SRS, you have reminded me of the first time I went off to help a friend with his thesis field work - I had started cooking beetroot in the slow cooker, and hung washing on the line. When I got home very late, the beetroot was perfect, but the washing was crawling with earwigs!

The lining stitching didn't go quite right. Mum had cut long curved strips from the hem of a skirt which was as full as a New Look skirt from the 50s and I had sewn these together with contrast zigzag to look like a design feature, picking up the colour from the outside. But with the juggling to fit the pattern piece, the lines looked crooked, so I had to hand sew invisibly, and unpick the zigzagging. This has slowed the whole project down.

I'm still playing with the topology of the turning inside out trick. The pattern directs sewing the shoulder seams before that process, and I'm sure that with two closed loops in the piece, turning inside out is not possible. In fact, I think it's not possible with one closed loop. The pattern suggests leaving both side seams open, and turning through one of them, sewing up afterwards, which would be very difficult by machine. I'm planning to leave the shoulders open, and have the side seams on the right side closed, with one on the lining open to turn through. Those would be easy to hand sew. I think I might have to make a model first!

I ate a big salad yesterday, with a lot coming from the garden. Lettuce (though one has been completely destroyed by slugs), radish, spring onion, and the first, full size carrot. The second lot of radishes have poked up above the surface, but there'll be a gap in the lettuce supply. The seedlings aren't showing, and I can't get pre-sown ones from the garden centres. I think I might get "living salad leaves" from the supermarket and plant them out. I've made a soup from the onion stems, peapods, lettuce leaves not up to salad, with the whey from the curds and the drippings from some burgers I had for Saturday's meal.

Penny