Interesting times

"May you live in interesting times", this is a Chinese curse. When I was 43, I married a handsome Turkish guy. This picture was taken in Adana where he came from. I was wearing a scarf which represents the typical Adana fabrics, but I found out after I bought this vintage scarf from India for 2$ on a flea market. He was very surprised to see me wearing it and he told me so, and I later found very similar things in the Museum of History in Adana. Along with a fantastic collection of Kelims.
A few days before I went out with C for the first time, I sewed myself a pair of red harem pants. I knew that bridal costumes in Old Turkey were red, as they were in China and in Central Asia. It was clear to me that I would be wearing red when I got married. I had no idea who to be married to. But when I was wearing these pants for the first time, sitting in a street café, part of a Turkish restaurant where I frequently had lunch, this waiter whom I had seen a few times stepped up to me and asked me "to take a walk with him", in other words, he wanted to take me out. And it did not take long until he proposed.
I wonder if I knew that my first marriage would be unhappy.
We married in Adana, I was wearing red (the same harem pants), but it did not bring me luck. This marriage ended after 4 years.
Four days before my divorce hearing, in 1997, I met the man I married later, and we've been together since then. Happily.

Basting the backing

After 17 years in my stash drawer, this Turkish fabric will be the backing of the bird quilt. I bought it at an incredibly low price in Turkey, when I was engaged to get married for the first time. It was in Mersin, a southern harbour, where we went to a fair (lunapark) with my fiancé and his family, mother, younger brother and two sisters. We took one of these small cheap buses called "dolmuş", pronounced "dolmush", which means "we are complete". Explanations at the end of this posting.
In Mersin, we visited a market, and I tried to find vintage fabrics or bedcloths, table cloths, whatever. Most of the stuff was so ugly that tears came to my eyes. Later I found out that this piece was for oversize bed covers, so I never used it, just kept thinking that I would change it to a proper size some day.
That night, I also witnessed a weird performance of a standup comedian dressed like a harem eunoch in fairytales, appearing together with a beautiful tall singer who looked like a model and sang like a pop star. We sat at a table and had a drink, and my fiancé told the show man that there was a German guest. Me. A sensation in the Turkish province! Nobody ever goes to Mersin. It is a stinking industrial place. So I was celebrated as the only tourist who ever came to Mersin.

Now I took this evidence of my presence in Mersin out of the drawer and washed it. It faded a little, but that's alright for vintage.
I basted the backing, creeping on the carpet, because I don't have a large table. My sports for today.

Dolmuş
These are private vehicles which stop on a gestic signal of people waiting anywhere along the road. To signalize how many persons want to get on the bus, you point the according number of fingers to the driver, and he either stops or shows the number of free seats with his fingers and drives by. The same fee is payed for any distance. When you reach the desired place, you just call "stop!" and you're allowed out. A dolmuş can take up to 10 Persons on board.
This is very practical.