Moving

Well, Leyla has moved out.  Well, her stuff is still here and she's going to pick it up tomorrow, but in all other ways she's already gone. :(  Natalie has moved the last of her stuff in (including the crazy cat, Dilly!), but but she hasn't put it all away yet.  She wanted to move out of her other flat as soon as possible because another woman just moved her stuff in last night. *sigh*  Things are going to be different without Leyla living here, but I really love Natalie, so it should be OK.  

After three weeks of freezing cold, rain, and snow it now is starting to feel like SPRING! I know that it's kind of a false alarm and that it'll still get cold again, but I can't help but feel excited for warmth. :) I'm excited to clean up the balcony and buy a small grill to put out on the table out there. I'm excited to go out without a coat again.  And flip-flops! yay for being able to wear those again soon.  The coming nice weather has reminded me again of all of the reasons I love Istanbul (it's so very easy to forget about them in the depression of an Istanbul winter), and it all the more reminds me that in 2 months and about 20 days I'm coming home. It seems so unreal. And sad.

Haircut

Well... for lack of anything else happening in my life, I'll post pictures of my haircut that I got today. Sorry they suck, it's pretty hard to take pictures of your hair yourself. Hmm... yep that's about all that's happened lately.

Snowed-In

Well it's pretty much a blizzard here! Yesterday the afternoon and evening classes were cancelled and today classes are cancelled as well. I think this is probably the most snow, this area of Istanbul at least, has seen in like five years. I took some pictures from my window. I really want to get out to take pictures, but I really don't want to leave the house because it's so snowy and cold. I might just leave the house to get stuff to make some food. And maybe stuff to make hot chocolate. :)


















In other news, I bought my plane tickets to come home in May. It's so crazy. It's seems so final, that my days in Istanbul (this time around at least) are actually numbered. I'm leaving the 'bul for London on the 20th of May. I'll spend three nights there with a friend who was working at Dilko when I came, but soon moved back home. She lives in Brighton. Then, on the 23rd of May I'll come home! It's so exciting and sad at the same time.

Yarn

So, I found the Kürkçü Han after much searching. I heard that it was near the Grand Bazaar, so my first order of business was to go there first and then look for it from there. There was one tiny problem.. it's been three years since I was there, and before I was with a group and just blindly followed everyone. I remembered where the Spice Market was, but went brain dead when it came to finding the Kapalıçarşı! We wandered around forever looking for the Grand Bazaar (if it's sooo dang GRAND we were wondering why the heck we couldn't find it!) However, we accidently stumbled onto the exact street we wanted -- we saw a large sign that said Kürkçü Han with an arrow! After much searching through bins with scary fluffy, bright colored, and often shiny yarn (which is nothing I would EVER use) I did find some yarn for the projects I want to make. I got some lovely yarn for the sweaters for Camy and Tori (pink for Camy and green for Tori), it is acrylic but it is really soft and feels a lot like a cotton blend. It was 1.5 lira for each ball.
Then I found some pretty green stuff for the purse that I'm making someone for their birthday, which is in two weeks. It's a lovely green, and I had just enough time this morning before I had to get ready for class to cast on and do three rows. :) At the same place, the Nako outlet place, which sells stuff that is meant for export, I got another yarn for myself (who knows what I'll do with it - maybe a scarf). Both of these yarns I got in a package of 5 balls for 5 lira. very good prices. Some of the yarn there was packaged with a label that just said 'export' and then there was another package of the same stuff with a Lion Brand label. The brown one I got for myself was actually a lion brand 'wool ease' that I wanted when I was in the states. I think the green one for the purse was some lion brand I've seen before but I don't know what kind. So, all in all I got 15 balls of yarn for 17.50 lira, which is like 15 dollars. For 15 dollars at home you can buy like 3 balls of yarn, and I got 15. :) yay.