back from Knitfest

A long road trip each way, it seems like the weekend passed in a flash, and now back to Acorn Cottage with more ideas and estrogen batteries fully recharged. It was great to see old friends, and put some faces together with Ravelry names of the folks I'd not met in person. Visited three different yarn stores, a tiny bit of rambling in Fairhaven, and lots and lots of knitting. My sister's recipe for savory corn pancakes* as a breakfast contribution were well liked. It was lovely to have a getaway out of the city; to see a different place and rest my eyes on a long horizon - we were literally right across the street from the bay, though we never did any actual beach walking...

I started working on the sleeves for my blue sweater. The sweater will be a longish project, since making the sleeves all stripey means lots and lots of color changes and lots and lots of ends to weave in. Hopefully it will look good enough to be worth all the effort; right now it is at an awkward stage. (revised Monday morning) After sleeping the night in my own bed, and looking at the sweater in the clear light of day, my ideas definitely need revision. It will, in fact, drive me crazy to weave in two billion yarn ends, and having the focal point be at the edges of the sweater, which looks nice on a size zero model with long skinny arms, will, in fact, not be ideal for Little Teapot. What I am envisioning now is a simple two-color, alternating every two rows stripe. That way the yarn can be carried along the inside without becoming too bulky, (which using a dozen different colors** would preclude; it will simplify this particular sweater design quite a bit, and make it more thoroughly the BLUE sweater that will actually fill the gap in my wardrobe.

Great progress happened on the neckwarmer, but when I ran a lifeline and tried it on, I decided that the lower half was too much a straight line to lie smoothly around my neck and shoulders, even if stretched and blocked. After all, if you think about it, that area is more or less a cone shape of about a 3/4 to 7/8 of a circle, not a cylinder. Soooo… I unraveled about a third of my knitting, back to the central area before all the increases, and will be knitting it up again, this time with additional increases to make it more closely approximate (the shape of) shoulders.

* Savory Corn Pancakes

4 ears sweet corn
(or 2 c frozen corn)
1/2c cornmeal
1/2c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4c buttermilk
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and partially cooled
2 green onions, finely chopped

If using fresh corn, cut from cobs, you should have about 2 cups. Or just use 2c frozen corn if it is not fresh corn season.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix in buttermilk, egg, and melted butter. Mix in corn and green onions. Let sit, in the refrigerator, for at least a half hour, (to help hydrate the cornmeal) You can make this up beforehand and let it sit overnight.

Fry like pancakes in oil till golden brown. The batter is pretty rich, so if you have a nonstick griddle, or good cast iron, you probably will not need additional oil after the first pancakes. I tend to drop the thick lumpy-with-corn batter onto the griddle and “help” it spread out into more or less round shapes. Eat with sour cream and savory sauces.

**have no fear, the myriad yarn balls of random colors will be reincarnated as a Philosophers Wool style two handed fair-isle cardigan or vest at some point.