9.29 end of the yarn

Hyrna Herborgar is coming along again (at last). One of the projects that K unearthed for me, it's been waiting for two years for me to figure out why I had two extra stitches appear over the most recently knit two rows. I had gone from 437 stitches (expected) to 445 stitches rather than 443 stitches. I set it down until I had some Attention to give to it, and there it sat.

It's moving along again - having identified and fixed the problem, I've now gotten from 22 rows to go to 13 stitches, one row and a bind off to finish.


Unfortunately, I need to find the other ball of yarn first.

9.26 End of the harvest

The garden has had a hard time this year. First it got too much cold and damp, then it got too little water as I was out of the habit of watering. My neighbor lost almost all of his tomatoes to black spots that I have tentatively diagnosed as Tomato Spotted Wilt. Mine are much farther out in the sun than his and did not succumb until right at the end. (Thrips, untreatable? lovely). It sounds like the plants need to stay out of the compost pile, which is annoying.

However, while my plants were slow to produce and the harvest was about half what I expected, I did have a month's worth of lovely tomatoes to munch on.

9.24 Progress

K did a sweep through the family room a couple of weeks ago, and asked what she should do with my knitting. "Oh, just put it in a pile and I'll take care of it."

Famous last words.

Out of the resulting pile, I have dismantled four projects as being Done. They were projects started for the purpose of learning some new technique, and technique mastered, they were no longer of interest. Their yarns are being recycled.

Then we have the projects that were cruising along, but got to the point where they needed Attention, not just Knitting. Not having time to give them Attention, they were set aside until I had time. And there they sat.

Ruby is just such a project. I got the fronts and backs done, and needed to spend some time sewing up shoulders and sides, picking up stitches for bands...



All done.

Fingerlakes fiber fest

This past weekend was the Fingerlakes Fiber Festival, in Hemlock NY. K, a friend Linda, and I went down on Sunday. We wandered around happily for a couple of hours, meeting friends and admiring goods, before we sat down to Artichokes French (K only went for the food, she claimed).

I bought a few things:
The yarn was from previous years' purchases, but I had decided I needed a nice semi-solid brown to frame it with. Voila!

I think it will work nicely.

Also, I picked up some High Bid Farm BFL in purple dots. Bob Geiger has taken over the dye duties. He's using the same colorways, but the technique is dottier. I really think I'm going to like it.

9.19 Still here...

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, it's just been very weird around here. K & S are back to school. I have a dozen pics on the camera I need to upload. Tomorrow I'm going to Fingerlakes Fiber Fest and I will have more pics to upload. Someday I will get them all on the computer.

9.6 Banana waffles

I promised Sylvia a recipe, so (only a month later) here it is:

Banana Waffles

4 eggs, divided
2 cups milk
4 T melted butter
2.5 c flour
.5 c nut flour (I usually use almond or walnut)
2.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
2 large or 3 small bananas, coarsely mashed

Mix eggs yolks, milk and melted butter together. Stir together dry ingredients, then add gradually to wet ingredients. Add bananas when the dry ingredients are mostly incorporated. Stir just until blended.

Whip egg whites to moderately stiff peaks. Fold into batter.

Bake in waffle iron until golden brown.

This is the version I currently make, with two teenagers (one being a boy). We have two waffle irons: one takes .5 c batter, the other takes 1.5 c batter. This recipe makes three large waffles and three or four small waffles. The recipe scales well down to either 2 or 3 eggs.

After many years of making waffles, the irons are still good, but the non-stick coating is not quite as non-stick as it used to be. A small touch of spray oil works wonders.

Correction: Sorry - baking powder not baking soda. You could possibly use baking soda with the bananas in the recipe, but then it probably should be about 1.25 tsp soda and I've not tried it that way.