A Canadian Wedding in Scotland

Be careful what you joke about. I joked about moving to Australia, and ended up living there for 15 months, and then I joked about how we could elope to Gretna Green and ended up planning a Scottish wedding.

Now, having done Australian Partnership Visa paperwork and having a bureaucratic day job, I felt very well equipped to answer all the ridiculous questions that were required to actually get married in a foreign country, but for those of you out there who might be contemplating something similar, here is the 2016 breakdown of what you are signing yourself up for.

Gretna Green will totally set-up your event. This is the easy part. Gretnagreen.com  has all the venue and food and info you need and the staff is excellent and happy to discuss options, lay out the price for you and notify the registrar of your date and time. There is some minimal info for overseas couples, but because the UK laws got messier last year, they mostly just send you to the government websites. You will then need to do the following things:

Fill out the M-10s for each of you, which is the Marriage Notices for the Scottish Registrars. These need (now stay with me, this is about to get nested and messy) to be sent in NO MORE than 3 months before your wedding day and NO LESS than 29 days before the wedding and require the following:

• Notarized Birth certificates
• Certificate of no impediment to marriage
• This doesn't exist in Canada, so you are instead going to have to go and get A Statement in lieu of a Certificate for no impediment to marriage. This is going to involve a request for authentication EXT 2165 Form which will ALSO need notarized birth certificates. This request will take 25 BUSINESS DAYS to process, even if you are in Ottawa and can show up at the office and wave paperwork at them.
• Declaration of Immigration Status: yes, even Canadians, who are used to waltzing through the London immigration turnstills by flashing our Commonwealth passports need to declare that we have a fiance visa. Which means that prior to this, you need to go and get...
• a UK Marriage Visitor Visa This can also only be applied for 3 months prior to the wedding or less, so you are basically submitting it while also on the clock for submitting your Registrar stuff. FUN! This is the big one, with the ridiculous questions, although the online system is genuinely functional (HUZZAH! FIST PUMP!) and lets you do it on the internet. You will need:
• 200 US dollars (or equivalent. *weeps about exchange rate.*)
• A UK passport size photo
• Tons of answers about how much the wedding is costing, who is paying for it, who is paying for the trip, do you make money, are you in a real relationship, blah blah blah blah blah BLAH blah. If you haven't done immigration paperwork before and don't have three years of forms to cannibalize for information and documents you want to leave some time for locating details.
• A biometrics (fingerprints) meeting which can only be done in certain Canadian cities so CHECK AVAILABILITY and which you need to book as soon as you submit your forms so I recommend submitting your stuff shortly before the three months and then picking a date that is available right at the beginning of that countdown. You can also 100% (I had to do this) accidentally go a week before the 3 month countdown because you freaked out and thought that maybe they meant no MORE than 3 months and then modify the date on your form because the visa is good for six months and they aren't too fussed about it starting exactly on the day of your flight to the UK.
• Supporting documents, like tax slips, payslips, itinerary, wedding venue bookings, bank account statements, the paperwork I had showing that "Booya, I already passed Australian immigration I am in such a real relationship shuttup", and also a list of every country you've visited in the past 10 years, although they only really want like 10 items before they tell you thanks that's enough. Also make sure you check which countries are Commonwealth and which aren't because there are some surprises on that list. 
• Then be prepared for them to take your passport and mail it to New York where they process the visa. But mine was fast and lovely and took like a week, so really I stressed out more than necessary. They want to take your money and have you get married, but they will make you jump through a lot of hoops to prove you aren't committing fraud. 
• Another UK size photo, thank goodness they come in sets of two from when you needed one for the visa.
• The registrar fee, and I have NO IDEA yet how to send pounds to a registrar from my Canadian bank, I will let you know when I figure it out. 

And then repeat for the second person! Which luckily my fiance actually has a UK citizenship in his back pocket, so he just needs the simple M10 form. HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND. 

So yeah, doable and from all reports I don't need to do much extra paperwork when I get back to Canada for them to recognize the marriage but sweet googly be prepared for the form tornado (Formnado). The Gretna Green website makes it look MUCH easier than it is.

That said, the registrar office is LOVELY. Go to their website and you can see the ceremony breakdown and if you need to call them they will be incredibly helpful and tell you that yes, you do need to show them your ORIGINAL passport and birth certificates, but that you can send your fiance on the day of the wedding to their office to do that. Verdict: Forms are evil, people are rad. 

Kitchen Fails: Garlic Press, I Curse You

So that Jamie Oliver cookbook I won has some pretty intense opinions about the types of things I should have in my kitchen. Admittedly, he is trying to give 15 minute recipes and is super up-front about the fact that if you don't have all the gadgets you will not be able to do it in that amount of time. Still, I think that requiring an immersion blender, a regular blender AND a food processor is a bit much. I'm still super pleased that I have a blender at all, but I got that mainly for smoothies (mmmm, smoothies).

But! I do in fact have a garlic press. I even managed to find a nice heavy metal one at a garage or estate sale or some such. And garlic always takes forever to peel and chop, so hey, just putting it into the garlic press with the skin on sounds sort of amazing. I'm game. Let's do that time saving thing!

Now, I'd had mixed results with the garlic press before, but I hadn't left the skin on, and maybe I hadn't committed to it properly? Surely it can't have gone as poorly as I remember it going. Time saving! Do this thing! Yay!

Did you know that garlic juice burns? I do now. And I don't mean in the frying pan. I don't know if it is me, the press, or some type of horrible cosmic cooking justice, but I sent garlic juice flying EVERYWHERE, and every drop that splashed onto my arms was like a tiny horrible acid burn (which makes sense, I bet garlic juice is acidic. Probably what makes them so delicious! mmm.). My hands were slippery, the press was fighting me, and there was horrible acidic garlic debris all up my arms. And I still had four cloves to go. And since you are supposed to just press the garlic right into the pan, the garlic needed to be added NOW and I didn't have time to stop and just chop it. Also my partner was "helpfully" mentioning that the garlic that had made it into the pan was beginning to burn in the more traditional cooking disaster sense.

Garlic Press, I curse you. I am also pretty sure this is the second time I have attacked myself with this garlic press. Which means if I don't get rid of it I will, in a couple of months, give it another go. I can tell you now, it probably won't go any better.

But you can totally leave the skin on when pressing the cloves. That was cool.

Kitchen Fails: No seriously, vinegars, whyyyy? or What's with all the vinegars part two

I like white wine.

But even I sometimes have half a cup or so of leftover white wine in the fridge which has maybe been lurking in the fridge long enough that I am not super keen on drinking it. It will maybe have gone a bit sharp.

No big problem, I thought. I know that people add white wine to vegetables or something. I know that I have glared at recipes that want white wine in them, but only like half a cup, and I hadn't been planning on opening a bottle that evening and I was annoyed about it making a demand that would require a whole bottle commitment when it only wants a little. This is great! I can add this wine to those recipes and I won't even be angry at the ingredient list! Perfect!

Plus I had some new Jamie Oliver cookbooks which I had won in a draw and this seemed right up his alley. So I opened the index.

The index was initially a bit of a disappointment. It did not have a list of all the recipes that had white wine demands. I am regularly disappointed by indexes, especially in cookbooks. But! It did have a WHOLE PAGE devoted to leftover wine. AMAZING. Maybe this page will tell me when and what I can add white wine to for flavour just because I feel like it.

No. No, this page does not tell you useful information like "just add it to those vegetables you are frying, it will be fine" (which is, by the way, usually true it turns out).

This page tells me that, despite ALL THE MANY TYPES OF VINEGAR I ALREADY HAVE, I should be making my own with leftover wine.

AAAAAARGH.

The worse part? THE WORST PART? I now totally want to make my own vinegar.

CURSE YOU JAMIE OLIVER. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VEGETABLES.

That wine is still in my fridge.

Kitchen Fails: What's with all the Vinegars?

So I decided to make some salad dressing the other night.

I always thought I hated salad, but I have slowly come to realize that I hate Kraft Italian Dressing and that the salads my friends made with actual homemade salad dressings were lovely, so I've started making my own. Most of the time it is just balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil with some salt and pepper, and maybe honey if I am feeling fancy. Sometimes I add garlic.  But I was feeling chipper and thought, AHA, I will see what other salad dressing recipes are out there on the internet and perhaps make a different dressing for tonight.

Guys, I hate food blogs. I hate them SO MUCH. They give me rage outs. So I am looking for a salad dressing recipe, feeling pretty good about the fact that I have been making my own salad dressings for a couple of years and have a well stocked kitchen and should be able to do it.

And does the internet give me a nice alternative and simple recipe to make?

No.

No it does not.

No, it tells me that the vinegars I have are unacceptable and that I need to go out and buy YET ANOTHER TYPE OF VINEGAR.

For the record, I already have four types of vinegar in my house:
Rice wine vinegar
White vinegar
Apple cider vinegar
Balsamic vinegar

This seemed to me an already excessive number of vinegars. I was already cranky about the recipes with their super specific vinegar needs. But nooo, evidently I need Red Wine Vinegar too. No, I said, no, I don't want more vinegars. So I clicked on the next link.

What did it want?

Champagne vinegar.

No seriously,  I didn't even know that EXISTED and here the food blog recipe thing is just all ... and so you just get your champagne vinegar out of the cupboard and make salad dressing. Nothing for the vinegars I already had. What do people just have ENTIRE SHELVES in their houses of types of vinegar? WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END?

I have so far refused to buy these extra types of vinegar. I made my old recipe instead. Screw you internet.

grumble grumble Champagne Vinegar grumble.

So I continue to be super pleased by the Steampunk world. I did the organizing for a few steampunk picnics in Ottawa this summer, and by about the third month realized I was bored with all my usual outfits. So I decided to base an outfit around a pair of suspenders and ended up THRILLED with my Steampunk version of Clockwork Orange meets the Teddy Girls (the-forgotten-1950s-girl-gang). I called it my Spider Girl. 

Just goes to prove that Parasol Duelling isn't just for ladies. 

Also it is always amazing to work with brilliant photographers. Thank you JJWENZEL!

Craft Pledge 2013

With the completion of 2013 and the New Year's Party gift delivery success, my Craft Pledge 2013 is now finished and I get to post photos!

The faceybooks inspired Craft Pledge 2013 with the following post:

2013 Creative Pay-It-Forward!

The first five people to comment on this status will receive a surprise something from me, in the year ahead. It could be anything - a card, a print, a book, a photo, an invitation for a tasty cocoa... The catch? Those five people must make the same offer in their status. Three, two, one... Go

So I did. Here are the packaged fruits of my labour. 

I sent my Australian craft pledges first, because I knew I would be seeing the Americans at New Year's (Canadian friends, I do not know why, but none of you volunteered for Craft Pledge 2013). 

My plan for Craft Pledge 2013 was that for every craft I would learn/relearn a skill. So for Victor, I learnt to do colour swaping in crochet to design a cellphone holder in Horde Colours.

I found an ENORMOUS horde cross-stitch pattern, mucked about with it and came up with this. I even mocked up a tiny cardboard cellphone in the correct size so that it would fit. I super love how it looks, but I neglected to teach myself how to keep the insides from being a huge mass of yarn ends, so hopefully Victor has found some use for it. 

Tallulah saw my attempts at embroidery for the first time this decade. I now regret not doing a more exciting pattern, but at the time I was just pleased to have found a fabric that took embroidery thread well. 

With the Australian deliveries sent and received, I settled into the rest of the pledges. 

I did acrylic painting for Clara. The tiny incense cones have been called poo by one person already, but I'm still reasonably pleased with how this new medium turned out. 

I did a crochet rose for Christina, which was my first time working in crochet 3D. I really enjoy this pattern and have made SEVERAL of these suckers with odds and ends from other projects:

 http://www.mazkwok.com/2012/12/free-crochet-pattern-blooming-rose.html

The project that took the longest was this video game themed scarf. I found the symbol from Sid Meier's Alpha Centari, which has been Siard's chat icon for YEARS. I then had to design the pattern on graft paper, learn to do proper colour swapping so that it would look good from the front AND the back and then play with a BILLION different balls of yarn because what the hell crochet, you basically are the WORST at making diagonal lines. Plus scarves are actually really big!

Cheryl received an oriental ink brushwork triptych of birds and trees, but I COMPLETELY forgot to take photos of them before delivering them.

The Craft Pledge actually took me all year to complete, so I'm not planning on doing a 2014 version, but since I just learnt to knit, I can guarantee there will be more crafts in my future.

Kitchen Fails: What happened to my pies?

So I'm usually pretty good at pies. They're one of the things that my dad makes, so I've taken part in lots of pie endeavours, and I usually keep them pretty simple. I make the dough recipe that's on the Tenderflake box because it is awesome and super simple (if you're in the states and can't find any Tenderflake, then I don't know what to tell you because none of the pie crust recipes seem to work without that lovely pastry lard. Australia, your pastry lard is kept with the butter) .

Anyway, usually my pies go easy peasy awesome (we've even been recreating Australian Meat Pies here at Home Base Canada, but that's another story). But the other day I got some Saskatoon berries and some currants and decided that I would just make pies with those and that it would be fine.

Guys, it was not actually fine.

First off, I somehow screwed up the dough. This was pretty much just the situation of me making the dough too dry and then FOR SOME REASON refusing to add more water, even though I knew it was too dry. Being stubborn is usually one of my strengths, but sometimes it means I refuse to add more water to dough that I know needs it. So yes, there was that to start, which meant that the dough was already giving me a bit of a headache.

Now, I figured that currants were not going to be the same as blueberries or raspberries, which is what I usually work with. So I looked them up on the internet. I knew they weren't as sweet, so I wanted to make sure I didn't screw it up.

The internet recipe said to cover the berries with sugar before plopping them into the pastry shells, so that's what I did. Usually I just pour the sugar over the berries once I've measured them into the pastrified pie pan, but whatever. This was a new recipe and I didn't want my pies to be too tart.

Then I topped off the pies and popped them into the oven.

Then I cleaned my bowls. And realized that ALL OF MY SUGAR had stuck to the sides of my white bowl, because the berries had been freshly cleaned and all damp. Yep, all of that sugar, not in the pies.

And yes, if you were wondering, currants are WAY tarter than blueberries. All I can say is, thank god for ice cream.

Cthulhu Pie

Have you seen the picture of the Cthulhu Pie? (There's a joke in there somewhere: "Have you seen this pie?" "No, is it new?" "No, it's an Old One" hahaha.)

I saw it, and then had the strange experience, which almost never happens to me on the internet, of looking at something awesome and saying "hang on a minute, I think I can make that".

Conveniently, I was also going to Harvest Noir (a picnic flashmob where we all dress SUPER FANCY and ALL IN BLACK and eat local food in neato Ottawa locations) with the Ottawa Steampunk society and if that isn't a perfect situation to make and consume Cthulhu pie well I don't know what is. (I mean, we play a lot of Arkham Horror, so it isn't like my life is short on opportunities to add some Lovecraftian edibles to my life, but I did need something to bring to the picnic)

Guys, if any of you make pies, this is not actually tricky AT ALL. Which I wasn't sure of when I started, so I made two pies, but waited until the first one was baked before starting the second pie JUST IN CASE. Also I made them four days in advance because I still needed to make bread for the picnic and ALSO also there was the possibility I was going to have to start all over (which is why I bought two boxes of the lard/shortening). But it all turned out really well AND they tasted good, so double win!

I made the recipe for pie crust on the Tenderflake box, because I love that recipe and it is easy and I know the pastry dough it produces is easy to work with.  This time, I was super careful about not making it too dry (unlike last time). I also decided to make blueberry pie instead of trying the cherries from the photograph because I know what I'm doing when it comes to blueberries and I wanted to use something familiar (unlike last time). I also didn't do any of the strange berry prep things that books seem to think are a good idea and just poured the corn starch and sugar right onto the berries once they were in the pie (again, unlike last time. God last time did not turn out well.) I also avoided using the frozen berries I'd bought and used the nice ones from our local market, but that was mainly because we're supposed to be using local produce and I'm not entirely sure "Canada" counts as local when the country is as huge as it is.

I tragically did not have a krinkle cut cookie cutter or pastry cutter or whatever they used to get that nice edging, and also forgot to buy one on three separate occasions. My lovely boyfriend picked me this up to use instead.

I admit that I was skeptical, but it actually turned out just fine.

So I layered the tentacles all over the pie and shaped the head with some more blueberries. The eyes turned out to be really simple to do, I just wrapped a triangular strip of dough around a berry and then threw the whole thing in the oven at the temperatures suggested by The Joy of Cooking for berry pies (450 F for ten minutes, 350 F for 35-40 minutes until Golden Brown). I even did the thing I Never Do and brushed it with milk so that it would turn out all pretty and browned.

Guys, I love how these pies turned out. Look at that Old One, just hanging out in my oven, dreaming his dreams of destruction.

I ended up with two pretty distinct Ancients, Mr. Squinty and Bright Eyes.


Then I popped them both in ziplock bags and just hoped they'd maintain their awesomeness while hanging out in my fridge. I also hoped they wouldn't destroy everything else in my fridge. And then, on Saturday, I took them out into the wild. Turns out blueberry Cthulhu pie survives in a fridge for a couple of days Just Fine. The nice part is these guys are easy enough that they may be appearing at future parties from now on. ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn (1)

Kitchen Fails: People Lie

Kitchen Fails: Never listen to people who cook when they casually tell you an easy recipe, they are lying

Yes, that title sounds like a bold statement, but hear me out. I don't think they are lying On Purpose. I don't think they are maliciously looking at you and telling you recipes missing key ingredients and then cackling to themselves. At least, none of my people are doing that. If the people giving you recipes are doing that they are jerks and should just tell you that they don't want to share. Also, you should stop asking them for recipes.

Nono, people who cook will tell you recipes in shorthand and blithely neglect the fact that you will Follow Their Directions but probably not know to also do x, y and z which they know to do but which you don't because Kitchen is hard.

This happens to me. This happened to me RECENTLY.

I bought this awesome ginger-orange sauce mix thing from a guy at a booth at a local fair. It smelled great. The sample tasted great. The recipe the seller at the booth gave me sounded wonderful and easy.

Take fish. Rub mix on fish. Put fish on couscous in a foil packet in oven, fish juices will cook couscous and VOILA. FOOD!

I already knew that Cooking People Lie, so I looked up the recipe online as well. This jived with what Selling/Cooking Guy At Booth told me. I also added some cherry tomatoes and some spring onions because they looked good and I am not actually BAD at kitchen.

Guys, I do not know what type of magical couscous and/or fish these people were talking about, but couscous does NOT cook itself in the oven in fish juices. It stays hard. And a little crunchy. This recipe only works if a) you cook the couscous first by following the directions on the box (remember to read those! See third post. They don't usually lie to you, although you can modify them later. I'm impatient, see all my kitchen posts, so I just add some hot water, and it is usually enough. ) or b) you know what the hell magic steps that guy was leaving out. Maybe there's a really juicy fish? I dunno. It is also possible that he did not think I would try this with uncooked couscous because that would be crazy and I misunderstood?

So yes, don't trust those cooking folk! Unless they've taken into consideration the fact that you need some extra steps spelled out, in which case thank them because remembering to tell people steps you take for granted is hard.

Kitchen Fails: Read the $&%@)& Instructions Right

Kitchen Fails: When you should really pay more attention to the cooking instructions

I like making muffins. It is one of my favourite things to make. So when my friend made these great Bran Muffins, and I discovered it was actually from the instructions ON THE BRAN BOX, I was in heaven. It had molasses! I love molasses. It had raisins. I love raisins! It did not and should never have chocolate chips, which I learned from experience by trying it, but that was an honest mistake and not the point of this post and really who would have expected chocolate chips to go poorly in a muffin? Not me!

So I mixed up the muffin batter, remembering what my mother told me to not overwork it and popped it in the oven. The box said 200 degrees C (390 F), so I put the oven at 200 and carried merrily on. And the muffins did not rise. They looked... sad. And not fluffy. And at 18 minutes I realized that my oven was in F and that I had put them on at 200 degrees F and that I had THOUGHT that seemed low but had just reasoned that bran muffins were weird and not bothered to read the instructions properly because come on, how hard was it to get the heat right on the oven?

Too hard for me that evening.

Luckily when I casually left the muffins in the oven at a higher heat for a bit longer they rallied and were totally tolerable. And the next batch was awesome (or possibly a little bit burnt, muffins are tricky. But also pretty hardy, thank goodness. They are like the aloe plants of the baking world).

Kitchen Fails: Yeast is a living organism

I love to bake bread. My dad's been making homemade bread for as long as I can remember, and one of my favourite things in the world is to happily feast on think trenchers of fluffy white bread covered in butter. Fresh bread doesn't last very long near me.

I have a healthy scorn of bread machines, but the prospect of only bought bread, no matter how lovely, was too tragic to face. So I was pleasantly surprised when I moved out on my own and realized that I'd watched my dad make bread enough times that I could do it too. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, loads of time, some therapeutic kneading and voila, fantastic bread. 

True, there was the time that I made it entirely out of wheat flour and it turned out like bricks. Or the time that I left in the middle of the rising period because I hadn't left enough time and it ... actually, wait, that may have been the same wheat bread brick fiasco. Anyway, needless to say there were problems, but that's what happens when you don't stop baking bread after your first success. 

But guys, Australia has been a DISASTER in terms of my bread making adventures. 

One of the reasons is simply because I've started making DIFFERENT bread. I have a sweetie to try it out on and enough time to experiment, but I am still the person that would just delete a half-cup of cocoa from a cookie recipe and things can go ....wrong.

I decided to try making the bread in the cook book. My dad always told me that my bread recipe was based off the white bread in the Joy of Cooking, with maybe a cup of bran or wheat flour thrown in for health and texture. Guys, this is not true. The Joy of Cooking asks you to do all sorts of things that I never bother doing, and sometimes it doesn't even want an egg. Madness!

But it is the ancestor, no matter how distant, of my recipe, so I decided to try it. I scalded the milk. I dissolved the butter and lard and then I ... poured the hot mixture directly into the bowl with my yeast. 

The bread did not rise. The moment I noticed it wasn't rising like normal, I knew that I had killed it with my stupid scalded milk. I had killed all my beautiful little yeast monsters with milk that was too hot. I felt like a monster. So I promptly primed some more yeast and added it in. Because of course adding more yeast most of the way through the first rising would fix it. >.<

The bread still not rise particularly well, and was dense like a block of bread dough which does not rise. Literally. I may have stormed resignedly out of the kitchen, muttering darkly. The happy ending is that it made the Most Amazing bread pizza base ever, but it was not exactly a triumph (actually, it kind of was, those bread pizzas were DELICIOUS). 

I decided to go back to my original recipe. Similar, but not quite as drastic, rising bread problems. I did it AGAIN, but primed my yeast for longer (this is where you dissolve the yeast in water with a bit of sugar first). This time it turned out almost right. 

By this point I had begun to suspect that my yeast was perhaps not the one I was used to, and that the package didn't tell me to prime it because Maybe I Wasn't Supposed To. Priming yeast is one of my favourite steps, and I had figured that even if Dried Yeast wasn't the same as Active yeast, or some such that it would still benefit from a bit of activating time with water and sugar, but after the failed batch of pizza dough (it should still be fine, if maybe a bit denser once again) of tonight, I think I will try not priming it at all. 

Australian ingredients being Almost but Not Quite what I am used to keeps tripping me up. I shudder to think what is going to happen when I make pie crust from baking lard as opposed to Tenderflake. Everyone wish me luck! 

(Also, to those Canadians moving to Australia [Americans, I have not checked for your Crisco, you crazy people, that stuff is gross], they totally have baking lard, but keep it in the chilled area with the butter instead of near the baking stuff. There, two hours in the grocery store saved!)

WOA: Book Adventures

As a side quest in my World of Australia adventuring, I've started a book blog with a friend.

www.bookswehaveread.wordpress.com

Yes, that is a different blogging platform, but that is what happens when you don't want to be the one setting it up and your friend does wordpress. We'll all survive somehow.

So if you want to know what I'm reading, and more importantly, what I thought of it, and follow some interesting adventures in SciFi reading (which is what my partner in crime is up to), feel free to wander on over there. Or click the link thing to the right. I've included it so that you can wander over WHENEVER YOU LIKE and not just when I mention it. Because I care.

And seriously, it is just whatever the hell we're reading and what we think. Which means I'm even going to talk about the more embarrassing young adult stuff I read. Which is Awesome.

WOA: Dialing Internationally

WOA: Dialing Internationally (or just because you can jump in real life doesn't mean you can get across a tiny stream in game)

Things I have learnt about Internatinonal Calling while in Australia
(where I not only have to do it myself, but need to coach other people on how to call me. When I can't call myself. It is tricky.)

First off, making international phone calls from/to countries that have completely different number systems is totally hard. Usually, when travelling, you try to use your phone as little as possible. When you've moved, that's not what's happening. Here's what six months living in Australia has taught me.

"1" is the North American country code, not a magic number that lets you call long distance.

You need to dial an exit code when calling beyond North America, which we Canadians have trouble remembering because we can dial internationally to the US like normal long distance whenever we want.

In Australia, that exit code is 0011, which means that when I dial N.A. I actually have to put in 00111 (area) (7digitnumber) which looks ridiculous, what with the three 1s all in a row, but is correct. Having one as an area code seems all fine and dandy until you have to actually use it.

Sending a text message to an international mobile number will bizarrely not follow these rules and numbers you can call will not be textable.

Various permutations of these rules will not work.

Scouring the internet will reveal that most people give up and just reply to the Canadian number and save it.

It actually turns out that if you put a  (+) sign in front of the normal 1 + (area code) + (7digitnumber) in your phone, the mobile recognizes that symbol and will just automatically apply the correct exit code when you dial/text.

Seriously? How did I not know this? We use phones all the flipping time and this is the first mention I've seen tha the little plus sign actually does something useful and isn't shorthand for something. My iphone would save numbers with it All The Time and I just thought it was being pretentious.

So yes, dialing a phone, yet another thing you have to relearn when you move to another country. Pretty sure I just figured out the international texting thing today. >.<

WOA: Blue Mountains

World Of Australia
New Location Discovered: THE BLUE MOUNTAINS

The Blue Mountains are just outside of Sydney and glorious. They are especially lovely for a beloved's birthday weekend when they are also hosting IRONFEST, where steampunkers, blacksmiths and military re-enactors run amok for a weekend. It reminded me of the Norman, Oklahoma Medieval Festivals much more than the SCA events I've been to recently, and I had a glorious time.

The theme of the event was Apocalypse and of course I made sure to have an outfit.

One of the things I love about Steampunk is that people wander up to, and ask you about it because it turns out it is exactly the type of thing they've always loved but that they never knew had a name or a following. Since that's how I felt about Steampunk when I first discovered it, I think these people are Awesome.

The Battle of Lithgow and the Napoleonic re-enactment camp were just great. The Battle is a fictional re-enactment of what might have happened if the French had fought Britain for control of the colony, and it had cannons. I enjoyed the cannons, and also, by that point in the afternoon, the sitting down.

They also had a bunker with circus acts, and a damn good contact juggler. The fallout theme actually made my partner-in-crime sad, as we'd left his Fallout costume in Ottawa to follow us later, under the evidently mistaken assumption that we wouldn't need it for at least six months. Silly us.

The circus reminded me of another quest.

Quest: Learn Aerial Dance -ONGOING
     Turns out it is called silks/tissue
     Pole dancing studies often do it (huh. Didn't see that one coming)
     Circus Avalon in Newcastle MAY teach workshops
     Pole dancing studios MIGHT be getting some courses in soon (no e-mail reply yet, the bastards)

We also saw The Three Sisters rock formation, which was FILLED with tourists, and the equally beautiful and much calmer look-out by the Leura Falls (note, the trickle you see is the falls. There is evidently not a lot of inland water in the Oz land. I may have made an unimpressed noise, but since it was following the very impressed noises I was making at the mountain views no one seemed to notice).

Plus I got to see more of my favourite Australia tree, The Bone Trees. (hmm, can't seem to find my photo of them. You shall have to wait.)

Kitchen Fails: Cocoa is a Dry Ingredient

You know how there are a billion gazillion food blogs on the internet? And how most of them seem to say things like "ohmygosh, it is so easy to make your own prosciutto/tea biscuits/glazed fizzywigs/whatever" and then there is a really simple looking list of instructions and some very lovely photographs of some very attractive food and then the comments all say things like "Wow! This was so easy! I can't believe I've been buying this all these years, and also my children/husband/greataunt'sghost all really love it!"?

Yes, of course you know, because the internet is FILLED with these things. And they drive me a little nuts, because I tend to screwup in the kitchen pretty regularly. This is because I am impatient. And often trying to cook while hungry. Which makes me EVEN MORE IMPATIENT. That, and I only vaguely know what I am doing, so there aren't many super useful cooking instincts for me to fall back on. So, because I am an oversharer and because I think we all feel better when the internet isn't insistently telling us that everyone else is super perfect and interesting and confident while we are trying to not burst into tears about losing our toothbrushes AGAIN (please note, this is just a random example. I actually know where my toothbrush is at the moment), I give you

KITCHEN FAILS: Cocoa is a dry ingredient

I wanted cookies. My old roommate used to make the most awesome cookie explosions, so I tried a recipe at her suggestion: Dark Chocolate Chip Comfort Cookies. 

The problem here is that I didn't have a half-cup of cocoa. I didn't even really want the double chocolate, so I said, hey, no worries, I have all the other ingredients, including awesome peanut butter, and carried merrily along.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, a tiny red flag went up about the fact that just deleting a random ingredient probably wasn't going to end well, but I. Wanted. Cookies., and just kept going.

Well, the batter tasted great, and I plunked them in the oven. Where they started to spread. And spread. And SPREAD. Please note that my cookie tray also doesn't fit in our apartment oven, a fact I discovered while trying to bake these, so I had them on an improvised tin foil sheet over the oven rack (I say this like I have since then replaced the cookie sheet, but I have not.). And these cookies were still spreading.

Now, the moment they had started spreading, my brain finally acknowledged the little red flag which finally got a chance to say "you know, a half cup of cocoa is actually a lot of dry ingredient" and "maybe you should substitute that with something, and not just delete it?" and "Don't do this. It never works when you muck with backing recipes" but by then it was too late. It was also too late to put them in a baking dish and make cookie bars. It was basically Just Too Late.

So they came out in sort of a strange film of mostly cooked cookie dough, and were delicious, but also a total fucking disaster. Which I then compounded by just sort of throwing the whole, not quite cooled, cookiesque mass into a bowl where they promptly adhered to each other into a big blob.  Which I sort of carved pieces off occasionally and ate in a rebelliously desultory way. Stupid cocoa.

WOA: Stromblo Steampunk Telescope

While reading about Canberra, I stumbled upon a charming sidequest:
Canberra Steampunk Telescope

Steampunk continues to be one of my Grand Passions, and I'm in the midst of being an Admin for the Newcastle Steampunk Enthusiasts group, and constantly on the look-out for Australian Steampunk Adventures. Going to go see a telescope which just happened to be in the city I was in was perfect. Go Steampunk!

The Stromblo Observatory went through a brutal bushfire in 2003, and this was a commissioned telescope to replace the one that was lost. I couldn't find much information on it, and my guidebook was from 2004, which means that the Observatory basically got a Tragic Story box which was less than useful. But Adventure! Determination! Misty morning walks!

So off we go, up the mountain. The drive was easy enough, and so was finding the husk of the burnt out observatory, as well as a lovely restaurant, but there was no sign of anything resembling a telescope, steampunk or otherwise.

By this point, I had become stubborn. There is no guarantee I would ever be in Canberra again (there's also no guarantee I won't be there every year, but big moves make you very aware of change), and we'd come up this mountain SPECIFICALLY to find this thing. Trying to prod my phone's internet into providing some type of useful location/information was spectacularly unsuccessful, and the staff at the restaurant just shrugged at our question in confusion and told us that it didn't exist (I knew they were wrong. Maybe it was a conspiracy?). So we wandered into the university compound nearby, which does the actual observatory work now, and forlornly tried doors and peered in windows.

There were a couple of displays we could see through some big glass doors, but I wasn't really sure we were supposed to be wandering around, nothing was open and it was getting a little chilly, so we sadly gave up and then cheerfully continued our drive.

Once I got home, I began to prod the internet much more efficiently than on my maddeningly rubbish little phone (I miss my Canadian iphone so much. I seriously need to get around to finding a way to get it unlocked). And imagine my surprise when I realized that my partner and I had, in actuality, stared RIGHT AT the damn thing and not realized it was steampunk.

It turned out that the telescope was the exact thing we had peered at through the glass doors at the academic observatory and then unanimously and categorically dismissed. And that's because we had been expecting to find something like this:

and had found instead this:

I think you can see how we got confused. Interestingly, those two pieces are done by the same sculptor, and you can read about their creation here.

So yes, maybe it is more impressive when you can get closer to it? Anyone been?

WOA: Canberra

World Of Australia
Quest: Post those backlogged adventures DING!
New Location Discovered: CANBERRA

First off, because I am the type of person to admit to horribly stupid stuff that I have done, I didn't know Canberra was the capital of Australia until I decided to move here. Much like Ottawa, they picked a location between their two heavy hitters (Sydney and Melbourne) and turned it into a capital city.

It has a the reputation for being a bit dull, which has been echoed by both my lovely travel book In A Sunburnt Country by Bill Bryson (So funny, and bizarrely entitled On Australia here. I find non-translated but totally different book titles very interesting) and by the various people I have met. I figured that, much like Ottawa, it was awesome when you got to know it, but didn't make finding the cool stuff easy.

The drive there was AMAZING. Not only did I get to see The Big Merino (yes, that is a giant sheep. Yes, I hugged it. Yes, there are MANY MORE giant things in Australia. And yes, you should come visit me)

but the landscape in Australia continues to be breathtaking and driving along the Australian countryside in our little convertible in the shadows of the mountains, surrounded by unfamiliar trees and SUPER WEIRD birdcalls (I kept insisting the car was falling apart. He kept telling me that it was a bird.) is a glorious glorious thing. Also,

Highway Driving Quest
SUCCESS

My ability to drive along Australia highways is totally getting better, especially since I am no longer frantically checking my lefthand mirror to figure out where in the lane I am. I forgot how much I enjoy country driving with the music blaring. Also, I have found all my old mix cds from highschool/undergrad, so the drives are particularly epic; Tenacious D is now stuck in my head.

We bummed around Canberra, played 500 (which is the Australian beloved card game equivalent to Eucher) until two am and FROZE. Dear lord, it gets down to freezing but they have no insulation and no centralized heating. WE WERE WEARING COATS INSIDE. I SLEPT IN SOCKS. I .. yes, I don't approve of this. Of course, back in Newcastle, I just went swimming at the beach in late Autumn, so my complaints sort of lose their weight, but still! I get cold when I sleep. /sulk

We also went to the Roller Derby game, because a)roller derby is AWESOME, b)they were playing our Newcastle team and one of our friends is on it (Her name is Beaver Destruction. As a Canadian, I try not to take offense. ;) ) and c) one of our 500 partners is sometimes a ref. Yes, the further I get from the Roller Derby Heartland of Texas, USA the more I see of it. Canberra's Vice City Rollers PULVERIZED our Dockyard Dames (seriously, I LOVE the names in Derby), and they should be very proud of how hard their blockers hit, but it was an awesome game none the less and the DJ was genuinely good.

We checked out the Tower thing, wandered the Museum of Australia (which told me things I did not know), I hung out in the Rainforest Gully of the Botanical Gardens (I was horribly allergic to Something/Everything in Canberra, but the Gully cleared my lungs right up. Also, Australian rainforest makes you think that you are about to get eaten by a dinosaur. The weird birds reinforce this), and we accidentally ate at Samy's Chinese BBQ, which it turns out is an institution. I have a knack for randomly picking iconic restaurants ( Chili in Washington D.C., Five Guys in an airport), for which I am extremely grateful.

So Canberra was grand, but I will tell you this now: it is not a walking city. There is way more road than anyone should ever need, and it tends to just spit you out in strange places, all the while you are surrounded by park which is surrounding suburbs and you are just trying to figure out where the city is. Plus, many of the pubs were closed at noon on a Sunday, which is just mean. So good times, but I prefer my beach.

Orchid Paintings

World of Australia Long-term/On-going/Very Big Quest

OIL PAINTING - Enough for a Cafe Show/ Fair Booth

Orchid Painting -Medium size - DING!

I've actually had some pretty good traction on this quest, so I figured I would share. I'm taking progress shots after each painting session, and it is very satisfying to see how it changes as I get the colours onto the canvas.

First I wanted to have the silhouettes down.

The start of the flowers, and deciding on the colours.

Almost finished. This is the stage when I'm nearly done and decide I hate it. It took me a few weeks to go back in, redefine my whites, muck about with the darks and sign it.

Finished. Rather enjoy it now.

Of course, photography of oil paintings is notoriously unreliable, and I am still of the school of point and click and maybe fiddle with the flash, so this is more of a gesture towards what the painting looks like, but still, a pleasant start.

Hair experiements

My hair is much longer than usual. This is probably because I have yet to call and schedule a hair appointment here in Australia (New Quest! Get Hair Cut). I figure I'm still in mourning for my wonderful hair stylist at Sublime Hair Studio, but I am also beginning to have difficulty seeing through my increasingly emo bangs. Anyway, this means I have enough hair to muck about with, and after a discussion about potential hair steampunk hair styles with a friend, it got me thinking.

Her hair goes down to her waist and there are a number of interesting vintage and regency do's available to play with, although admittedly sometimes her hair is actually TOO long for the look. Mine is  right under my ears, so most of the things we looked at won't really work. (For those of you with longer locks, Torrin Paige has lovely long hair tutorials on youtube. Plus, she is not annoying to watch on video, which turns out to be the exception not the rule for youtube hair tutorials)

I wandered over to Steam Ingenious which was talking about steampunk hair, but I'm not really anxious to go for wigs yet. I like my hair. Up to now, I've just thrown some hair gunk in (the good stuff. Like Thrill or Gooch), scrunched it around a bit and gone. Sometimes I've even used hair spray. I don't own a curling iron or hair blower, and I'd rather keep it that way, but with the extra length I find myself wanting to do things with a bit more drama. And if you want to try new things, ten minutes before you walk out the door is probably not the best time selection.

So now... now we experiment!

Experiment 1: BRAIDS

Wavy hair from putting my hair in braids (lots of them) when it is wet and leaving it until it is dry/I get impatient. I pinned them up using leftover bobby pins from when I was in ballet (yes, from when I was EIGHT). 

Tada! Wavy poofier hair. Add some hair gunk to make it stay, and this could be a fun base for hairstyle. I was worried about having too many kinks, but my hair is super fine and short, and also I suck at braids,  so I think I could get away with leaving it in braids for much longer.

Next time... The Gibson Girl? Or really, I may just try more braids. Also, blog photography takes effort. 

Baking Bread

So, I like to bake bread. My father always made bread and it is something I am actually good at (unlike say, cookies. I have a tragic cookie failure to tell you about later).

The bread I usually make is just the normal white bread recipe from my ancient Joy of Cooking, modified as I see fit, because it is a dough that I understand (except for that time I used all wheat flour and ran out on it while it was rising and maybe ended up with bricks. But whatevs! Usually it goes well. Unlike the cookies.).

But Australia, as you may have gathered, is hot. Not super hot, because evidently this is the Worst Summer Ever (hah! It is to laugh.), but warm to the point that they don't have furnaces (I know, my head exploded too. My mom was all "Would you like the quest CLEAN THE VENTS as an add-on to your vacuuming skill" and I realized that I did not have the pre-requisite item vents. It was odd. As is the way vacuuming is spelt. Better not type it again, it will just get weirder.) So I am waiting to break out the All Day Bake That Bread Event, but I do get very testy when I am recipe surfing and all the meal plans involve weird ingredients and kitchen implements I don't own and probably some type of eldritch knowledge because it shouldn't turn out wobbly, but the bread recipes have things like "Easy! Quick! No kneading!" What the hell internet? This is the one thing I would like to take at the Advanced Level. Or at least Intermediate (because yes, usually it is just me and the white bread hanging out. Why get fancy when it is so good and warm and yummy?) But I LIKE kneading bread.

ANYWAY, I figured I'd do a couple of lower level BREAD QUESTS to keep from going stale (hah! I am so funny.) and I came across a recipe for Beer Bread that involves Self-rising flour, which was the only flour in the house at the time (also I had no yeast. Setting up a kitchen = hard).

It turned out AWESOME.

RECIPE: Beer Bread

3 cups self-rising flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
1 beer

Mix. Put it in a loaf pan. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

If you don't have self-rising flour (because seriously, who has that? Why do we have that? Being in a couple is weird) you can do it the way Farmgirl Fare does it:

3 cups organic all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder 
1 teaspoon salt

Personally, I like it with the little extra sugar. The best part? Trying it with different beers. I think my favourite so far is Corona with feta and rosemary, but the Guiness beer was interesting (and tragically popular with the ants, damn their eyes! Eye stalks? Visual Sensors!)