George and I drove up to Seattle on Saturday, to attend a Cluster 14 Reflection meeting. It was so heart-warming to see so many young people learning about the Institute Process and assuming leadership roles. George shared stories of recent IPG activities in Tacoma. 
When we arrived in Seattle, we spent the late morning shopping at the World Spice Market, where I renewed my stash of za 'attar and smoked paprika. That store always has the most wonderful fragrance, which invites the customer to linger and browse the spice jars, many of which contain spices I'm unable to find here in Tacoma.
We also went to Istanbul Imports, where we ordered Turkish coffee prepared for us by the owner. George had a delightful conversation while I browsed through the shop looking at all the carpets, looms, crafts, ceramic dishes, pounded copper-ware, glass teacups, and hand-made jewelry.Currently I'm enjoying a set of videos on the Silk Road featuring tribal people who weave these colorful, flatwoven, non-pile carpets, called Kilim.
While browsing through the Kilim gallery at Istanbul Imports, I was able to connect my impressions from the videos to actual handwoven carpets and other textiles. It was so enjoyable feeling the wool, looking at the backside of the carpets, and noticing that the patterns were similar to those featured in the film.
We ended the day visiting my daughter Laurel and her husband Mehran at their home in Renton. We dropped in just as they were preparing dinner, but declined their invitation. We'd just finished a wonderful meal prepared by a Persian woman at the Cluster 14 meeting. When I mentioned how much we enjoyed the Persian rice, Mehran taught me how to prepare Baghali Shevid Polow, outlining all the steps - how to diffuse saffron to create fragrance and color, and how to prepare tah-dig potatoes (Flickr photo above). This will be a project for next week.
