Miss E's party

We went to Miss E's party today - she's one of T1's class mates for Turkish, and in the same English speakers group as T1 and T2. She loaned her grandmothers large house overlooking the Bosphorus and had a magician. T1 can not stop telling everyone about the magic.... I enjoyed having valet parking at a birthday party.... T2 produced this card for her - Alex the Lion from Madagascar and Buck from Ice Age.... with bunting (it is a party after all!) Greetings cards are not readily available here, we make lots of cards.....

Boyner bottle light fitting

This lamp isn't for sale but display only at Boyner in Istinye Park - very neat - clear light bulbs and the bottom of the bottles sawn off.... very clever and hard to discreetly photograph.....

More Eminönü

This part of the street sold wooden things, mainly the long flat paddles for putting Pide into the oven... sieves and all sorts of wooden spoons. It progressed to woven rattan, then finally - Scythes... I often see chaps walking with scythes, grim reaper fashion in the area we live in. I guess they are easier to use than petrol strimmers on hillsides. Curiously they all had stickers saying 'Made in Austria'

This is the same shop from 2 angles. He sells all sorts of dried goods, from raisins to dried aubergines, as well as olives and honey - kind of a sore cupboard type shop... Mostly Turkish produce

Someone else's Eminönü

I went to Eminönü with one of my girlfriends, this is the area behind the Spice Bazaar. She had been talking about a bead and hair accessory 'han' for a while - these are buildings. Here, often streets are dedicated to one particular 'thing' so hundreds of shops selling very similar stuff in a small area. Retailers from all over Turkey will come and do their shopping here - most sell to the public, some will split the packs of 12/24/144.
I got a huge pack of simple bobbles for an outrageously low price, which, considering the number of them we get through will be a good thing. But spent time understanding what was in the place and then we wandered into a couple of other areas, and another han that specialised in all things Chinese - I managed 2 floors of that one out of about 8..... more to follow.

The bead shop above sold everything from cheap and nasty plastic beads to beautiful real pearls. It was huge and difficult to absorb the variety of stuff it sold!

Wordless Wednesday

Incoming mail - Art Lottery

This second card came from Lyn, it has 'Start with a base that has shapes on', 'Add a skinny line', 'Add a fat line', 'Piece something' and 'Add curvy lines'

Birthday Party

With 3 littles we go to a lot of birthday parties, this one a Russian/Turkish one - some great home made Russian and Turkish food, and Turkish 'entertainment' for the big people a very good Napoleon cake (this is a bizarre speciality I am developing - and enjoying the process too! - this one had the right balance of vanilla cream and pastry - not too sweet and not too dry!) For the little people, the birthday cake was from Pelit - it was truly amazing, the river was made from jelly - it was entirely edible except for the candles, fence and the large blue firework sticking out of the house's chimney that lasted all of the singing of 'Happy Birthday' - yes, we sang in English!

Incoming mail - Art Lottery

This card came from Charmion - her techniques were Ethnic Element; Gathered Fabric; Heavy thread; Button; Attachment.

The paper 'attachment is a Noshi - something I have seen but never knew the name of.... she kindly included some eyelash yarn an ATC and a piece of hand dyed fabric.... nice....

Art Lottery Challenge

The FAT group I belong to had a Art Lottery Challenge, you handed in 5 numbers then got back 5 techniques that you were to use on a postcard. You could make 3 cards, either with the same numbers or different numbers. It was an interesting concept that I enjoyed..... Piece the background fabric, Add a new shape, Add a printed word, Add a doodle then colour it in, Add something organic. So, I pieced the background (the half square triangles were trimmings from a previous project) - add a new shape, that was the 'brown' rectangle, add a printed word - Aşşk - I doodled as required, then coloured the leaves with chalk.. - I was also asked to add something organic, well that was the doodle, a coneflower..... and the card was made with only cotton..... I traded the cards, which will follow!

Sticks of oya

I have long wondered the best way to 'display' my oya 'collection' one museum has window picture frames with a standard length displayed. This was a seller in Ortakoy - very neat idea.... it may get stolen....

Astoria AVM

These floating hearts are the 'decoration' in Astoria AVM, made from feather boas, or something very similar, they are very cool..... sadly the 'crisis' has had a toll on this mall, it is a smaller one, with some different shops - and - lots of closures...

I am still wrestling with the pink tulle..... it's been unpicked again - too fluffy - still. Lets hope it works this time....

Wordless Wednesday

Ruffling for 5000 years

OK a slight exaggeration, but it feels like it, the first attempt at the skirt failed miserably, the thing just was so ruffled it would have been unwearable.... I'm having worries about this one now being the same, even though it's 'half' as ruffled.... thank goodness I have the ruffler foot that is now making 'give me a break for 10 minutes' kind of noises - maybe it needs oiling?.... and that the net is beautiful and soft and does not tear when you frog stitch. So skirt mark II - half way through...... they better like them....

Valentines

From T2, I love to cook with my Mommy.

T1's Valentine is curious - I like giving Santa my presents... They were found after a long hunt - under a laundry basket! I didn't notice at first, but they both have magnets on the back and so are stuck to my lamp.

Spoons

These were in the same cafe as the Nargile.... neat eh?
My boy sent me a Valentine - only someone has hidden it.... will have a big hunt tomorrow....it's cute.... but then again he is cute.. 5.5 years old with 2 missing teeth...

Inbed with Orhan.... The museum of innocence

A couple of night back my girlfriend called and caught me in bed at 10pm.... early for me..... and asked if I was sick, 'no, I'm in bed with Orhan......' She was slightly shocked, then asked 'Orhan who?' I explained Orhan Paumk, well his book....
It's taken me a good couple of weeks to plough through the door-stop tomb - 530+ pages..... but it was well worth it. At last Mr P has written a fabulous books, his early books were tortuous to read, well I admit, I never got past page 20 of most of them, after several attempts. This one is different.
It is a love story, centered around obsession, unspoken desire and unfulfilled lives. The setting of course is Istanbul, in the 70's and 80's. There are scenes in various parts of the city - they even drive past the end of my street on several occasions.... I have the feeling there is an element of truth and fantasy mixed together but have yet to check that out. The most delicious thought is that he is actually planning to open a museum, biased around the book, and with 83 display cases, one for each chapter. I already have my entry ticket..... it is supposed to open in July 2010 - anyone know how to get me an invite to the opening??

More from the market

No 3 loved these grips, a simple soldered cluster of crystals on a old fashioned hair grip.... super cute.

Çarşamba Pazar

The weather is turning warmer, so No 3 and I went to the Wednesday market... always interesting, I love the brightness of the scarves on this stall... a great contrast to the grey day.

Wordless Wednesday

More fluff

It looks like it will be a nice skirt, though less than half done, it's taken 3 times the amount of time, and 4 times the amount of fabric.... thank goodness I got a ruffler foot for my Nina a long time ago - worth it's weight in gold.... almost! lets hope the skirt looks great - or else lots of frog stitching... and of course, a second one to make!

Fluff and stuff...

To try and head off dressing up wars, I had a trip to my favourite supplier of all things fluffy and frivolous for net.... these are for garments, the swirls are cream net, delicious and soft, the 'rock' fabric is hand beaded, and layers of 'transfer printed' net, but again, surpisingly not at all stiff. 10 meters of super soft, pink net has been porcured for a new fluffy skirt... or two

An overnight visitor

After swimming T2's very wobbly tooth came out.... later that evening the 2nd (slightly less wobbly) tooth was aided along a little. Knowing the stories of the tooth fairy fishing under pillows for teeth I whipped up this little pouch..... we've set 'rules' for the generous fairy.... Since Turkish kids don't have the said winged creature, we're running this in Great British Pounds.... First tooth generates a £2 coin, subsiquent teeth a £1 coin... the tooth fairy will also be delivering a piggybank in which to store the loot..... not that anything can be done with it here.... piggybank to be procured very soon....

Busy in here....

I love this pool, whilst it isn't the closest one to us, it's just a couple of years old and lovely - I am hoping that not too many more people find it. It was nearly the last day of the holiday..... so.... we went swimming, 2 moms, 1 dad, 4 littles. Then someone else got into the pool - the other mom said..... 'it's busy in here'.... yep it was, there are normally 3 people in there.... at the most!

Wordless Wednesday

Ortakoy Cafe

My mom visted over Christmas, and as is our 'tradition' we went ot Ortakoy, we saw some 'interesting' sights - more to come.... these nargile were inside the cafe....