Expat Excitement

This is the second time I've lived abroad, and the longest, and I am firmly convinced that something strange happens to the wiring in your brain.

I've been to two expat shops in the last week, courtesy of an English friend of mine here. There's an Irish shop a few metro stops away, and an English shop just out of town. She was amused by my reactions in both - I went around squealing and gasping my appreciation at finding items I would never buy normally in the UK. Oh, the excitement at seeing clotted cream, Hovis flour and Cadbury's chocolate! I swear, I nearly fainted when I found the Battenberg and Cherry Bakewells. (He does make exceedingly good cakes, doesn't he?) They had Dip-Dabs, sherbert lemons and sour Skittles. It was like going back in time - I can't remember the last time I had a Dip-Dab, I used to eat them with my sister when we were wee things. (No liquorice toffees, though!)

I did of course spend far more than I should have done, which will result on some fairly strict budgeting for the next couple of weeks. I did get tahini, so I can have a go at making my own hummus soon. And Wensleydale cheese and some pickle, for sandwiches. (This country makes 80 different types of cheese, why am I buying Wensleydale??)

This is the thing. I only came back from England a couple of weeks ago, but it was like a starving man at a feast. Heinz spaghetti hoops in a tin - I ask you! What was I thinking?? It does strange things to your brain, does living abroad. Or perhaps it's just me?

Do you see that grin?

That's the grin of a mad person, as my parents will readily tell you. I'm back home for a couple of days during the half-term holiday, and I've taken this opportunity to treat myself. Ignoring the bag of half-complete crochet projects, the piles of yarn waiting to be worked, the stacks of fabric and patterns, I embarked on a completely new craft - spinning.

Spinning is something I've been interested in for a while, if only for the historical world it seems to open up. For centuries, nay, millennia, spinning was a constant in the lives of women. While you're gossiping, you're spinning. Rocking the baby to sleep? Spinning. Hence the distaff sex (a distaff being a stick used to hold unspun, prepared wool). At university, I studied fairy tales, in which the symbolism of the wheel or spindle is more complex than might at first appear. I learned how to spin at a Viking history event in York, aimed at people approximately ten years younger than me, and I've been dying to have a proper go ever since. Thus the purchase of a spindle and some wool.

I've actually got a spinning wheel upstairs - it's very old, bought from a local charity shop by my mother for my 21st birthday (best present ever!) but before I work out how or even if it works, I wanted to learn the basics with a drop spindle. Which is very appropriately named, I find. But the great thing about spinning is if you make a mistake, it's relatively easy to fix it (although very hard to fix it neatly).

Now my yarn is thinner and more even, with fewer slubs, and I'm starting to plan all the fabulous things I can make with it. I really should finish my last blanket before I embark on a new one, shouldn't I? But craft isn't supposed to be sensible!

The rest of my trip has thus far consisted of crossing many things off my to-do-list (currently several years long) and enjoying the very welcome luxuries of: Georgette Heyer, bath-tubs, Haagen-Dazs ice cream and my own, fabulous bed. In various permutations and combinations.