coming along nicely!

I'm making progress on two things at the moment:

J2's Payton sweater, which is really a sweater dress & almost to her knees! (which is what she wanted, honest!). I had to adjust the sleeves to fit her so they became plain red rather than striped as I didn't think I could randomly make up the changes carefully calculate the shaping and cope with striping at the same time.

I just have to pick up the stitches around the neck to make the collar and it's done.

I wondered if I could cope with making a man-sized sweater for J2 so I held it up against it him, (not that he would appreciate a red & white striped sweater, though black & white stripes would be fine of course). This length would be about right for him, so man size is do-able as soon as I can find a weird suitable pattern for him.

The beans & potatoes are doing well too. I'm fascinated by watching the beans growing. J1 has been explaining to me the functions of different parts of the cells in the growing plants, which was great- I learnt something new and I was reassured that he's been doing some revision, as his Higher exams start this week (phew).

The tops of the potatoes are peeking through the first layer of compost. If you grow tatties in a bucket you have to gradually build up the layers of compost as the plants grow, to replicate the earthing-up process needed if they were planted in the ground.

I'm still saving toilet roll tubes so that I can plant more beans for a later crop. (It makes it so much easier to plant out the beans in the tubes as the roots can't get tangled, and the cardboard rots away into the compost). I'll wait till its a bit warmer before I sow some lettuce seed outside as there's still a chance of ground frost even now (no, really!!).