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Living in Turkey
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Safe, scary or a place for sharing?

With tulip leaves on our terrace well up, spring is on its way early here in unseasonably mild Istanbul.  We are anticipating our May journey. Turkey has been in global news for some serious reasons already in this New Year, so it’s time for an update!

Closest to home, the disappearance and murder of [...]

The alchemy of overdye

Original vintage Anatolian carpets

Textile romantics cannot bear to throw anything away. Especially vintage fibers that have been handspun and dyed, then woven into a rug using the knowledge gained by tradition, communicating the patterns of a timeless heritage. The pride and talent of an anonymous Anatolian woman, someone we’ll never know, leaves a [...]

Treasure hunting a home

 

Blue Mosque January 2012

The 1st of March, Abit’s birthday. An exceptionally snowy winter in Istanbul, spent designing new rugs and home décor, planning 2012 workshops and our spring craft trip east. Living in a visual world of patterns and images instead of words, writing and blogging were set aside for a time, [...]

The random perfection of Turkey

 

When asked why I love Turkey, I could take hours to respond, and often do. There is so much to say. But Natalie Sayin of Turkish Travel Blog says volumes in a single post, asking several bloggers, myself included, to submit our favorite photo of this ‘addictive’ country. Visit her blog, and see [...]

Spanning years, cultures and creativity

Ouravatar is a detail from a suzani, hand embroidered silk and cotton textiles traditionallybegun at the birth of a daughter for her dowry. A suzani’s circular motifsrepresent Gardens of Eden, reminders of an abundant life here in an earthly paradise. These circles imply connection, the arcs of bridges spanning divides andeven cultures. Colorful rainbows [...]

Manifesting Destiny

 

It took a random trip back to Istanbul in 1998 for me to recognize that I could create any kind of life I wanted. I didn’t have to follow the American Dream to‘success’:  the corporate high salary job, a big house, the nice car with the hefty lease.  I was living a good life [...]

Full bloom

 

Until I moved toTurkey in 1999, I didn’t fully realize that a person could have more than one home, more than one country, more than one culture. That we don’t have to choose.  Having a personal connection to multiple cultures is the best way we’ll learn to get along with each other on [...]

The ‘girl effect’ hits home

This past winter,  as I worked one more time in California to bridge the financial gap that always occurred each winter in Turkish tourism,  with economies tightening and a decade that has seen wars,  terrorism,  earthquakes tossing in more than the occasional challenge to making a living,  I decided to work with a life [...]

A verdant world within borders

After nearly 12 years in Turkeyand a lifetime of loving weavings and embroideries, I’m hardly an expertdespite a formal textile education. In a city like Istanbul,I’m surrounded by generations of rug merchants who could offer the equivalentof a PhD in techniques, styles and the various regions from which their warescome. While I’ve met a [...]

East meets West: knitting up cultural exchange

We’ve launched a project on Kickstarter, the creative arts crowd-funding site, to help us fund our East meets West fiber arts workshops, in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet, starting March 2011.

Can fiber arts bridge cultures?  Will women from multiple countries knit up new versions of traditional skills? Is there a common language of craft?

Read the [...]