Well, What Do You Know?

It’s been a bit quiet here lately, hasn’t it? What do you think the reason might have been? Well, here’s a clue:

And, here’s another:

And here is your final clue:

Yes. I’ve been on holiday. Peter and I went on a tour of Turkey. Consequently there wasn’t  much crafting going on during the second half of March. In fact, despite the fact that we were doing a coach tour, up until I was finishing my packing on the day we were leaving, I wasn’t even going to take anything crafty with me! No, really! I had decided that I would go craft-less for the duration. However, once I had seen how much room was left in my suitcase at the end of the packing process, I thought I may as well take some knitting. Here are some of the things I brought back:

Shaggy hats for Syria Relief

Regular readers will have seen similar shaggy hats previously, but the stripey hats below are a variation on the scrappy yarn theme. I had found several small remainders of balls of yarn and decided that, rather than chop them down for shaggy hats or crochet multicolour squares, I would join them all together randomly and knit as a complete ball of yarn.

Hats for Syria Relief, knitted with scraps and ends of balls

I am quite pleased with the result of that experiment so shall probably try that again, when I have another collection of part-balls.

Old Uzbek Suzani

The hats are not the only things I brought back from Turkey. I treated myself to the Suzani in the above photo, which had been imported to Turkey from Uzbekistan. That photo doesn’t do it justice so let’s try this one:

Detail of old Uzbek Suzani

Hmm, that’s still not great. How about this:

Corner detail of Suzani

I think that’s probably the best reproduction I can get.

Peter and I were visiting an old tower in Istanbul when I noticed that there was a shop selling textiles. Well, it would have been rude not to visit, wouldn’t it? And, once you’re there, you have to buy, don’t you? When we saw this old Suzani from Uzbekistan we both really liked it so I decided to buy it. It cost far more than I would usually pay for a textile item but it is beautifully worked, silk on silk and I just didn’t want to resist – so I didn’t!

The final photograph I am going to show you is of a shop window I saw one afternoon, in Ankara, I think.

Singer sewing machines are truly international!

No, I didn’t buy one of those!