happy days are here again

celebratory indecipherable lace waving - if lace looks bad pre-blocking, make sure no-one can see it!

Life is sweet right now, literally, with the puzzle wrap, or 'zle as I shall call it, officially off the needles, and a glass filled with sweet, sugary, memory inducing goodness, which is also sometimes known as root beer.

'Zle (rhymes with glee) went like a dream, despite my bad-mouthing it in earliers posts. I didn't use a lifeline, but instead relied on stitch-markers between each pattern repeat, making it a doddle to keep the stitch count correct. The odd mistake, a forgotten yarn over or two, was easily corrected on the next row, but 'zle could be holding out on me, and take revenge in the next half. I can't tell yet how it will block out, but I'm hopeful, as everyone says that lace looks bad until fully finished.

But better than the anticipation of putting together puz' and 'zle, is the joy in discovering a local, if intermittent supply of root beer.

When I was little, as an occasional special treat, and only ever on a Friday after school, my mother would take me to a certain hamburger chain, that had recently begun its campaign to educate the British taste. My mother was American, you see, and missed burgers. When she first came to England, she scandalized her local butcher by asking him to mince up prime steak, so she could make burgers (she then went and bought a mincer, as it didn't pay to upset the butcher). She also joined what is, I am sure, a very worthy organisation, the American Women's Club of London (and I just found them online, so I'm linking to them, seems only fair), even though it really wasn't her scene. She joined because back in the '50s the AWCofL was the only place you could get a decent burger, and sometimes you just want to eat your burgers out.

But as she rediscovered burgers, I discovered root beer, and life was filled with a certain bubble gum and medicine and thick sugar but ultimately indescribable taste. And then the certain chain stopped selling root beer.

I found a bottle of root beer years later, and shared it with my mother not long before she died, listening as she told stories of hunting up sarsaparilla root, and brewing her own as a child.

But joy of joys, I found root beer again the other day. It isn't my favourite brand, and it is ridiculously expensive, and at the checkout you do have to have long conversations about 'what is it?', and 'why have you bought 12 bottles?'. And I'm not entirely sure that I actually like root beer, but it is my drink with history, and I'll stick by it. Cheers.