what I came home from New Zealand with...

A cold.

Exhaustion.

A slightly out of kilter body clock (three hours' difference between Canberra and Wellington, for those who don't know).

About a dozen rows of my mohair cardigan done.

A lot of receipts from taxis and meals out.

Some NZ chocolate.

A duty free bottle of gin.

A fridge magnet for my mum.

A stuffed kiwi from the touristy shop.

A Maori pendant for Sean.

Some thermal mud hand creme.

A lot of dirty clothes.

Approximately 1.5kg in extra body fat.

Hair and skin dried out by horrendous wind and aircraft air conditioning.

Ok, so what's missing from this list?

Can anyone guess?

I have no wool. None whatsoever, except for the wool I took to work on while I was there (see above list: nothing much was achieved).

I guess the CBD of Wellington is not really the place to find purveyors of fine NZ wool because the ONLY yarn I saw was a stack of feathers outside a fabric shop going for $1 a ball (that's still too much, IMO).

I was so busy all week there was no time for any real exploration outside the CBD, which was a very nice place, as city centres go, but it didn't give me what I wanted.

Guess it's back to shopping on line.

Bells