Beginning to catch up...

So... Yeah. There's been a huge gap in 2011, mainly due to preparing for, sitting, and passing (!) ACVP board exams, then fleeing to Australia to start a new job. There's a bit of catching up to do.

Of course, there have been more socks - basic pattern with Zitron Trekking (XXL).

As part of the master plan to take all the brewing paraphernalia with us to Oz, we picked up a new burner - a bit sturdier than the last one, and it can boil a flamingo from 20 metres.

I finally finished the top/tunic thing I've been working on intermittently for the last couple of years - knitted in lace-weight alpaca, the pattern was made up on the fly.

More preparations for moving across the Pacific - since we were shipping the computer, we picked up a cheap laptop for Mort to use in the mean time. Sometimes packaging is nearly as entertaining as the content:

Horace!

This year, like last year, we were graced with the presence of Horace, the "dog vomit" slime mold. But this year I was quick enough to get photos of him/them over the three days of transition from plasmodial to sporangial phases (I think).

Ribbons

Mort worked his arse off yet again this year coordinating the local homebrew competition - so of course we entered. This time, we came away with three ribbons - a first and two thirds for various styles:

First went to Simon for a Dry stout:

A third place to the Weasel for a Weissbier (the same recipe as last year, but a different batch):

And a third place for Andrew with a delicious Eisbock:

Silent auction scarf

Apart from study, study, study, I'm still managing to get in a little knitting. Often as a reward between groups of journal articles. As part of a silent auction fundraiser for the local international veterinary student group, I knitted a double-sided pawprint scarf (about 1.7 m long) - learning how to do double-knitting in the process.

If we were moving to a cold climate, I totally would have made one for myself - probably not quite so necessary in Sydney, though.

Edit more than a year later: here is the print pattern I ended up using:


The leftovers turned into a very functional tea-cosy.

Below is Mort playing with his new beer gun, which lets him bottle carbonated beer straight from the keg without exposing it to oxygen - making the whole process quick and keeping the beer more delicious.

Moa's Ark wins again

Because we won a couple of blue ribbons at the local homebrew competition last year, we were eligible to enter the national MCAB competition (Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing) in those categories.... And man, Moa's Ark really was a good porter - taking a silver medal for that style.

We've also been cat-sitting once again, this time at our place. The bottom cat is Minnie - the one who went into acute renal failure a little over a year ago and visited us during that period. The top cat is Rosie, her sister. They'll be back here again in a week or so.

Finally, Spring has sprung. Paddocks are littered with daffodils, blossom blooms, and the rain rains the good, wet type. We no longer need to fear frost-bitten mushrooms:

Turducken

Mort and Jen made turducken, mostly just to see if they could. Turducken is an unholy bird, consisting of a chicken in a duck in a turkey, with stuffing between the meats. Their first step was to debone all birds, with the exception of the drums and wings on the turkey (for presentation). This allowed them to stack the layers - from bottom to top there is turkey, stuffing, duck, stuffing, chicken.

The next step was to sew the turkey up, and trying to create the illusion of a bird that still has bones, instead of an abominable meat-sack:

Then cook. For a really long time. This is extremely important, as turducken is the perfect storm for food-poisoning. I think this one took about 10 1/2 hours. The outcome was very successful.

We had 17 people eating dinner that night, and managed to consume nearly half of the frankenfowl. Food-poisoning: nil.

Club bourbon barrel projects

Sometimes, members of the local homebrew club aggregate in the basement of the local homebrew shop to play. In this case, we're fiddling with club brews, where the wort was made as a group in the OSU fermentation sciences department, individual members took wort home to brew, and then brought it to the club for aging in a bourbon barrel.

The empty carboys are being filled with the barley wine that's ready to go. The full carboys have a big porter that's going straight into the empty barrel.

That's a lot of beer.