We win at beer!

We did far better than expected in the homebrew competition... We ended up taking best of category for a Hefeweizen in the German Wheat and Rye group, best of category for a Brown Porter in the Porter group, and best of show for the Hefeweizen. Below are the ribbons to prove it:

So what this means is that the Ninkasi Brewing Company, with our input, will be making 60 barrels (about 6600L) of The Weasel Ate My Venison!, and some will be sold commercially as a seasonal brew in Oregon and Washington. It will also be the official beer of Septembeerfest this year, and it is possible that the Weasel herself will be able make it to the festival.

Sweet.

Four-letter words

Sometimes a four-letter word is so offensive it has to be made into a five-letter word. This quality graffiti was added to my trip to work over the weekend:

More four-letter words are "knit" and "vest" - as in my new favourite item of clothing for the slightly warmer but still chilly Spring weather:

This is a pattern from the book Kate gave me for Christmas.

"Tim Tam" is not a four-letter word, but one of the local Aussies discovered them at the local supermarket. The packaging may have changed, but the bikkies are the same...

One sock pattern to rule them all

I'm finally getting around to posting my pet mega-geek sock pattern spreadsheet up on the webs - I call it "Obsession for socks", it can be downloaded here. I've been using this foundation pattern for a while now to construct toe-up socks on the fly without making a gauge swatch. I usually knit both socks at the same time so I don't have to make notes for the second sock.

Random food

We had friends (probably soon to be flatmates) around for dinner last night. Among other things, we made paneer, which turned out to be stupidly easy.

Not so long ago, Mort also played with making spring rolls, extremely delicious and vegan to that Lindsey can eat them. My favourite thing, however, is the apron.

For me, there was a box of fun that's rapidly becoming other things:

My lobster-claws

In return for taking care of Johanna's cat, Minnie (and not taking her to "work" with me), Johanna bought me some awesome lobster-claw cycling gloves. They've got padding on the palm, reflective stripes on the back, and dozens of tiny bicycles to make sure everyone knows they're for people who want mittens but also want to be able to change gears, rather than for people who want to dress like a cow and freak out oncoming traffic. The gloves I had with separate fingers weren't stopping my hands swelling up and turning purple with the wind-chill I get cycling down the hill when it's below freezing.

Minnie, despite going into acute (and briefly anuric) renal failure right before Xmas, is now off fluids, off meds, concentrating urine and has a normal level of blood urea nitrogen = rock on, kitty!

In a completely unrelated area, I may just have figured out the fastest and laziest way of ripping out wool for recycling. Grandmum would have approved.

I finally finished the socks for Mort with a DNA-cable up the front - I'm pretty pleased with them.

And sometimes Mort has to disassemble the oven door. The upside is that the handle no longer wobbles.

Three carboys full

Real Christmas trees are the done thing here, which makes sense since we're in one of the states that grows them for everyone else. On the first of January, however, they're hurled out onto the street to await pickup by the Christmas-tree Man:

We briefly extracted Steve from his exciting world trip for a hiatus in our little slice of Palmy, and forced him to make beer in the garage:

And now, smugly, we have three carboys full of beer that has pretty good prospects. Left to right, it's a Brown Ale (Steve's one), Dry Stout (like Guinness), and Brown Porter (yesterday's effort). No, not all of our finished homebrew is in shot.

I have kickass slippers

It's like I stood still too long and warm fuzzy moss grew over my feet:

A geeky spreadsheet for the pattern can be found here - Slipper pattern (it displays as gibberish, but if you right-click on the page and "Save page as..." you can download the file... I hope...)