I posted this picture months ago on my instagram and I suddenly had loads and loads of people asking me if I'd be willing to sell dreamcatchers.

Hula Hoop Dreamcatchers In Progress

We've spent five whole weeks indoors as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc. It feels like a lifetime ago that we were playing on the swings at the park and building sandcastles at the beach! Still, we've managed to fill our time incredibly well with crochet, crafts, soapmaking, reading, painting, cooking, canning and baking.

I'm trying to stay busy and stay positive, but being indoors for this long is really taking its toll. Still, we've made a point of dancing along to GoNoodle, we have worked hard at assembling lego sculptures of awesomness, and have fingerpainted a gallery of magnificent artwork that we've stuck to every available door/wall/surface. It's pretty awful to be stuck indoors for this long, but I think if I'm going to be stuck anywhere, I'm pretty sure that I'd want to be stuck with this crazy bunch of humans.

A few weeks ago I started crocheting a small blanket for the couch to keep myself busy and productive. I pulled together some really nice colours from the Scheepjes Stone Washed range, and made up a bunch of African Flower Hexagons. I used this pattern tutorial: here - it was quick and easy to work up a bunch of these in random colour combinations. I really like the colours I had on hand, they're tonal and have a lot of rustic charm with their tweedy colour blending.

Happy African Flower Hexies

I joined the African Flower hexagons together with the crochet-as-you-go method and added a final border when I ran out of yarn. I've still got some ends to sew in, but I'll get there. Eventually.  I am especially pleased with the way it makes me smile whenever I see the finished blanket draped over the back of the couch.

Of course, when the children saw my blanket they wanted one each too - and I thought it was a good idea to let them come up with their own designs. Rookie mistake. Isla's design is a smorgasbord of unicorn glitter, with granny squares, flowers, hearts and a unicorn hood. Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing with this one but I hope it works out.

Unicorn Granny Squares, with Added Glitter

The design also includes a hood, a horn, ears and a spiral mane. Of course.

Finnlay chose some really strong primary colours and a vehicles theme. It more or less matches absolutely everything in his room. He has chosen a few pictures out of his most favourite book (A 101 Vehicles) and I'm attempting to copy them and make them out of yarn. Wish me luck.

"But mom, this grey stripe should be a road." Obviously.

I have a feeling that we're going to be in lockdown for a lot longer than the four days that are left. I've still got a long list of fun (messy) things to attempt with the kids to keep them busy, thank goodness, but I am starting to wonder how on earth we're ever going to get all of these crafty makes back home with us when we make our trek back to the UK! We will have to get a container full just for the artistic masterpieces (finger paintings and scribbles) alone - nevermind the leftover yarn!

For example, this week we arranged to have some suits dry-cleaned. With two presses of a button on an app, we had scheduled a collection on the same day. You then fold up your garments into a pre-provided bag and leave them outside for collection. Two days later they're returned to you at a specified time, completely dry-cleaned, pressed and neatly left outside your door. All of this happens without even having to talk to anyone else.

Another luxury is the incredible availability of things. I've been able to get Dutch yarn delivered to me from a yarn shop in Dubai. I've bought amazing American bakeware in a local hardware store. I found a Kiwi-made youghurt Maker from a vegetable shop in Abu Dhabi. I've also managed to find Yorkshire Tea in some local stores on the main island, which is only a short drive away. Before I moved here, I worried about how easy it would be to find things that I was used to - things like toiletries, groceries and even fresh fruit. I needn't have worried; the UAE is like an oversized global marketplace if you just know where to look.

When we moved into our flat, we got an enormous gas-burning oven - another luxury that is considered the standard size here, where catering could be considered something of a national pastime. It's double-width, and I've discovered that it takes two very generously-sized baking trays side-by-side. I can bake an enormous birthday cake with four layers in just one oven session. Or, 48 cupcakes. It is truly a thing of beauty. And I've been using it. A lot. I've baked across the globe this past year, trying all sorts of recipes every week and making Southern biscuits for dinner (it's a bit like a savoury scone, rather than the sweet snack you'd have with tea), Australian lamingtons for tea, South African snowballs as a treat, and most recently an Irish tea cake - because, well, it reminds me a bit of home.

Granny's Irish Tea Cake

This was my husband's late grandmother's recipe. She had an enormous collection of amazing recipes - both indulgent, and war-time. This one was one of her regular makes, and a firm favourite in our house. I'm incredibly grateful that I managed to write down a number of her recipes which we now use quite regularly. Making fresh tea cake for (well) tea has been a little luxury for us too, in this time of Covid-19 isolation. It is proper comfort food.

Elice's Irish Tea Cake (our family recipe)

• 1 teacup of cold tea

• 1 teacup of brown sugar

• 2 teacups of self-raising flour

• 1lb of raisins (450g)

• 1 egg, beaten

1. Put the sugar and the raisins into a bowl, add the tea, and soak overnight.
2. The next day, add flour and a well-beaten egg, and mix well.
3. Pour mixture into a well-greased small tin and bake on the middle shelf of an oven at 150'C for 1 1/4 hour - 1 3/4 hours (or until brown and baked through). Mine took about 2 hours.

Yorkshire Tea in Abu Dhabi

I thought you might like to see that while things are certainly available here, they sometimes look a little different. I think you have to be open to accidentally trying new things as you go to make sure you find what you're looking for!

Selfie at the Fossil Dunes, Abu Dhabi

I was reading an article last week and I came to the sudden realisation that I've been living temporarily, or as they say, living with one foot out the door. That is to say, although we've been living in Abu Dhabi for a year so far, I haven't really admitted or committed to it emotionally or geographically. I still tell people I'm "abroad," and I'm still working UK hours. I do everything in terms of what's going on "back home". I have one foot firmly planted in the whirling sands of the desert, enjoying the spectacular sights and new experiences that you get here, but equally, my other foot is already out the door and on its way back to England.

I haven't updated my blog at all with what's happening here because I've been so worried about being judged for being away while still running my business back home - nevermind that I'm still working especially hard, while my very capable mother-in-law keeps things going on-site. Whatever will people think? What will people say when they think I'm off swanning overseas in perceived luxury (I know that's what I thought of before visiting here), when the idea of here is so very different. I'd also been worried about why it was worrying me - just for good measure, I suppose. Where's home? Where's here?

So in all of this quiet worrying, we've still been living life. I've been quietly enjoying things like visiting the Fossil Dunes (that's the picture, above) just outside of Abu Dhabi. We got a bit lost on the way there, and ended up driving around the camel racing track which is smack-bang in the middle of some dunes and is barely contained. We waved to the riders and admired the long eyelashes on the happy camels. We finally ignored the SatNav and just drove straight over the dunes to arrive at our destination. Oh, how things are different.

The other thing that really struck me, while being here, is that people often ask - so where are you from? It's the first thing a taxi driver will ask you, and we get a lot of taxis as they're often a quicker and cheaper form of transport than anything else. It's also one of the first questions that they ask you at school, while the parents natter over the watercooler while waiting for the children to finish school. So where are you from? Often, people try to guess based on your accent. No, I'm not Australian. No, I'm not Syrian.

It's a loaded question. I'm from South Africa. I was born there, I grew up there. My family is there. But home seems to be England, where I've spent the last ten years. Ten! I don't know how that happened so quickly. That's where my two children were born. Where I met my WI family. Where we bought a house. I've felt conflicted when answering that question, as if saying that I'm from England is somehow betraying my family in South Africa. But practically, it's just giving someone a frame of reference for the following conversation. I suppose I've just really not set aside the time to process and understand what this means to me, or to consider why it's having such a profound impact on my sense of self.

And really, it hadn't occurred to me before this that living this way - struggling with this dual-heritage but now displaced diasporic lifestyle in a temporary setting - has the potential to be really unhealthy. I hadn't quite realised the extent of the impact it was having on me personally, and also on my family. It's a silly thing, surely? Everyone here is from somewhere. Everyone here has a home that's elsewhere. Yet for some reason, it's quite a big thing to me.

The one thing that is really quite marvellous about living as an expat in the desert is that there are shops, restaurants and social activities to represent just about every nation. We were so excited to see that there is a Waitrose here where we'd be able to get our favourite British foods and ingredients. We were doubly excited to see that it also stocks a number of our favourite South African goodies that we haven't had in years. There - in Waitrose - the three nations coexist so happily. Yes, you can buy Ouma's rusks and Mrs Ball's chutney in the British supermarket in the middle of the desert. It's a wondrous thing.

And so - I suppose, I want to share these things with you. I want to tell you about the spice markets, and about the old fishing dhows that meander down the waterways. I want to tell you about sandstorms, and navigating yarn shops where the owners only speak Arabic so you have to use hand signals. I want to tell you about how delicious moutabbal is, how we're using up buckets of sumac and that time when I accidentally bought laban instead of a bottle of milk because they looked the same and there wasn't any English on the signage.

So, I hope that I'm back. I hope that you'll join me for the short time that we're here before we embark on our next adventure - although, we're not sure where or when that will be. I left a part of my heart back in our home in England, and quite a large part of it in the tiny but beautiful shop we run in Westcliff-on-Sea. There's another big part back in Cape Town with my family. Even so - there's still a bigger part right here with me in the Arabian desert. I don't know if those holes ever fill up, but I think that embracing what we're doing right now goes a long way to healing the hurts and making way for new adventures.