Oolong knits

Chard (Beta vulgaris var. Flavescens) I love chard and I'm always surprised that this easy to cook plant is not more popular. Growing them yourself is a must, because you won't find them in supermarkets in the UK. If you do not know what to do with them, here is my go to recipe: chop a few new leaves and boil them in a pot with enough water to cook rice, boil them just enough that they start wilting and add the rice. Cook in very low heat until the rice is ready and mix a bit of olive oil in the end. Soil moist and plenty of muck Aspect open Row spacing 45 cm Plant spacing 45 cm Germination 2 weeks Time to maturity 18 weeks Sow outside April-June Plant outside May-June Harvest All Year Store cut as required Pests/diseases bolting in summer, keep moist

I hardly ever include socks in Eye-Candy Fridays, but I should. There are some truly nice sock candy out there and Andrea Rangel's Saxe Point is a worthy example.

Spinach are not only delicious, they are one of the easiest crops to grow in the allotment. However, they do tend to bolt if the weather is too warm, so, unless you are sowing in early spring or late Summer, choose a shady area of your plot to grow them. Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) Soil all but poor, dry soil Aspect partial shade Row spacing 30 cm Plant spacing 15 cm Germination 2 weeks Time to maturity 18 weeks Sow outside March-June, September-November Plant outside April Harvest April-October Store freeze after blanching Pests/diseases mildew

I had a really hard time choosing the photo to illustrate Ranunculus by Midori Hirose, not because there were no nice photos, but because there were so many amazing ones to choose from. No wonder this is one of the most popular patterns: everyone looks great in it. And there are an endless choice of variations: light texture created by using larger than usual needles, heavy texture created with worsted weight yarn, soft texture by using mohair, or instead the sharpness created by yarn with very good stitch definition that shows off the beautiful and simple lace details. There is short sleeves, no sleeves, long sleeves, balloon sleeves or just normal sleeves. There is large, bulky sweaters with tones of positive ease or, instead, tighter ones with only a bit of positive ease or even zero ease. The possibilities are endless and every one of them looks great. I'm sure a lot of people are knitting more than one project, because it's so hard to choose one model.

To be honest I find British rocket salad leaves quite bland and not worth growing at all, unless you prefer your salad tasteless. Instead I recommend using an Italian wild rocket variety, or arugula, with a nice strong flavour. There is nothing easier to grow and also faster growing from sowing to harvest. I always have a large area of my plot where I grow this in order to make sure I have a nice flavoursome salad on my table through out the all Summer. The plant is quite hardy and doesn't die with cold weather, but, unfortunately, it does stop growing. Rocket (Eruca vesicaria) Soil moist, fertile Aspect sunny, tolerates some shade Row spacing 15 cm Plant spacing 15 cm Germination 10 days Time to maturity 12 weeks Sow outside April-July Harvest July-November Store cut as required Pests/diseases slugs and snails

Knit it and wear it at your own risk. This is BR-10904 Unlooked-for Silhouette Big Sweater by Kazuyo Nakamura (中村和代). A beautiful bulky sweater with a very, very unusual shape that works surprisingly well. The photo I chose is from littlepurl's project . She changed the collar and I really like her version. The good news is that this change is trivial to make.

These gorgeous socks are the solution I found to a few personal problems. The most serious of these: excess of sock yarn in my stash; the milder one: cold feet in winter; and the last one: impatience. To solve all these problems in one go I designed a pattern for thick socks knit with two different strands of sock yarn held double through out. With the resulting gauge, these socks fly off the needles, ready to warm cold feet in no time. In addition, even when knitting plain socks, there are not enough stitches to reach the dreaded death by boredom caused by miles and miles of stockinette. But the cherry at the top of this cake is the beautiful marled effect obtained by using a combination of self-striping yarns which keep surprising me as I knit on. The technical details Yarn: Scheepjes Invicta Colour, colourways 970 and 975. Needles: 4mm (US6/UK8). Pattern: standard construction, i.e. cuff-down, with heel-flap and gusset, and a wedged toe finished with Kitchener stitch . Bri...

Another sweater that combines lace and ribbing. Docklight by Julie Hoover includes more ribbing (than Waffle, that we saw last week), which in my opinion makes it a little more unusual and elegant (and of course minimizes the see-through effect). Of course, it could just be the amazing beauty of Brooklyn Tweed yarn. I think it would be difficult to make a pattern that looks bad with this yarn. On the other hand I personally cannot justify to myself to spend so much money on yarn while there is so many people going without food, shelter, clean water, medical attention or education. But that doesn't change the fact that it still is dreamy yarn.

I always thought there must be some way of grafting even the most complex stitch patterns, but until recently I'd never found this information either in books or online. Joni Coniglio has written an amazing amount of articles about grafting for Interweave. They're all super detailed (even too much: prepare for a tour de force) and clearly written and there are so many of them it's too much work to list them all here. I'll give only a couple of examples that I found particularly useful. If you ever need to graft lace, here is an absolutely amazing tutorial on how to do so: An Education in Lace Grafting Note, this is actually a series of tutorials and you can find the links to the rest of the series at the end of the article. And here is another on grafting brioche which includes video tutorials: Brioche Stitch 101 If you'd like to check her other tutorials, I found them by clicking on Joni's name at the top of the articles. Socks And since we are talk...