the blue mosque

We are in Turkey visiting and hopefully encouraging a friend of ours who is working here. While he was at work yesterday his roommate spent the day with us and took us to several different sites. The first one was the Blue Mosque.




Before going in we had to take off our shoes. Plastic bags were available to use. It was cold and the carpet inside didn't provide much warmth for our stockinged feet so we didn't stay long. But we did take a few pictures....









On our way out I noticed that one of the security guards was wearing slippers. I suggested to him that they should provide slippers for all the visitors because the carpet is so cold. He smiled at me and took off his slippers and let me put them on! I warmed my feet for a few seconds and then gave them back to him. He smiled again and wished us a good day. I really like these Turkish people.

snow storm

Beth wrote this morning to say that classes have been cancelled at her college due to a huge storm that has blown in and is blowing lots of snow around! I found this picture and imagined that this was her trudging across the campus to her classes before they were cancelled.

It's snowing lightly here as I write but we certainly haven't seen anything like this yet this year. Just wait until March!

it has started again

Fasching is upon us again. That's what they call "Carnival" in this country. I actually learned today that Fasching officially starts on the 11 of November at 11:00 am. Then it kind of gears down for Advent but as soon as Christmas is over, they are at it again.

We happened upon a very large gathering in Lörrach yesterday. Lots of costumes and everyone was watching a....

...tree being put up. So I looked this up and discovered that The "Narrenbaum" (Fools' Tree), a relative of the Maypole, put up by some "Fools' Guilds" in Fastnacht Celebrations is connected to the medieval iconography of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Awareness. By the 15th century it was depicted more often as a tree on which fools grew.
This makes sense as Fasching is all about playing the fool!
These boys looked a little bit "fool"ish in their cute shorts.

Always confetti. You can't have Fasching without confetti.

The tree was up and then the music started - first with drums of course and then the brass do their part. These Fasching bands are actually very good.
Here you can see the bottom half of the Fools' Tree with a "fool" climbing it!

I took this picture to show the costumes AND the "red-head". Quite the colour!

an ironing tutorial

I love to iron. No really, it's true. I first showed my aptitude for this skill at a very young age when I ironed my first article of clothing - a sock. My mom was very excited about this, but not exactly in the way I thought she would be. Once she had removed the sock from the iron she warned me of the dangers of ironing. Dangers? How could that be? It was several years before she "trusted" me with the iron again...

But when she did, she was serious about it. She taught me how to iron shirts and I follow these steps to this day.

The concept is easy: start with the smallest parts and gradually work up to the largest. So, the collar is first...

Then the upper part of the front of the shirt, moving into the...
...yoke.
Then around to the other side.
Sleeves come next (looks like I need to change my ironing board cover).
Then the body of the shirt.
This picture is for free - I love the detail of this sideways bottom-most buttonhole that the Germans always put on their dress shirts.
The back.
And the other front panel.
Be sure to do up the collar buttons and top button and hang the shirt carefully on a hanger.
Voila!
When I was a young teen and my parents would go out on a Saturday night to "Adult Fellowship"at the church, I would turn on the hockey game and haul out my mom's ironing board, iron and the stack of shirts that had accumulated over the weeks. I would iron through the hockey game and well into the movie that followed before they would come home. By then I would pretty well have that stack ironed and hung. My mom would come in and say "Oh, the fairies have been at work!".

a packing bonus

On Friday I decided it was time to pack away my fabric. I don't plan on getting started on any new projects before our big move in August and packing away all options makes it easier to not think about it. However, as I was pulling my fabric out of the chest where I store it, I came across a quilt top that I had put together a few years ago. I had forgotten about it - again - and suddenly voila! there it was. What to do. Leave it or finally quickly finish it up.

I opted for finishing it. I bought some cheap fleece at a department store in the nearby city to put between the quilted and flannel layers and instead of painstakingly quilting it, I just tied it. It was simple and easy to do and is now a nice cuddly blanket.
I love this quilt. I love plaid and the reason I made this one was to use up a bunch of my plaid scraps - which I did. But, there are still quite a few scraps that I've collected since.... but they are now packed away - I almost forgot!

it looks good on her

Katy is taking a guitar class at school with several of her friends. It's a great deal but does require the rental of a guitar. We figured that we could likely get her a guitar of her own for what the rent would cost - which we did. She's been making great progress already. She has guitar class first period and it's a great way to start the day.

pray for haiti

torino 2006

Four years ago the girls and Howard and I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Olympics in Torino, Italy. One of the Resident Assistants at BFA managed to find a bunch of pretty cheap tickets for the Canada/Czech Republic hockey game, so off we went on a bus loaded with mostly BFA RAs. It was quite the day!Howard's brother, Steve, and his kids, Allison & Jori, were living here at the time so they got in on the trip as well.

Fortunately Canada won the game in the first period because they definitely lost periods two and three! They managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth and we were all happy. We could all see Wayne Gretzky (the GM of the team that year) across the way, sitting in the nosebleed section like us. I think he was gritting his teeth the whole time.

The craziest thing that day was when I was asked by an Italian if I was one of the Canadian athletes! I think my ski jacket must have tipped him off. We all had a big laugh about that one! It was quite the adventure. (Thank you Heather M. for posting these pictures so I could "borrow" them!)