Feeling Festive

This will probably be my last post from Germany, because I am moving back to the States in less than a week, the thought of which is weird and scary right now. I want to recap the trip I took before the one to Amsterdam I just microblogged about the other day, because it was kind of the culmination of my time living here.

There were two things I was really looking forward to when I moved to Germany. The first was experiencing how Germans do Christmas. Hint: it involves Ferris wheels.



The other thing I was looking forward to? Visiting the Wollmeise brick and mortar shop. Wollmeise is a yarn that has caused much Sturm und Drang on the internet (see how good my German is getting?). These kerfuffles are inevitable when the demand far outstrips the supply and the expectations get out of control. In any case, I've gotten my hands on a few skeins over the years and I love it. I love the base yarns, I love how they look knit up, and Claudia, the dyer, has the most incredible color sense when it comes to rich, saturated colors and unexpected combinations. Being able to visit the shop was basically the first thing that came to mind at the prospect of moving to Germany, honestly.

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow knitter came to visit me from NYC, and we embarked on a trip of Christmas markets and Wollmeise hunting. We went to markets in the following cities:

Bonn
Köln
Heidelberg
Munich
Nürnberg
Frankfurt

All in a week. That's a lot of Christmas! It really did put me in a great spirit. There's something so fun and festive about wandering between the stalls and oohing and aahing at all the beautiful things around you. There was much glühwein, and kartoffelpuffern, and lebkuchen consumed, and shopping. Plus it was snowy, which I just loved. Have a few photos.








But what you really wanted to see is the yarn, yes?

The Wollmeise shop is in Pfaffenhofen, a very small town in Bavaria, less than an hour's train ride from Munich. The shop is thankfully a short walk from the train station, and it wasn't too hard to find. We started with a walk down this wintry path toward the town center.


Then we arrived.



It was pretty breathtaking, I must say.



We actually didn't spend too much time there, lest more yarn fall into our bags. We met someone who'd travelled from Pittsburgh with her family and planned the whole trip around being able to visit the shop. We also met a lovely woman who rode the train with us back to Munich who was visiting her daughter and made this outing hoping to be back in time for lunch. She also told us that before we arrived, an American man had come into the shop, having been sent by a cousin who said to buy yarn but gave no other guidance. It certainly was a fun place. And yes, I made some purchases.



On the train I worked on these socks that are now finished. They are for my husband and made with handspun Rambouillet yarn.



Now, I am done with the traveling. I'm winding down my time here, cleaning and packing and getting ready to move again. Soon I'll be plying the very last fiber I brought to spin.



2012 has been the most incredible year of my life, with all these adventures. 2013 promises to be incredible in a different way, as I retire from this transient lifestyle I've had up til now. I'm incredibly thankful that I've had this opportunity to live abroad and I felt like I've made the most of it. Now I'm ready to discover what home is.

The longest night is very soon upon us, and I hope you and all your loved ones have a fabulous time awaiting the light on the other side.

Quick report from the Netherlands

I'm staying in Utrecht:




But today I went to Amsterdam:




which is a great place to knit on a boat:




I love boats. I don't care how much of a cheesy tourist it makes me. If knitting on a canal tour boat is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

I'd love to share with you, if you'll indulge me, the experience of buying things, namely fabric and spices, at the markets in Istanbul (not Constantinople), a trip which followed closely on the heels on the previously blogged day trip to France. Sadly this post won't have a lot of photos of the markets themselves, because the experience was surprisingly consuming. I'll toss in some photographs from around the city for good measure, though.



Anyway, Istanbul. It's breathtakingly gorgeous, and ridiculously old, and there is so much fun stuff to do there. As with so many of the places I've been in the past few months, it's been merely a taste of someplace I already miss and want to return to.



If I had merely been browsing, perhaps I would have had a different experience in the makets, but I wanted to buy some ikat fabric and some spices for glühwein. Ever since Jenny Jo and I took a dyeing/weaving class at California College for the Arts, I've had a fascination with ikat fabrics. My hilarious attempt at making a vaguely circular shape in that class:



Nailed it! Anyway, ikat fabrics are not typical in Turkey, but they are in other parts of Central Asia, and that stuff makes its way to market along with the carpets and the saffron and whatnot.



Some things about shopping at the markets, namely the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar:

* It's like the biggest 600 year old mall ever. My biggest advice to anyone visiting Istanbul is WATCH YOUR STEP. The city is super hilly so there are stairs everywhere, and said stairs along with floors, sidewalks, doorways, streets, etc are old and uneven and not so friendly to the clumsier among us. But watching your step isn't the worst thing, because the floors can be fascinating, too.



* Shopping takes takes some time. The shopkeepers wanted to sit me down, yell at some guy out the door to fetch me tea, and show me EVERYTHING.



The husband and I got trapped in a carpet store for quite a while after pausing to look at a map of Turkey with corresponding carpet patterns outside the shop. We made it patently clear we would not be buying a carpet and he didn't seem to care much; he just wanted to show us the goods and challenge me to untie a knot from his superbly made carpets. It was pretty hilarious, and I suspect he offered us a really great price on a truly beautiful carpet we were sadly just not in the market for?

* If I said I was "just looking," I was often met with a snide comment. People wanted to know what I wanted, and once I said ikat, I was quickly whisked through the market by one guy to his buddy's shop. Buddies. When the guy at the hotel called his buddy to take us to the airport, he walked us outside, took some bottles of water from his other buddy at the convenience store without paying or even saying anything, and handed them to us. So many buddies!

* I'm glad I didn't buy anything at the first shop I went to. I actually really enjoy haggling but I wasn't meshing with the first guy and I later came to find out his prices were indeed quite outgrageous. I did the slow walk out the door and he made no appeal to me, so that was that.

* I enjoyed the next shop I found much more. The salesman was friendly and fun to talk to, the husband and I had some delicious tea, and then I did some damage. I didn't have to work too hard to get the guy down to a price I thought was reasonable for the absolutely stunning and gorgeous fabrics I came away with. These are all from Samarkand in Uzbekistan, and now I have to figure out what exactly to do with them.



* It is so much fun to taste everything that looks good, both inside the spice market, which also sells nuts, dried fruits, and sweets, and outside where there are people selling amazing fresh cheese.



In general, there is so much amazing food and drink to be had all over the city. Fresh squeezed pomegranate juice, where you been all my life?



* The husband, who is not a haggler by nature in the slightest, talked a street vendor down on a bottle of water on our last day there. This tickles me to no end.

I hope you're enjoying traveling with me. I've got less than a month left here in Germany, but hopefully more adventures to share before I go all Midwestern on you. A few more photos:









p.s. I must not be the only one who read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child and wondered what Turkish delight was?

p.p.s. One of the photos is a dead giveaway, but this blog post is also a Where's Waldo for the evil eye amulet.