Oolong knits

Pure Scandinavian design. Hulborter by Marianne Isager is not a free pattern. It is not even an easily obtainable pattern unless you can speak Danish. But it is a quite simple design, so you can try to replicate it by adding rows of eyelets to your favourite sweater pattern (I do apologize the designer for making this suggestion, but it is true).

In my garden, bees are not just passing by, or flying by to be more precise. No, no, they aren't. They are here to stay and they are living in this bird box. Lovely, orange-bellied, pretty bees. I am so proud of my garden. I think they are tree bumblebees . They have arrived in the UK in 2001 and they have already reached my garden! They have learned the one rule of survival: live along with humans or perish. While shier bees prefer living in the wild, these clever ones are living in bird boxes! Welcome to the 21st century.

What an amazing creative name for a pattern! This men's cable jumper by King Cole Ltd is a free pattern and in my humble (just kidding) opinion those cables are amazing (and tweed yarn gimme gimme gimme I want this sweater).

I have a beautiful Lilac (Syringa) in my garden with short cone shaped bunches of mauve flowers. It is quite tall, over 3m. It started blossoming in early Spring. Its leaves are cordate shaped and paired opposite. The flowers are single and blossom in short cones that grown in bunches, from 3 to as much as 10 cones growing from the same branch. It is deciduous (I have found a photo from early March and the leaves were just starting to come out). Its flowers look very much like that of the Buddleja, which caused me some confusion at first, but it is definitely not a strange Buddleja, as I thought. The leaves and trunks identify it well. Here is an article about pruning it (deciduous lilac should, if necessary, be pruned immediately after flowering).

Another free cowl this week. Metamorph by Jeny Staiman is a math wonder. With the clever use of 8 buttons that allow you to add twist to your heart's content, you can use it as a simple cowl, a Moebius, and more. A practical advantage to this clever design is that the more twist you add, the tighter the cowl gets. So you can use it as a normal cowl if the weather is warm or add twist and make it tight and warm for when its cold. Check out the video, for explanation of the idea. There is really very little to the pattern: make a tube and add 8 equispaced buttons and respective buttonholes at the ends. That is all. This simplicity means you can use almost any stitch pattern in the cowl for extra interest. Photo taken from this project .

Blue-bottles (on the right) pretty purple flowers blossom in May. If one deadheads them, they flower for longer. Like other perennials, they benefit from division every few years, in their case Spring (before they flower) or Autumn is a good time. Here is a more detailed explanation (follow the link division under propagation).

Knitty has recently published a cowl pattern by the wonderful Martina Behm . Wolkig (Cloudy in English) looks a lot more complicated than it is. It is a simple sequence knitting pattern (p6, p3tog, k39, kfb, kfb knitted in the round) with an unexpected complex result.

Myosotis, better known as forget-me-nots, are very common in my garden, where they are growing quite randomly. I suspect these would be considered weeds if it were not for how cute their flowers are. Here is a bit more information about this lovely flower, which is a good option for planting under other taller ones, such as roses.