Twisted PEZ quilt - finished!

 I'm still figuring out this whole naming your quilts thing.  It does make a quilt seem more like a unique work of art instead of just a sewing project, doesn't it? Since this quilt was made with a Pezzy layer cake and the Twister tool, I thought Twisted PEZ was an apt moniker.  It also sounds a little like a punk band which adds to the whole teenager vibe as does the texting abbreviations fabric we chose for the border.

This quilt has a bit of a history. My daughter Delaney purchased the layer cake with her own babysitting money while we were still in San Antonio. She laid them all out and sewed the squares together along with the white border. But then that whole pesky cross-global move thing happened and it sat for a while in the UFO pile here in Turkey.  Meanwhile I accidentally used the orange fabric we had purchased for the border and binding in a baby quilt. My bad. But I did help her pick out some new fun fabric and ordered it for her. And found the pink binding fabric here in Adana.

Eventually we got it out and she used the twister tool to re-cut and re-sew the squares and added the black border. This is not her first quilt. She has done a baby quilt and a jeans quilt. But there were still some sewing lessons to be gleaned from this project and a few tears of frustration as well. A seam ripper was used. More than once. 

After the top was finished it sat some more in the sewing cabinet. Then last Saturday I was ready to sandwich and baste my Freedom Star quilt and I asked Delaney if she would like to sandwich her quilt as well.  Sandwiching is my least favorite part and I always recruit her help as it is much easier with two people.  And since I was going to be crawling around on the back porch anyway I thought we might as well get both quilts ready.

I fully intended to start quilting my star quilt. But when Delaney said she would really like me to do the quilting on her Pezzy quilt,  I grabbed that instead and started. I'm not sure why. Old habits of putting your kids' needs before your own I guess.

I sewed two echo lines inside each pinwheel and then around the whole pinwheel center all with my walking foot which required a lot of pivoting. (ugh) Then I decided to try some free-motion in the negative space on the white border.  I did two rows of pebbling and a larger row of figure eights. I think it went better than it ever has. No shredded thread, no skipped stitches, no thread breakages. I wish I could say why it went so well but I have no idea. Same machine, same thread, same operator.

Close-up of the quilting and the fun border fabric.

I did a simple elongated scallop stitch on the black border with my walking foot and bound it with some pink fabric bought here in Turkey. One cool thing about fabrics here is that most of them are 93 inches wide so they are great for binding. It only took 4 WOF strips to bind this thing and I had almost a yard extra. The back is a fun pink, green, and black plaid.

Delaney was at a friend's house watching movies last night so when I finished I put it in her room and then went to bed. When she got home she came in and woke me up to tell me how much she loved it. Yay!! Success.  (By the way, if you are wondering what she looks like, scroll down a few posts. She's the gorgeous blond with the viking helmet on her head.)

So even though it wasn't my quilt, I'm still counting this as a finish for me and crossing it off my WIP list. Now I can move on to :

 Quilting my Freedom Star HST quilt.

 Finishing Jayne's Ten Little Things baby quilt.

And Carson's grizzly quilt. He's waiting very impatiently.

And even though it is already late Saturday morning here in Turkey and this is not strictly a quilting blog, I'm linking up with Crazy Mom's Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF, and Can I get a Whoop Whoop? Cuz it makes me rather giddy to see my amateur efforts alongside all that gorgeous quilty eye candy.

A date to the mall - keeping it real

Today was a family day - which means a day off work for all active duty personnel. It was not, however, a day off of school. Which kind of defeats the purpose of calling it a family day, don'tcha think? Anyway, these last couple of months have been uber stressful for Geoffrey so this day off was a blessing for him.  He spent the morning golfing with one of his work friends. The golf course here on base is quite nice, and very cheap. So he's been trying to do a bit more golfing. He even talked me into going last Saturday. It was my second time golfing in 13 years but I did okay and enjoyed it.

After lunch Geoff and I headed off base. We stopped at the furniture store in the alley to check on the bookcase we are having repaired and looked at some bedroom furniture we need to have made. No decision yet but we are close. It would be great to have it done before my parents get here next month so we'd better hurry up.

Then we drove across town to the M1 mall.  I had been there before but Geoffrey hadn't. It's a large very modern mall with some pretty pricey stores in it.  The Turks you see there tend to look a bit more affluent and European in dress than the ones you see in Old Adana although there is a mix. I enjoyed myself but was at times a bit uncomfortable. And I realized today why living here seems easier for Geoffrey than it is for me (aside from his stressful job).

First, he is not a rule follower. If a rule makes sense he follows it. But if it doesn't, he won't. (This doesn't apply in his professional life, of course.) And he doesn't expect others around him to automatically follow rules either. So the traffic here doesn't surprise or alarm him. Another odd unique thing about Geoffrey's driving is that if there aren't enough things going on to warrant his attention, he doesn't pay attention. At all.  On deserted or familiar streets he will run red lights, miss turns and blow through stop signs simply because he wasn't paying attention and missed them. But in complete traffic chaos in a strange place he constantly knows where every other car around us is and can find places based on horrible directions and his own innate map. And since he has complete confidence in those abilities he never feels alarmed or nervous.

I, on the other hand, like to know exactly where I am going and how to get back at all times. I get lost easily and feel very anxious if I don't know where I am. I am a devout rule follower and I'm always surprised when other people aren't.

Second, Geoffrey is not afraid to look stupid. I know that sounds cruel but it's true. One of the things you have to get used to here is that there is no such thing as browsing. As soon as you walk into a store, there are people trying to 'help' you. In the alley where the shop keepers speak English this can be annoying. But at the malls very few people speak English.  So it's a different ballgame there. When I walk into a store and ascertain that the clerk doesn't speak English, that is the end of the conversation.  I respond to their greeting in my limited Turkish, of course, but if they don't speak English I'm not going to ask them if they have the shirt in a different color or if they know where I can buy a particular item they don't sell.  Geoffrey will. He will carry on a long monologue way past the point at which it became obvious that no one understands a single word he is saying.  He will use primitive sign language and speak in short, loud words until he looks like every caricature of an American tourist you have ever seen.

And somehow it works. Today at the mall we went into Praktikar, the equivalent of Home Depot, and Geoffrey wanted some polishing compound to use with his buffer to clean off a metal door. The two clerks he asked had no idea what he was talking about. Ten minutes later he has 5 clerks around him who all still have no idea what he is saying.  Twenty minutes later he is in the back office on the computer with five different people trying to find some place in Old Adana where one of them thought he could purchase it.  And a half an hour later, he is finally leaving the store with the polishing compound he needed.  The manager had found it in a different department.

I hate looking stupid. I hate not knowing what I'm supposed to do or how things work. I'm not a control freak. I am generally a flexible person. But I like to know what is going on. Today before we left the base we stopped at the Turkish cantina to turn in our empty 5 gallon water bottles and get new ones.  I've done this several times since we got a water cooler. But today the clerk asked me if the empty ones I had turned in were the Hayat brand or the Evril brand. I had no idea. I hadn't even noticed there was two brands of water. Apparently one is more expensive that the other and if I bought the more expensive kind without having returned empties of that same brand I would have to pay a deposit. I was completely flummoxed and feeling so stupid to not know which type of water I had purchased the 3 or 4 other times I had done this. Finally the clerk I had given the empties to outside came in and told us which brand it was.  I was so grateful I could have hugged him.  So not being able to read signs or ask questions or understand what people are saying to me puts me completely out of my comfort zone.

Finally, although Geoffrey hates having people he knows pay attention to him (think birthday parties, congratulations, awards, etc.) he doesn't mind it when complete strangers stare at him.  I am the opposite. Bring on the singing telegrams and the standing ovations. But let me be invisible in a crowd. I know people don't mean to be rude or menacing. I know that I look, dress and speak very differently than what they are used to seeing. But I hate being stared at.  It makes me want to go hide in a closet. And when I am in Adana it seems like everyone is staring at me. It's disconcerting to say the least.

Anyway, we did stop in the Gap store at the mall. My favorite jeans in the world are Gap jeans and I wanted to see if they had them. We found these great Gap T-shirts that had various cities stitched underneath the GAP logo. Cities like London, San Francisco, New York and. . .

Okay so its not Adana but its still in Turkey. And someday we will get to Instanbul.

They did have my jeans. Since the sizes are different here I tried on two sizes. I was about to buy the larger one but let the clerk (who did speak some English) talk me into the smaller of the two. She reminded me that they stretch quite a bit when you wear them. I am still debating whether or not I should've purchased the other pair. I'm a cheapskate at heart but I will pay full price for these jeans (they are that awesome). Oh, if you're curious I'm referring to their 1969 curvy cut jeans. If you have a curvy figure, you should try them. Your tush will thank you. The only problem I have with these jeans (and it has happened 3 times now) is that they wear through in the inner thighs. Yes, I have tree trunk legs and that is the problem. The solution is to iron denim patches on the inside of the thighs as soon as you buy them so when they wear, they won't tear.

So in the states they cost $75 full price and they hardly ever go on sale. Today I paid 149.99 TL for them. With the current exchange rate that is $83. Ouch!!! But we did get a coupon for 30 TL off our next purchase, which we immediately used on a sweater for Geoffrey. All the same I really hope I picked the right size.

I hope that with time I will feel more comfortable here. Honestly I had hoped that after 7 months I would feel more relaxed and confident venturing off base than I do. It has been more of a challenge than I thought it would be. So for those of you who have remarked that my life seems so exciting and adventurous here I thought a little candor was in order.  There are many times when I realize that I left my comfort zone 7000 miles away in Texas and it's the thing I miss the most.

Germany - Girl Trip

    After some internal debate and no small amount of guilt (it was during a stressful hospital inspection for hubs) I recently escaped to Germany for a week with Delaney. We almost didn't make it on the plane due to a problem with our residency permits and passports and a very um.. excitable Turkish Passport Police official.
    When I signed us up for Space Available Air Travel at the terminal the week before I had explained to both the US and the Turkish officials there that my Turkish residency permits were about to expire so I had turned them in for renewal along with my brand-new official government passports. Therefore I would be traveling with a photocopy of my residency permit and my tourist passport. There were assurances all around that it would all be tamaam (okay).  At worst, I would have to pay $20 for an entrance Visa when we returned. No big deal. Well, cometh the hour and cometh the angry Turkish man and it was not tamaam.
     This was one situation where I was glad I didn't understand Turkish because there was a lot of yelling intense discussion going on. But everyone except the Passport Police kept assuring me that they would work it out so I didn't stress. It was actually kind of amusing. In the end I had to leave the terminal, drive to the Wing building and collect my expired Residency Permits and my official Passports from the Pass and ID. Luckily they were still all there and not at the consulate yet.
    In the end, we made it on the plane squished in between a bunch of Navy guys coming uprange and flew to Ramstein. Once we landed we were very glad we had packed hats, gloves, scarves and coats as spring had not yet arrived in Germany.
    Our purpose for going was to visit and help out a friend of ours, Jayne. Due to a contract problem with a Turkish Obstretrician, you can't have a baby in Turkey right now. So all the preggos have to go to Germany 4 weeks before their due date and stay 2 weeks post baby, or until the new passport shows up. They call this madness Storknesting. So Jayne had been in Germany with her two rambunctious toddlers and her well-meaning father for a month without a car, in snowy weather and very very pregnant. Not the most ideal situation for keeping one's sanity intact.
   Since Delaney is a frequent babysitter of said toddlers and sits with them every week in church and I am their Primary leader for the last half of church, they are pretty familiar with us and were over-joyed to see us. We took them to the park and on stroller drives through the large BX complex and put them down for naps and sent Jayne and her dad out to the movies and such.

Here are the cuties! Did I mention we also fed them sugary snacks and put them in silly hats? Aren't we helpful?

The BX there is amazing. Easily 10 times the size of our BX. Delaney had lots of fun shopping. She was sorely disappointed though when she couldn't find new boots. And maybe even more so when mom did find a great pair of shoes for herself.

Love the picture! She needs to make it her new fb profile pic.

Here is Jayne with her cute preggo belly.  No, you can't rub it. 

     I really like Jayne. And I like her kids, who have personality and spunk coming out their ears. I even like her dad, who was a bit of a character and capable of turning every conversational topic into a discussion of the sad state of American politics and the plight of the small business owner.
    She reminds me so much of myself when I spent my days chasing after two little curtain climbers.  Just like I did she worries about her kids' crazy and sometimes naughty behavior. Together we roll our eyes at mothers of quiet calm little girls who glare disapprovingly at the highly unstable ball of kinetic energy that makes up her four year old son.  She doesn't believe me, but back in the day my oldest had hers beat for parental exhaustion hands down.  It's hard to see my calm 17, fairly responsible son as a child who could inspire his mother to smash plates on the back porch from sheer frustration. (In my defense, I only did this at night after he was in bed and I always swept up the shards. It's surprisingly satisfying to break something on purpose after a long day of restraining yourself and over-taxing your patience.)
   And Delaney likes Jayne, who is her Young Women leader and does a fantastic job. In a place where like minded friends are a bit harder to come by, she manages to be mentor, leader, and friend to my daughter.  They share books, watch entire seasons of Warehouse 13 together and sometimes just hang out.
    So spending a week with her, even in the midst of Storknesting difficulties, was great fun. Since we didn't have to shovel it or drive in it, we enjoyed the occasional snowfall. We did get off base a few times. Once to church in a regular size ward (congregation) which was wonderful but kind of strange at the same time after attending our tiny branch for 7 months. Jayne and I also did a USO tour on Saturday. Delaney was supposed to come too but she got sick in the middle of Friday night and opted to stay home. She decided this was providence as Grandpa ended up needing some help babysitting. Then on our last day we were able to spend some time with our Uncle Frank and Aunt Crystal, the same family we had visited on our October Germany trip. But as this post is getting a little long, I'll save the details of those two excursions for next time. Stay tuned!

Women's Market Visit

    I've already blogged about our great local market here when we can buy fruits and vegetables that taste so much better than the produce in the states. But there is another kind of market you can visit called the Women's Market.  At a produce market the vendors will all be men. But at the Women's Market the products are all created and sold by women. It's a much different experience.
   My daughter Delaney has been dying to go to the Women's Market but since the market is held on Wednesday, her school classes prevented her from going. And then miraculously, there was a Wednesday with no school. So off we went.
   I drove with my trusty friend Karen navigating. I even brought my GPS so I could mark the spot and possibly get back there on my own.  I have to admit though, I'm still rather terrified of driving here in Turkey and it hasn't improved much in the 7 months we've been here.  For many years I have considered myself a brave person. The kind of brave that will drive from Florida to Arizona by herself with four children because hubby was in Korea and I wanted to see my family for the summer. The kind of brave that can evacuate due to a hurricane (sans deployed hubby) and not stress too much about it.
     I thought that strength and independence would serve me well living in a foreign country. But driving in Turkey takes a different kind of brave. Roller Coaster brave. Dirt bike riding brave. Snow skiing downhill at high speed brave. Basically, adrenaline junkie brave. And if you know me at all, you know I am not that kind of brave. I am a mouse. A timid one.
   Nevertheless, we made it and I even found a place to park. The Women's Market is divided into two sections: handmade items and homemade food.

Aren't we cute?  I ended up buying the one Delaney is wearing. And I LOVE it.

 This time of year you can find a lot of knit and crochet hats and scarves. All colors, patterns and yarn types.  The skills of these ladies are unbelievable. I ended up buying a hat and two scarves. Delaney bought a hat.  One of the scarves I bought is the softest yarn I have ever felt. Its orange and fuzzy and I walked around petting it the whole time. Seriously.  I'm not a cat person but it was like wearing a kitten around your neck (without the bitty claws).  We paid from 5-10 Lira for each item. That's about 4-7 dollars. Incredibly cheap. When I was in Germany last week and saw similar scarves for 20 Euro, I appreciated all the more how inexpensive things are here in Turkey.

Here is the hat Delaney bought. The cute flowers on the side are a bit hard to see but they are darling.

 You can also buy jewelry there. These funny mustaches necklaces cracked us up. You could also buy a mustache ring or earrings.  Delaney and I both purchased necklaces and Delaney got some matching earrings as well. Not of mustaches. These had crocheted chains with large metal flower pendants. Very cool.
   Behind Delaney is our friend Melody. She just moved here recently so it was fun to take her along. She has a great attitude and is loving the adventure of Turkey. 

There are also lots of scarves of the type used to cover hair for sale here, often with intricate crochet around the edges. Tablecloths, doilies and darling crocheted baby clothes are also offered. And because the women vendors are not as pushy persistent as male vendors tend to be, shopping there is a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience.

Once we finished the handmade section, it was time to check out the food. Nearly all the food is made right there so you can watch it being created. The most fascinating was these little nut filled fried pastries.

This older Turkish woman starts with a small blob of dough then rolls it out with a thin dowel to an impossibly thinness.

 Then she puts small piles of chopped nuts in a line down the middle of the dough, fold the dough over a couple of times and then pinches in between each mound.

 She then cuts them apart into these little boat shapes and they are fried and then dipped into the sugar syrup that nearly every Turkish dessert includes.

They are good but you can only eat one of them before you are overwhelmed by the sweetness. We bought some of these and some tiny donut holes that looked delicious but were way too syrupy. My favorite is the scone fry bread that is filled with a potato and cheese mixture. Yum!

So now you know what a trip to the Women's Market in Adana is like. Come visit me and I'll work up the courage to drive you there myself!

Mud, Fish and Camels

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Hope you felt loved today.

This holiday is double duty at my house because my husband was a Valentine's baby. He is one who doesn't like a lot of fuss. Three years ago I threw a surprise party for his 40th and I'm not sure he has recovered from the shock yet. Today I took him to lunch and recited the names of all the people he works with that I have seen in the last few days to whom I could've mentioned that his birthday was today but didn't.  He said that my restraint was the best present I could've given him. That's a good thing since Amazon has once again proved that prime doesn't apply to Turkey and the golf bag he picked out for his gift has not yet arrived.  And since the gate is still closed our romantic dinner out will be at the bowling alley. meh.

I spent most of today taking Rory to apply for his new tourist passport and then taking all the rest of the kids to apply for new residency permits which had expired when our military passports had. Its amazing how much paperwork is involved in living overseas! But as least I can check those important things off my hanging over my head to do list.

Today I wanted to post some pics of some of the crazy things they do here on base to keep us all from going well,  crazy.  I have to say that the base does a great job in providing family friendly activities.

This is the before picture.

This was the Dirty Dash. My 2nd and 3rd decided to participate and Delaney made their great T-shirts with cut out letters and a spray bottle of bleach.

The after picture!! They came in last but they finished!

The race turned out to be a bit more challenging than they realized but they both had a great time with the mud pits. They were a complete mess when they finished.

Here is a shot of some friends from our church group. The team on the left is the "Mormon Mafia" and the pretty girls in the middle are the "Dirty Dancers."

The Fall Festival was a great event as well. It included some great Turkish food, a camel ride -

or a ride on this contraption.  I almost lost my lunch just watching but Carson loved it.

Most recently, they filled the base pool with fresh water and brought in a bunch of trout. It's hard to see them in this photo but they are there, swimming in a tight circle in the deep end and mostly ignoring the corn and shrimp skewered on the hooks.

Here you can see the fish better. Brannick caught one but it flipped off the hook before he could haul it up over the side of the pool.

Delaney is the only one of my five who managed to get a fish all the way out of the pool. Here she is with her gutted and cleaned fish. She was pretty excited. Not excited enough to eat it though when we cooked it that night. She's not a fish fan.

So there you have it. Life on base can be a bit surreal - like that show with Jim Carrey where he's on a TV set and doesn't know it? Everything here is controlled and contained and very very small. Sometimes its nonsensical. Just this week they changed the speed limit from 40 kmh to 25kmh. That's a drop from 25mph to about 18. It kills me to drive that slow. And I can't really see how dropping from sloth pace to snail pace is going to save any lives. But there are a lot of good things. With people constantly leaving and arriving, the base expends great effort to create a sense of community here. As part of that community, I appreciate that.

In the details

May you live in interesting times. Ever heard that Chinese blessing/curse? Well, here in Turkey we are living in interesting times. Too much to talk about but the upshot is we are all safe and we are all restricted to base for the foreseeable future. Of course, that limits my ability to have Turkish travel adventures and share them with loved ones through this blog. But that's okay.  We are safe and have a great community here on base and everything we need.

When things get challenging its so easy to complain, isn't it? As a family I think we've been handling everything great but this morning I had an experience that I feel was a little tender mercy. It was very windy today so I offered to drive Delaney to school so her hair wouldn't get messed up. (She is singing the national anthem in an assembly today and wanted to look nice.) I needed to go to the commissary to get a bag of gumdrops to build molecule models anyway. Evan wanted to come along so he hopped in the back.  We dropped Delaney off, navigating the inconvenient construction road closures, and headed to the commissary. Just before we turned into the parking lot I saw an older Turkish woman sitting on a corner waiting for the shuttle bus. I had met her once before at my neighbor's house so I waved to her.  She came over to the car to say hello.  I asked if she needed a ride. She said she needed to go clean a house in Phantom housing, back near the school where we had just come from. But we weren't in a hurry and I hated for her to wait in the wind so I offered to drive her.

On the way I asked her how she had learned her very good English. From working on base she said. She also liked to watch the English news because they spoke proper English with no accent or slang. Then she began to tell me about her life. How she had worked since the age of 10. Before that age she cared for younger siblings while her mother worked. They were very very poor and she had never had the chance to go to school. She used to cry and ask God to allow her to attend school but she never was able to and felt embarrassed that she couldn't read and write.  She didn't tell it as a lament. None of the martyr 3 miles in the snow barefoot uphill both ways pathos. She was cheerful and happy as she spoke.

As an adult she would buy small candies and chocolate so the neighborhood children would come to her house to do their homework. Then she would learn along with them.  She eventually learned to read and write and was able to get her driver's license. She also taught herself Arabic so she could read the Koran. She kept saying how she wasn't very smart but was grateful to God to have the chance to learn to read and write.  As if a person who taught themselves Turkish, Arabic and English with no formal schooling or tutoring could ever be considered 'not smart'!

As she got out of the car she turned to Evan and told him to work hard in school. This is the child who complains if he has to write more than a sentence a day!! He had been listening attentively to her story and I had been silently thanking God that he was with me to hear it.

Remember I had only met this woman once. She had, in fact, mistaken me for someone else who drives a white mini-van which was the only reason she came over to the car.  The house cleaning appointment was for an inspection and she had a dead-line in the early afternoon. She said that she had been praying and wondering how she was going to get to the house in time to finish the cleaning. And then I drove up because God sent me to her.

God is there in the details of our lives. My son needed to hear her story. I needed to hear it. And God wanted to bless a faithful woman who has worked so hard to improve herself.  Remember that Geoge Strait song, "I saw God today"? Well, me too.

A long overdue finish - Color Clams

This is my clambake quilt based on Emily Herrick's tutorial found here. It's a great tutorial and went together pretty quickly. I made the top a while ago, like maybe a year?? I used a collection I found at JoAnns and some other fat quarters here and there. I wish I could remember the name of the collection but I'm sure its not available anymore anyway.  I think this was the probably the second non-baby quilt top I finished.

After it was done I quilted both the cream and the butterfly borders. And then for some reason I can't remember, I went ahead and put the binding on. Probably because I had it finished and ready to go.

But I couldn't decide how to quilt the main portion of the top, where the clams are. Because the binding was on and it looked like a finished quilt, my family began using it. It's a great testament to the quilting basting spray I used that the layers never came apart with all the loving it got. I made sure it never got washed and intended to finish quilting it just as soon as I came up with some amazing quilting design that my limited FMQ skills could manage.

That miraculous idea never arrived and due to some timing issues with my machine my FMQ skills have decreased and I find that most quilting I do these days is with my walking foot.  But this week I decided that it was time to get this off the UFO list!! Since we were all so used to seeing the quilt with no quilting in the center, I decided that I would just stitch in the ditch around the clams. Its not spectacular quilting but at least now I can wash it! And I kind of like that the all the great fabrics and colors of the clams aren't covered by stitching.

The butterfly border fabric is my favorite.  Its so cheerful and such a great combination of darks and brights.

The daisy backing is a fabric I bought on clearance at Hancocks when I first started to quilt.  If I remember right it was $1 per yard.  It is good fabric and if I had known what I was doing I would've bought the whole bolt. As it was I think I bought 5 yards.

Finished dimensions are 71 in by 63 in.