I really did. Last Saturday, I went to a wool festival.

Here comes the woolen bride

Not only that, it was in a place called Cockermouth. If you are native to this island, that’s pronounced “cock-a-muth.” Tee hee.

That’s in the lake district in the waaaay north of England. Apparently there are also two excellent and revered beer outlets there, but I didn’t make it there, and I think that Paul was a bit pleased since it means that we’ll get to go back and it will be new to both of us (that’s kind of a thing. not a big thing, but still a thing–99% of this stuff is new only to me, so stuff that is new to both of us is a pretty big score.).

Not only that, but I took a bus with about 25 other wool fans about 3 hours (each way) to get there.

Not only that, but I spent a *uckton of money on yarn. The good news, however, is that I stayed within my budget and about 40% of my expenditures were for gifts. So there.

Don't they look like father and son?

Things I learned at Woolfest 2009:

• Alpacas are closely related to camels and therefore are very cranky and spit when they’re not happy.
• Alpaca-stuffed comforters are 3/4 the weight and 100% of the warmth as traditional down, AND hypoallergenic.
• The trick to shearing a sheep is to keep it on its back so that it knows it’s powerless and doesn’t fight (ha).
• Sheep’s wool is a very sustainable, eco-friendly and effective alternative to fiberglass home insulation.
• Some wool dyes are very bad for people and the environment and so there are actually organizations to raise awareness about this issue.
• I really really really like purple.
• They make entire wedding gowns out of this stuff, and not in a good way (see above).

If you are a knitterly type and not my friend on ravelry, check out the flickr links to my unbelievably exciting new stash growing efforts. If you don’t care about yarn, I advise you to stay here.

How am I? What’s going on? Well, since you asked, I’ll spill. I’m pretty sure this is the boring stuff, so feel free to skip it.

Thing one: Who I live with.

I have a fantastic flatmate.  She is very kind, funny, smart, interesting, and thoughtful. When she comes home at night, she almost always brings sweet snackies to share. She is almost never home because she spends a lot of time with her folks who live about an hour away, as she is unemployed and they need her help.  When she left today, we literally could not figure out when the next time that we would both be home would be. Best. Roommate. Ever.

Thing two: Where I live.

I have a fantastic flat. I love that it is super-modern, with hot water on demand, big windows, and a huge tv. I love that it is quiet because it is hidden among a bunch of office buildings. I love that it is so centrally located, walk just one block and I can see the castle. I have done a bit of exploring, and so far I have strong opinions about where I buy my groceries, but not yet where I drink my beer or my coffee.  There’s a trick to balancing these with thing three.

Thing three: Work.

If you haven’t heard, I will be losing my job in a few months.  It’s not the end of the world, really, since I got several months notice and have a cushy little windfall should I need it. So far, working from this side of the pond has actually been tremendously productive, as most of my favorite workday distractions (I’m looking at you, Bronwyn and Erin) are not at work at the same time that I am (mostly). Anyway, my job goes to part time starting next week, which I think will still be enough to make ends meet, and then officially ends the first week of November.  My plan is to stay here for maybe another month and mooch off of those who love me before I go home and mooch off of some other people who love me while I look for a job.

Thing four: The British Boyfriend

Paul and I are great. We already knew from experience that we are really good with the romantic, adventurous bits, but now we’re learning that we’re pretty darn good at real life as well. Not only that, but it is so fun to be in love with someone and to be discovering all the many little ways that you are compatible. We have all manner of ridiculous travels planned for the summer, but I’ll update you as we go. For now, things are great.

Thing five: Free time

Edinburgh (not surprisingly) is lousy with knitters. There is a knitting group meeting practically every day of the week around here, and I’m thrilled with it. The past two weeks I have gone to the group that meets at a yarn store that I have been to with both my sister and my boyfriend. This week, I’m going to one at a fantastic coffee shop nearby.

Thing six: Everyone asks.

The weather is fine! It’s not glorious, like I hear Seattle has been, nor sweltering as Manchester, but still quite pleasant.  I get a bit of sun and a bit of rain every day. And on warm days, the sun gives way to unbelievable fog as it goes down. Still, here’s what I saw when I was walking to knitting group last Thursday:

One view of Edinburgh Castle, hold the clouds

And I suppose, in a lot of ways, it is.

Things that make this real life: Today, I bought a trash can for my bedroom.  I went to the post office.  I bought ingredients for dinner. I worked a full day.

Of course, if it felt like real life, we probably wouldn’t have to keep saying it out loud.

Things that make this not feel like real life: Today, I paid for my new trash can in pounds. It cost me nearly $1.50 to mail one Father’s Day card. Paul cooked dinner. I worked from 3:30pm-11:30pm and enjoyed dinner, a beer, and some cake while I did it.

Real life is awesome.

If my internal monologue has had a theme over the last two days, it has been “What the hell am I doing?” We got to Edinburgh about 2pm on Saturday, after a lovely beer-soaked evening in Lancaster with Craig, his Katie, and Rob. As we were driving in, it occurred to me that although I did make a hotel reservation for that evening, I wasn’t actually sure how to get there. And I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing, that I don’t even know how to get to the hotel?”

Turns out, Paul and I both are good with directions and landmarks and such and we found the place, found parking, and checked in without much trouble. We headed to the hotel bar for a snack, a beer, and a wifi connection so that I could start finalizing our apartment-viewing schedule for the day. And I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing, that I just rolled into town and don’t even know who is around to show me their apartments today?”

I managed to set up a couple of appointments for the late afternoon. The first was passable; it was in an interesting neighborhood and the flat was nice enough. It belonged to a 25 year old dude, so it had a certain dark sparseness that seems a hallmark of that phase of bachelorhood–you know, money to own a flat, but no girl yet to make it homey. The second, I didn’t even get inside of because just a quick drive through the neighborhood told me it wasn’t what I was looking for. No big deal though, I had at least two people that wanted to meet me on Sunday, so we’ll call the apartment hunt off for a couple of hours and be tourists for the evening. And I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing, holding out for something even better, when I already found something that will work?”

Being a tourist in Edinburgh is really just a lovely experience, if you don’t mind the rain. We walked the Royal Mile, had a snack of some chocolate soup, cruised around the castle, and planned roughly 50,000 things we’d like to see during the Film/Music/Theater festivals here in August. We shared a great dinner and a bottle of wine, and as we were falling asleep, I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing, that I don’t even know where I’ll be sleeping tomorrow night?”

This morning, Sunday, was simply glorious in Edinburgh. We had breakfast at a sidewalk cafe, and after making three phone calls and sending two emails, and still not having a single appointment to actually view an apartment, I thought, “Holy shit, what the hell am I doing?”

And then I thought, “You know, I really haven’t asked myself that enough times in my life.”

I don’t mean that I don’t think about the choices I make, I mean that I tend to plan, prepare, and choose a safe, predictable route, no matter what’s available to me, specifically in an effort to avoid the kind of low-grade panic that’s been following me around for the last 24 hours. Wow, is that boring.

Especially since I’m here now. Here, being my flat. My flatmate is a fellow geek, a traveler, and a Scotland native. I live about a 10 minute walk from the castle. I’m closer than that even to a glorious selection of bars, pubs, cafes, restaurants, theaters and, yes, yarn stores.

It seems like it would be such a simple thing: You get in a big metal cylinder in one place, then get out of it in another.

That only covers the first 15% of my travel story, actually.

To be fair, if my travel plans had happened the way they were supposed to, they still would have been ridiculous.  I was supposed to fly from SAN to JFK on a redeye, spend 16 hours in JFK, then take another redeye to MAN.  Obviously not the most restful travel arrangement ever, but I’m hardy and I have mobile broadband, so I figured it would be fine.

And it was, for a while.  I did get a ridiculously expensive manicure in JFK, but the massage chair justified the enetire price.  I also enjoyed a more than reasonable amount of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and put in more than a full workday.  Not bad.

Roughly 24 hours after I left San Diego, I was asleep somewhere over the Atlantic.  I was awakened by an announcement on the plane’s PA calling for a doctor.  I swear, it’s just like they did in Airplane!  Some time later, I was awakened by another announcement, this time informing us that we had made a u-turn and were headed toward St. John’s, Newfoundland in order to get an ill passenger to the nearest medical facilities.

Now, I get that sometimes the way forward is actually the way back, but in this case, we were two hours outside of Manchester and an hour and forty minutes away from Newfoundland.

Once landed, the ill woman had to be removed from the plane (they never told us what was wrong with her, but she was barely conscious as they wheeled her off), then her luggage had to be removed from the plane, and then a broken lavatory needed to be fixed.  All of these things, as you can imagine, caused a pretty heavy strain on the resoucres at St. John’s airport, so we were lucky to be back in the air just two hours later.

The flight to Manchester was thankfully uneventful, but passport control took ages, thanks to a preference for UK passports (pffft), and a very full flight from India that arrived just before mine.

When I finally got through, I had a good cry and a shower and then a lovely wander around Manchester, followed by some local ales and a tasty dinner with three of my favorite people on the planet.  Already, the travel was worth it.

Stay tuned.  I’ve been in the UK for five days and I’ve already got some romance and a healthy bit of adventure.

Ways you can do that:

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