July has been a less adventurous month than normal for Ross and I in Australia. It is the middle of winter here and has been more rainy and colder than last winter. We also did a bunch of travelling in May and June, so we stayed a lot closer to home this month.
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| Lambs at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show |
Ross is fully in the throws of dissertation writing, so he works most days of the week. I've been enjoying the cooler weather by doing some long runs and knitting on the couch with a book on Audible - I'm currently listening to
"Becoming" by Michelle Obama and am really enjoying it. Though it does make me even more depressed by the current state of politics in the U.S....
At the end of June we found out about and went to
USAFoods, which is an entire store of American food. It was incredible! We ended up spending way too much money on really random things that we hadn't had it more than three years. Our baskets included: American-style bacon (significantly different from bacon in Oz or NZ), Goldfish crackers, graham crackers (I've had to explain Smores to everyone in my office), pie tins, so much salsa (adequately spicy food is almost impossible to find here), cornmeal, peanut butter filled pretzels, Bisquick mix and LaCroix water. I'm sure that there were other items but I can't remember them at the moment. We spent over an hour wandering through the store looking at all of the items and getting homesick. I didn't think that shelves of pop tarts or salsa would ever make me homesick but it did.
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| Fluff is so gross. It makes me a little sad that people see this and think "Merica!" |
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Pop tarts and peanut butter and jelly in the same jar -
it doesn't get more American than that... |
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| So much hot sauce! |
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This company started off small in the town where I grew up.
Now it's all grown up and selling overseas... *sniff* |
My birthday was at the beginning of the July. We had been planning on going snowshoeing in the mountains around Melbourne but Ross hurt his foot and then it warmed up some and started raining, so that trip was postponed. We instead had a glorious, cheese-fuelled adventure at my new favourite restaurant in St Kilda -
Milk the Cow. It is a bar and cheese store/restaurant. How great is that?!? We started off with mulled wine and then I got a flight of cheeses paired with ciders from around Australia. Sooo good! Ross got the fancy Mac 'n cheese and thoroughly enjoyed it. We also split a small pot of fondue. Like I said, cheese galore!
In mid-July we went to an arts and crafts festival in the
Royal Exhibition Building, which is a gorgeous building fyi. It is called the
Finders Keepers Market and has artisans from all over Australia. The market happens a few times a year. I had gone to it last year and really enjoyed the market and the food but this year Ross and I weren't as impressed with the market itself. The food was still amazing but there were so many people around and the stalls didn't have as interesting of items as I remember them having last year.
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| Honey and cinnamon + Nutella and hazelnut Greek donuts |
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| Bouquets of local flowers |
The most exciting thin that I did this month, besides the cheese-filled birthday extravaganza, was attending the
Australian Sheep and Wool Show. It sounds nerdy but it's the biggest sheep and wool show in Australia (and possibly the Southern Hemisphere) and was pretty amazing. In this, I am very much my mother's daughter. I am part of a knitting group that meets once a week at pubs around Melbourne to knit (Melbourne Drunken Knitwits) and I went with a bunch of those folks. The show is held in Bendigo, which is a two-hour train ride north north-west of Melbourne. We made a day trip of it and knit on the train both directions.
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| Sheep waiting to be herded during the working dog trials. |
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| Look at those horns! |
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| Winner, winner, chicken dinner! |
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| Curls for days. |
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| Ewe champ. |
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| Sheep paparazzi |
The show itself was great! There were so many sheep (obviously). There was also a ton of yarn and wool for sale, as well as a bunch of arts and crafts and all the farm supplies that you could ever want. My favourite event was either the working dog trials or the sheep shearing contests. The working dog trials were amazing because the dogs had to herd a flock of sheep through a series of obstacles with nothing but verbal commands from their handler. Plus, when the dog got the sheep into a tight space, the dog would run along the top of the sheep. It was great. At one point I ended up sitting next to an old couple and had the pleasure of overhearing the older gentleman telling his wife everything that the dog was doing correctly and incorrectly. So good!
The sheep shearing was just as impressive. Have you ever watched someone shear a sheep in 90 seconds flat? I have. Multiple times. It is quite impressive. I managed to stay within the budget that I had set for myself for the day but only just. There was just so much pretty (though expensive) yarn, tasty food, great pattern books, etc. It took more self control than I had anticipated.
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The collected purchases of about ten of us.
Mine is the small pile on the back of the bench to the left of the basket. |
I had also been planning on running the half marathon distance at
Run Melbourne again this year (I ran it last year) but I ended up getting really sick and missed three days of work. There was a little part of my brain that thought that I might still be able to run 13.1 miles but luckily the logical part of my brain, with some help from Ross, won out and I slept in instead. It was pretty frustrating though because I've been training for the last couple months. I'm signed up for another half marathon in mid-September on the Mornington Peninsula, so all of the training will still be utilised, though I might try to find another half for later this year - there is a
women's running event December 1st that starts/finishes just a couple blocks from our apartment that I'm considering but it has the potential to be super hot at that point in the year so we'll see.
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| Winter day along St Kilda beach. |
Ross is heading over to Wellington for the first full week in August to meet with his committee and then we're going to try to go snowshoeing the following weekend so send cold, snowy thoughts our way!
