New Passion - Needle Felting!

I haven't written a post in a while. It seems I always start my blog with the same line lately, life has been so busy! It's good busy though, I think I have been quite productive lately and trying to get back to doing more creative things. I still need to work in evenings or weekends, but I make sure to take one day fully off and do fun stuff to de-stress.

Talking about creative things, I recently started needle felting and I'm SO hooked! This is how it started - I have always dreamed to have a little Etsy store with my designs and printed out two products - a bag and a mug - with the bee design (which I gifted to my favorite people). I was looking for some fluffy bumblebees to hang from the bag and thought why not I try making them by myself? So, I ordered a starter kit two weeks ago and since then I can't stop making cute wooly creatures! I also started my Etsy store, NushStudio to give myself a push to create more and share my love with others - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/NushStudio

Here are some of the things I have made so far - Henry the hedgehog, bees, mushrooms, Pacman and ghosts.

Henry

Pacman and ghosts

Bumblebees

If you never heard of needle felting before (I didn't when I started), it's like making scultures with wool. There are special needles for felting that have barbs. All you have to do is keep poking the wool with needles and it starts attaching the fibers to give the wool ball a shape. There are many cool tutorials and books on needle felting. I think it started in Japan, like most cute things do, and most popular books are by Japanese authors. I bought the book Cute Needle Felted Animals by Sachiko Susa.

I do recommend starting with simpler objects like mushroom before going into animals or more complex structures. I have only started to learn making animals (Henry is the first one) and got so many projects on my list! I will keep posting more of my creations as I make them. I do recommend giving it a go if you're looking for a fun hobby :)

Life Updates (Yes, I'm Still Alive!)

I thought last year was the worst productive year for me in terms of blog writing and I did plan to write more this year, but turns out PhD life and traveling doesn't leave me enough extra time to write. Funny that I'm writing after whole 8 months!! 

So, good news is I'm still alive and doing fine but what happened during last 8 months? I have been travelling A LOT! Though most of the times these are weekend trips plus a day or two extra, I have to always play catch up game with work everytime I am back. Then there are friends, personal life, and so on. Looking back a year ago, I couldn't feel more grateful for where I am today. I feel really lucky to meet all the people I've met in the past year and all the traveling opportunities I had so far.

Here is the list of places I've been to this year - the year started with celebrating the New Year in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then I went to Hungary in February, back home in March, Netherlands in April, Denmark in June, Italy in September and just got back from Greece. Within the UK I've visited Isle of Wight in February and two new places in my favorite Cornwall - Perranporth in May and Falmouth in July. Falmouth was on my list for a while, so happy that I managed to visit this year. Two more countries to visit this year in November and December. So, I've been going somewhere pretty much every month and my travel stories have been piling up. I do promised myself to write everything up in separate posts because many of these trips were dream-come-true, lifetime achievement for me.

White washed buildings surrounded by blue ocean in Santorini

However, I think it's time I move to a separate platform with my travel stories. I will still keep this blog and post personal stories from time to time. I kept this space mostly for myself, more as a diary rather than to share with the world (other than some learning posts). 6 years later it makes me feel nostalgic going through all the posts. But I do want to write about my travels more broadly, for bigger audience, for the less privileged, non-white, women of color who dream to travel independently. Also, I do realize that it's more difficult to browse the stories in this platform, having to go through the total list or clicking for older posts. So, I'm wrapping up this post with some of my favorite photos from recent trips before I write about them separately on a different platform.

The Colloseum, Rome, Italy

Copenhagen, Denmark

Budapest, Hungary

Tulip festival in Keukenhof

Santorini, Greece

Devon Life - Fossil Hunting in Lyme Regis

Yes, I'm writing after 9 long months, after the longest gap in my blog writing and ending 2018 with the smallest number of blog entries! Good news - I'm still alive and have a lot to write. Bad news - life has been incredibly busy (in a good way) and none of my stories are ending up in my blog anymore. Right before the end of 2018, I wrote in my new diary a to-do list for the new year and writing more blog posts was one of those. 

It's almost the end of February and I still couldn't manage to get one entry in my blog and my to-do list is only getting longer. But better late than never. Starting to write from today and hopefully this year I'll write more posts than last year including all the pending travel stories. I just finished reading the book "This is Going to Hurt" by Adam Kay. I really enjoyed reading the book and especially the short diary entries motivated me to start writing again and reminded me that it doesn't have to be long but it's important to continue the practice of writing. So, starting off this year's blog entry with a quick one from last weekend's trip to Lyme Regis in east Devon. 

One of the main reasons why I decided to live in Devon is the proximity to the coast. It's very easy to get to the beach by train, Dawlish, Teignmouth in just 20-30mins and Cornwall in few hours. However, so far I've been to the beaches in south-west and didn't have the chance to explore much of east Devon. I've few places to visit, Lyme Regis being the first stop among them. It's famous for it's beautiful prehistoric landscape, and million years old fossils. As written on the official website, "The local blue lias clay found to the east and west contains the remarkable fossil remains of sea creatures from the Jurassic seas of 180 million years ago." Also, the first complete ichthyosaur in the UK was found in this area by Mary Anning hundreds of years ago.

Charmouth beach

Traveling there isn't much difficult, apparently the 9A bus goes directly from Exeter bus station, but we took a 40min train to Axminster and then bus to Lyme Regis that takes about 25mins. We got lucky with some beautiful sunny weekends in February and Lyme Regis looked gorgeous in sunshine when we reached. We walked around for a bit, popped into some fossil shops, and went to get some fish n chips as it was lunch time and we didn't want to feel peckish while fossil hunting.

Lyme Regis

After doing a bit more walk after lunch and a drink at the beautiful seaside restaurant, we decided to go to the Charmouth beach for fossil hunting as it's renowned for fossils. It's about an hour walk from Lyme Regis but because it was already afternoon, we decided to take the bus and spend more time there. Bus took about 24mins. 

Charmouth looked equally beautiful and you can surely spot a lot of people facing downwards, which means they're after those hidden gems, and we followed. Unfortunately we couldn't spot a dinosaur but we were happy with our little fossils and that we were lucky with the weather and didn't come back empty handed.

On our way back we walked to Lyme Regis, took little more than hour. It was uphill for a long time and we came back with sore legs (we frequently do long walks and I'm used to running, but that knocked us off) but happy hearts. The landscape in that area is incredibly beautiful and I'm looking forward to exploring more of east Devon this summer :) 

Hiking on Dartmoor

Spending another traveling. Quite a bit of journey, more than four hours with three changes. I don't mind long journeys if I don't need to change trains too many times, then I can focus on something and get some work done. This isn't happening today, so I figured I'd rather write a pending blog post. The weekend before last one I went to hike on Dartmoor with a group of people. It's a national park, part of the moorland and popular hiking place in Devon. I had heard about it before, so was looking forward to going there.

On the way up

Everyone who is familiar with British weather knows what a difference sunshine can make here! The day it's sunny outside it's like a freaking festival (!), but probably because everything does look very pretty in the sun here. We got lucky on our hiking day as there was some sunshine in the morning and wasn't very cold. Dartmoor weather has its own mind people say, so wasn't really sure what to expect. We got some drizzles but was lucky that it didn't pour down.

The most interesting part of Dartmoor landscape is granite hilltops. Later I learned that this place includes the largest area of granite in Britain. On our way up we saw Dartmoor ponies wandering around freely. They were super adorable!

This photo was taken by Joey. I really like it, couldn't help posting!

Ponies!

I wasn't sure how difficult the hike would be and which shoes to wear. It wasn't too steep or difficult actually, only need supportive shoes for the rocks - LOTS of them there! Other than that it was quite fun to chat with people while hiking. We had a little lunch/ picnic after we hiked up. The weather started to look more dramatic by then.

From the top

When we hiked down (we did a loop) it felt much shorter than the first half. We definitely hiked more than half of the total path (8 miles) on our way up. Some people grabbed a drink at the pub where we started, most were quite tired. Overall it was a good day. I look forward to more hikes in different seasons. I wonder how the scenario will change.

Dream Trip to Cornwall

This post is long overdue. Last last weekend I went for a short trip to St Ives in Cornwall. Visiting Cornwall has been my dream for many years and I wasn't disappointed a single bit! The place was absolutely dreamy and I'm really glad I took the time for myself to explore and relax little bit. Of course, it took me few days to come back to reality (wish I didn't have to!) and catch up with my research. And like all PhD students I've reached the point of frustration while trying to solve something that seems apparently unsolvable (why do we do this to ourselves really?!). So, I decided to take a little break and write this post instead.

St Ives is a cute little town, one that has been a popular tourist destination and inspiration to artists for ages. Usually most places in Cornwall require driving like most beach towns, but they built a tiny train station from St Erth (four stops, takes 12mins) that drops you right in front of the Porthminster beach (how convenient)! The train journey from from St Erth is very scenic as well. My AirBnb host suggested me to sit on the right side, front-faced for the best view and he was absolutely right!

So, this is the first picture I took of the Porthminster beach after getting off from the train. It was cloudy and windy on Friday afternoon, so I wasn't expecting much, but that view took my breath away! This one is the calm beach, more suitable for families with little kids. The turquoise blue is stunning and as the sun peeps in and out, the ocean changes its colour in various shades of blue too. I felt I could just sit there and watch it all day!

Porthminster Beach

The Porthmeor beach is about 15mins walk from there. There's also Harbour beach in between. I was lucky that my AirBnb was conveniently located right in between the beaches and everything was in walking distance. The place itself was very nicely decorated too and the couple was very kind and friendly. Soon after I realized you start seeing the same people again and again as you wander around because it's so small! However, I didn't get bored at all. There are also plenty of art galleries and museums to explore. Later in the afternoon I made a quick trip to Porthmeor beach. This part is more of surfer's zone with gorgeous waves. The Tate Museum is right next to this beach too. There's a cliff named Man's Head that offers breathtaking views of the beach. I decided I'd spend more time on that beach next day.

Porthmeor Beach

On Saturday morning I pushed myself to get out of bed before sunrise so that I could watch sunrise on the beach. I'm not a morning person and it was little chilly in morning, but that romanticism (!) was totally worth it! It was cloudy at first but then I got a beautiful view as I was about to leave for Porthmeor. Also, pro-tip - I learned the evening before that Porthminster is perfect to watch sunrise and Porthmeor for sunset. I didn't realize it and missed the lovely sunset on Friday as I was waiting for it by Porthminster :-/ Anyway, here's a picture of the sunrise :)

After that I headed to Porthmeor beach and walked on the quiet beach by myself. It felt like a dream and I couldn't help humming "Don't Break the Spell"! The surfers started to gather too. It was lots of fun to walk on the beautiful, clear water even though it was quite freezing. I collected lots of pretty shells and started to head back for breakfast and little shopping as they neared the opening hour. Most shops open there around 10am, which makes sense for tourist towns but also I started to get hungry. 

I had tasty Cornish pasty, hot chocolate and brownie and went home for little rest. Later that day I went up to Man's Head. We were blessed with gorgeous sunshine that day and I took plenty of pretty pictures. I mean it looked so beautiful already that I didn't have to make much effort!

I loved that they placed benches beautifully on that cliff. What a simple nice idea to let people watch those blue waves! I walked to the top, took more photos, had fish & chips for dinner and came home with a happy heart.

On Sunday it was time to head back. It felt too soon! I really wished I could be there longer. I left AirBnb with all my luggage and it was drizzling, so thought I'd just walk around little bit. I went to the gift shops and had more Cornish pasty, but after a while I couldn't resist climbing Man's Head again. I spent some more time there watching beautiful waves, the wind made them extra gorgeous! After that I headed back to Porthminster beach and hopped on my train back.

I'm really glad I made this trip and can't wait to go back in June. Already started to think where else to visit in Cornwall! :p Till then I've got plenty of photos and videos to cherish those beautiful memories. 

Now back to my research (-_-).

On Dixit and Tech Talks

After long Easter break people are slowly getting back to work here, though most schools are still on vacation. Just learned yesterday Easter break is 3 weeks long here! What the hell! Summer, Christmas, Easter - students in this country get so much time off! It may also be I feel weird getting used to full-time student again. Everyday I think I need to push myself more to do my research. Technically no public holidays apply on me. I can't tell I'm doing well with time management yet but hopefully will get there slowly. 

Anyway, this post is a short and quick update. I met a fun group of people yesterday. We played Dixit and had dinner together. It was the first time to meet them and also first time to play the game, but I almost won! I started slow, was the very last one but it started to become more fun as we played couple of rounds. The purple bunny below is mine :D (half-way through the game). The black one eventually won.

If you never played Dixit before, it's a storytelling card game where everyone has a set of cards. The storyteller picks one card and says a word or phrase or sentence that may describe the picture on that card. Then the rest of the players pick one card from their sets that may tell that story. When everyone is done selecting their cards, all players (except the storyteller) try to guess which one was the storyteller's card. If someone gets the right answer then both the storyteller and the person who could guess get points. It's actually quite fun game as it makes you analyze participants' psychology - whether they think in literal way or in creative way. 

Dinner was good. Joey made vegetarian pizza and Marcus made Scottish Haggis, which is usually non-veg but the veggie version was yummy as well. We had good conversation too.  

Today I went to tech talk series and it was actually quite interesting. It was nice to hear about practitioners working on real projects. I found the talk by a Data Scientist from Sparx particularly interesting. They are a educational research group creating personalized math lessons in collaboration with schools. Also, got to connect with the Digital Exeter Meetup organizer. I think there'll be potential opportunities to collaborate in future. 

Even though I'm not a social person in general or go to such events solely for networking, it's been a good experience. Looking forward to attending more events like this and hopefully will come across more nice people too!

Brighton Days

Brighton is a beach town and quite popular tourist destination (figured from AirBnb price!) in the south of the UK. Apparently it's the third most expensive city to live in this country, but I had the chance to stay here for a while because of my sister. I visited her 3 months ago and been staying with her until I move to my own place. 

This city reminds me of my childhood a lot as I grew up in a coastal city and going to the beach was a regular fun activity for our family. People living here are lucky to have a beautiful beach right in the heart of the city. Surrounding city centre is buzzing with all sorts of shops and makes all amenities easily accessible. You walk through the lanes and can hear the waves calling you (well, not quite as romantic until you cross the street as traffic and human noise masks it quite a bit). 

Water always pulls me because I've always had close connection with rivers and ocean. Sitting there alone listening to the waves soothes my mind and makes me feel I could wash away all my pains. Most importantly, the vastness and depth of the ocean remind me that we're all so small. I should learn to be more humble and tolerant from the ocean. 

I love sunsets, and a beautiful sunset by the beach is all I need to be happy or at least heal my soul. I was lucky to spend some time alone there watching pretty sunsets when I needed it the most. Given that it's still pretty cold for spring, both days I came back frozen! Hopefully I'll get to spend longer time when it gets warmer.

Brighton Central Beach

I also like the view from the house. You can see this hilly area that goes down to Stanmer Park. On a beautiful day, clouds rise above the hill in a blue sky making this background even more beautiful. The weather has been funny since I got here - a lot of rain and snow. But got to see some beautiful sunsets in last couple of days. 

I am also trying to get back to running routine slowly. When I moved here I put my running gear in my main luggage so that I don't have to live without running for too long, but it became overweight, so had to get rid of them :( Happy to be finally going back on track even though I gained a lot of weight in about a month >.<

View from living room

 

Last time when I came here we went to visit the Brighton Pavilion, which is very gorgeous. I still haven't gotten the chance to explore the museum, hopefully soon. We planned to visit the aquarium with Arnan (my little nephew) but couldn't find a good day for it yet. The weather has been bizarre most weekends. 

Brighton Pavilion

Brighton Museum & Gallery

My Brighton days are almost over. I'm moving to my place this weekend and then will be visiting occasionally. I'm looking forward to being settled and getting back to my regular lifestyle, but it'll always be a pleasure to come back to this city.