weren't fun). Mochimochi Land's patterns are definitely fun to play with.

If you haven't been keeping up with Harper's Bazaar, you might not have spotted this rather charming cardigan pattern designed by Paul Smith. While a ready-made Paul Smith cardigan might easily set you back over a hundred pounds, this one can be yours with just a bit of elbow grease – and a rummage in your stash for suitable colours.



Unusually, the design is shown only in sketch form – straight from the designer's sketch pad, perhaps? – so it may be a little tricky to imagine how it would look on, but the bright colours, toned down with black and white make for a fun statement piece which is also very wearable.

Click the image above to visit the Harper's Bazaar website where you can print out the pattern. When it's gone, it's gone so print out your copy today to avoid disappointment.

This is not a Simply Knitting pattern. It is not hosted on our site so we cannot supply it or answer queries about it. If you have any problems or questions about the pattern, please contact Harper's Bazaar.

Get ready for Easter – or just celebrate the joys of spring – with these adorable chicks.

Designed by Alan Dart, the Chick and Egg pattern is free to download from his website.

Each chick takes just a small amount of the colours shown so they're a great way to use up small amounts of stash – or a really economical way to make lovely gifts! They'll last longer than a chocolate egg, too...

The chicks would also make excellent and unusual name-card holders and party favours at a child's birthday – with or without the eggs. Or why not host an egg decorating party and let each child embellish their own egg with scraps of yarn, beads and sequins?

Shamrock-inspired knits are a great way to celebrate St Paddy's Day, and we've got two super quick treats for you, courtesy of Vicki Howell, author of Knit Aid.

Vicki has designed a bejewelled shamrock and adorable shamrock baby bootees and posted both free shamrock knitting patterns on her blog, making it a little easier to be green today.

We're thrilled to be able to show you these gorgeous stockings – particularly as we're between World Women's Day (8th) and Mother's Day (22nd in the UK). March is all about mums and the other strong women who shaped the world so it's the perfect time to raise awareness and funding for cancers which affect women particularly.

Designer Erssie Major has created these beautiful stockings using Lorna's Laces Pink Flamingo Stripe, chosen because 20% of the proceeds from this particular yarn go to fun breast cancer research.

"I named them Ann Marie Stockings, after my own mother who died at a young age from ovarian cancer," she explains. "Her mother, my grandmother, also died at a young age of breast cancer, so I felt designing the stockings would be a good way to raise awareness."

Don't fancy knitting thigh-highs? This clever toe-up pattern can be cast off at several points, allowing you to make ankle socks, regular socks or knee-highs, as well as the full length version. There's no shaping to worry about either: the close fit comes from the elastic properties of the lacy rib and is widened by changing needle size.



As you can imagine, this is a cause close to Erssie's heart and she's already planning her next knit. "Later in the year, I hope to make a trainer sock version of this stocking, for a Race for Life volunteer to wear in a fun run to raise funds for women's cancer charities," she says. If you enjoy knitting this free pattern, you may like to make a donation to Cancer Research UK or a similar charity. Don't forget – every penny helps!

Ready to cast on? You can download the Ann Marie Stockings pattern (PDF), visit Erssie's website for more information or find the pattern in the pattern library on Ravelry (you will need to be logged in to Ravelry to access this link).

Way back in issue 22 we teamed up with Colinette to launch a competition asking our readers to design a pair of socks for their favourite celebrity. We had loads of fab entries, and the winners were published in issue 30.

The winning entry, designed by Stephanie Angus, was a pair of socks for a Mr Stephen Fry, novelist, TV presenter and universally acclaimed know-it-all – and, we recently discovered, Twitterer. We also discovered that Mr Fry's fans are both numerous and eloquent in their pleading that we dig this pattern out of our archives and let it see the light of the internet. It was hard to resist – so we didn't!

Celeb Socks (PDF) contains three patterns: Stephen Fry socks by Stephanie Angus, Alan Titchmarsh Fantasy Socks by Jane Sanderson and Rick Stein Bed Socks by Evelyn Tanner.

If you send us a photo of a celebrity, like Mr Fry, wearing your handknits we will send you something fab from our stash box! The more outrageous the knit, the more outrageous the reward...

This pattern is available to download as a PDF document. It won’t open unless you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can download this program from the Adobe website for free. If you have Acrobat Reader and it’s still not working, try right-clicking the link and clicking “save as”. Save the document onto your computer – make sure you can find it again! – and try opening it from there.

If you're desperate to knit yourself a Sackboy, the lovely people at the Sun are hosting our unofficial pattern designed by Alan Dart. (Yes, they have permission to do so, just as we've had permission from Sony!) Just click here to visit the page, then on the paragraph in red to be able to download the PDF.

Big trees, little trees, skinny trees and fat trees. Trees with bright autumn leaves and trees with green needles. Weeping willow. Silver birch. Ash. Elder. Oak.

As the seasons change and the years pass, a few things will stay the same, and you'll want the big old trees you pass on your favourite walk to be one of them.

The Woodland Trustis launching their annual Winter Ancient Tree Hunt on 1 December, and to celebrate they've released three gorgeous free patterns for you to knit.



The patterns, designed by Laura Long, whose work you might have seen in previous issues of Simply Knitting, are for a simple striped scarf, a lovely intarsia scarf with a leaf motif and a pair of cosy mittens.

Each scarf is designed to be exactly 1.5m long, which is the equivalent of a British Standard Hug, making it a perfect way to measure around trees without having to carry a tape measure.

A thick trunk is one indicator of a really old tree, and so they can work to preserve them, the Woodland Trust want to know where all the estimated 80,000 ancient trees in Britain are. How do you spot an anciet tree? Well, start by giving it a hug: look for oaks that are three standard hugs, beeches over two  and sweet chestnuts four hugs around.

It's a great way to get kids interested in spotting trees and adds a slightly competitive element to a Sunday walk, so why not pick a crisp afternoon and start your own annual Winter Ancient Tree Hug?

Don't be (granny) square - break out of the mold and start crocheting all kinds of funky shapes. This crochet shapes (US terms) series of patterns will walk you through pentagons, octagons and more.

And then if you want something even more wild – but which probaby won't make a very good blanket – head over to the crochet coral reef for some mathematical instruction.

All Hallows Eve is almost upon us, so get your fastest needles or hooks out if you want to add a little bit of festive orange and black to your home.

There are lots of great free patterns around, so here are thirteen of our spooky favourites

• Cute Halloween hats from Polartech.
• Tiny ghosties from Jean Greenhowe.
• American yarn company, Caron, have a gorgeous witch throw on their website.
  
• There's a crochet pumpkin in Gramma Lowe's collection of Halloween crafts.
• Disguise your baby as a vegetable with this adorable pumpkin hat.
  
• Give your stash a creepy guardian in the form of Chaucey, the knitted skull.
  
• Making your own costume? This witch's hat could be adapted for wizards, too.
• Knitted eyeballs make a grusome accessory...
• ...and so do knitted severed fingers!
• Frighten the granny out of granny squares with this spider crochet motif.
• Turn a quiet cup of tea into something a bit less sedate with a skull and cross-bones tea cosy from the Anticraft.
  
• Try your hand at Fair Isle with this totally excellent witch's cat hat from French language blog, Creations on line. Scroll down to download a PDF of the pattern in English.
  
• And finally, this tiny crochet witch from Armina's Ami-nals would make an adorable mascot!

Fun website allaboutyou.com has added a craft channel to their site! This means that as well as beauty tips, food, home and travel ideas you can now download a free knitting pattern from their growing collection – and they've got some good ones by designers like Debbie Bliss – or chat to other like-minded folk in their forum. We think it's a lovely way to spend a coffee break!

Autumn is here and as it's officially October we're getting ready for Halloween. Put your Christmas knitting on hold for a little while and knit this gorgeous pumpkin from Curly Purly. He's super-sweet – and the pattern is free, too!

Aren't they gorgeous? These three butterflies were all crocheted, and the patterns to create them are free to download from MyPicot. There are dozens of crochet stitches and motifs on the site from the simple to the terrifyingly complex, making it an excellent resource for all crochet addicts – and not a bad place to visit for those just starting out, as some of the stitches, like these butterflies, are truly inspiring.

All the patterns are charted rather than written out, making it easier to see where different sections of motifs connect to each other. They all use the same key, which means that you can read them easily whether you're familiar with the British notation, the American – or perhaps some other system entirely – and you'll quickly become familiar with the most commonly used stitches.

Hot on the heels of the rant they published a few weeks ago (which may have sparked a little ranting at Simply Knitting HQ – and some very sensible comments from our readers), the Guardian has gone further than we could have hoped in redressing the balance, and has published The Rebel Knitter's Guide.

It's a really fun collection of patterns from a new designer, and as well as simple patterns, there are a couple of more complex pieces, using colour work, shaping and even some lace socks. We like it a lot, and all we can say is "Bravo!" to Mazz, and hope that lots of Guardian readers are inspired to take up their needles.

As all the patterns are free to download from the Guardian website (some are PDF documents, some web pages) you can cast on today for a fruit or iPod cosy – or that rather nice bag...

Who would have thought? Thanks to the clever folks at CraftBits, you can now knit a viking baby hat to go with the adorable baby viking jumper we featured in issue 42 of Simply Knitting. (It's in the shops now, if you haven't got yours yet!)

Tidy up your knitting space and find a home for all your little bits and pieces in by knitting or crocheting a collection of cute baskets using scraps of yarn.

You'll want quite a firm fabric to make the bags stand up straight so you may find that you need to go down a needles (or hook) size or two and leave the luxurious, flowing cashmere for another time. Cotton or cotton blends work quite well and this is the perfect time to get out any rough fibres you don't want next to your skin! If you use a wool or wool blend yarn you can felt the finished pieces afterwards to tighten the stitches, but don't try felting anything described as machine washable: it just won't happen.

Now: crochet (or knit) a square or rectangle the size you want the base of your basket to be. Measure around the four sides, and knit (or crochet) a rectangle as long as that measurement and and wide as you want your basket to be deep. Sew the two together, embellish - why not? - with a bit of lace round the edge or some pretty buttons and fill with all your knitting notions!

If you want to use a yarn which you don't think will stand up on its own, simply crochet (or knit) the piece of fabric for the sides twice as wide as you would otherwise. You can then fold it in half and tuck a cardboard support in the middle to stiffen it up.

If you prefer a more detailed pattern, why  not try these cute crochet baskets (NB: they use American terms) or these funky knitted ones (PDF)?

Download your free sock pattern (PDF) and join the Simply Knitting team in our first Simply Knitalong!

This lacey sock pattern, designed by Debbie Tomkies, is a great first toe-up sock pattern. The lace pattern is simple enough for a beginner to grasp, but interesting enough to keep more advanced knitters entertained. It's a great all-round pattern and produces a lovely finished item - perfect, we thought, for our first ever Simply Knitalong.

DT Craft & Design's gorgeous hand-dyed sock yarn is 90% stunningly soft alpaca and 10% hard-wearing nylon. It knits up to form a firm material which is soft against the skin and has a slight halo, making these some of the most luxurious socks around: a real treat for your feet. It's hand-dyed by the designer in unique colourways including




Feet First by Debbie Tomkies is available to download as a PDF document. It won’t open unless you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. You can download this program from the Adobe website for free. If you have Acrobat Reader and it’s still not working, try right-clicking the link and clicking “save as”. Save the document onto your computer – make sure you can find it again! – and try opening it from there.