One blue pencil

Tim Dowling's blue pencil - it could be yours. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

A year ago Kyle McDonald put a picture of a red paper clip on his website, offering it in exchange for a house, writes Tim Dowling. Instead he got a pen shaped like a fish, but he traded that, and a year and 14 trades later, he has realised his dream by trading a role in a movie for a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan, where he means to settle down and write a book about his quest.

The only way to improve on his experiment, it seems, is to beat his time. In that spirit I am putting up this blue HB pencil - slightly chewed and a little blunt, but could be sharpened - to trade for, let's say, a Tuscan villa or similar. I don't really care how many trades it takes to get there, but the deadline is Friday, so anybody with a holiday house going spare who also desperately needs to write something down could spare me a lot bother. Serious offers only please, and no haggling. We simply haven't got the time.

Please email a description and photograph of the item you would like to trade to saturdayguardian@googlemail.com. We will contact you if we'd like to take you up on the trade. Please include a phone number where we can reach you.