Necessity – The Flower Vase of Invention?

I ran into a bit of a hiccup in preparing for a brewday this weekend. I had just finished preparing my starter and was getting it setup on the stir plate. After the usual jostling, I got the stir bar engaged to the magnet in the stir plate and turning slowly. Satisfied that everything was stable, I turned up the speed on the plate, producing the usual satisfying whirlpool in the starter. No sooner than I started my next task – checking my inventory of malt – did I hear a “ping”…followed by the sound of a slow drip of liquid.

Turning around I saw, to my horror, that the plate had thrown the stir bar and cracked the flask (you can see a bit of the crack, left-side of the image). The starter was too big for my smaller flask, so looking around I came across the only available container – a flask of flowers. Long story short, the flowers have been moved to a less visually pleasing container, and a bit of bleach rendered their vase clean and sanitary. The bottom is too thick for the stir plate to work, but it makes for a pretty starter!