London, Saturday 11th June...

I'm sorting through the maps of France and have found a Mini Atlas of London... I'm nearly ready!So far, the plans have been vaguely laid for Saturday 11th June. I'll be meeting up with blogging friends at the V&A at 10am or as soon thereafter as people can arrive. The plan is to visit the Cult of Beauty exhibition at the V&A and to go to the South Bank in the afternoon for the Festival of Britian exhibition. I imagine that food and chatting will also play a significant role in our day!
j
If you would like to meet up at any point in that day, and can get to the V&A or the South Bank, then email me and I'll give you my mobile number - it would be lovely to see you. Ang (Tracing Rainbows)and I will both be in London on the Sunday too, so I hope there will be the opportunity do do more things with blogging friends on that day - there was talk of a boat trip up the Thames but nothing is fixed yet. I'll be leaving for Edinburgh around 5pm that day. Do get in contact if you can come - it would be lovely to see you!

Saturday's Vide Grenier

It was a beautiful sunny day on Saturday and I set off early and alone for the Vide Grenier de quartier of a local town - this town has a weekly Flea Market but one quartier (area of the town) in turn also hosts a big Vide Grenier in May. This time it was the turn of the quartier nearest us - I actually drove past the turning it was so close! Having turned back, I drove down a partly-finished road towards a partly developed lake, and parked in the shade. I walked (bearing bags and wearing sunhat) down some more unfinished tracks past some beautiful lakes with the morning birds singing. People coming back from the Vide Grenier, bearing their finds, encouraged me to keep on going - there was more walking to do! My CK shoes didn't really enjoy the rocky paths, but the walk was fantastic. I crossed two bridges over the streams between the lakes, and I was there, in a carpark next to a small sports building!

And here is what I bought. Two glass jars with vintage French labels and a blue enamel pan.

A stencilled rose plate to add to my small collection and three beautiful embroidered cloths.

Oh yes, and a spaghetti ladle to replace to old one! You can see how pretty this green, appliquéd cloth is. In poorer condition, newer and more damaged than the other two, but I still think I can mend it and use it.

Here is the blue rose plate collection, newly displayed...

I like the different ways the factory used the same stencil.
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And here is the first vintage jar, with some garden roses.

I liked it so much I decided to do the same with the other one!Here's the very fine, slightly Art Deco embroidered cloth - I got another one of a similar date, but don't seem to have photo'd it yet!And do you spot the polkadot cloth? It's new!!! You can blame Pomona for that. I wasn't sure if I should buy it, and she encouraged me to splash out! I am so pleased I did, and so is Ben, it turns out.

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Thanks for all your lovely comments. Next post will be a bit of info about where we're planning to meet up in London on Saturday 11th June. I STILL can't leave Blogger comments so I can't contact you all directly - so sorry.

Time for a break

I've just realised it's been a month since my last blogging break - and it feels like time for another (in the nicest possible sense).I'll be off for a week, not looking at my blog or yours, but I will be planning my London trip and answering emails, so I'm not completely out of touch! Have a great week, my friends...

Nesting

These are old nests we found while trimming our hedges this year. I'm happy to tell you that the current nests are still very active and the sparrows which nest in our roof and our hedges are thriving on the food I'm putting out for them - this is the first year we've followed the RSPB's advice and kept on feeding them into the spring. I also watched a nightingale picking up worms from our lawn this evening - they sing all around us, but never, it seems, actually in our garden. I'm not complaining - they're loud and their songs carry through the night!These nests are also making me think about just how much I'm enjoying spending time with Ben building up our own home, garden and home life. We're both pretty busy with work but I'm only part time and I'm blessed to be able to keep house and enjoy feathering our nest while spending time with the boys too. It's possible to feel overwhelmed with all the tasks but it's also possible to stop and smell the roses, both literally and figuratively! Hope you're able to feel that way too, friends.

Hazy Sunshine on Vintage Shelves...

For weeks now I've been taking photos of the shelves below our front windows - usually in the hazy sunshine of the late afternoon. The shelves themselves aren't vintage, it's the contents that qualify!

Two beautiful books...

... a hand-made wooden horse...
and a (fledgling) collection of vintage Lourdes souvenirs. I'm collecting the pictures of the church, not of Our Lady, as I'm not Catholic myself and I find the scenes more to my taste. Lourdes is not far from us - and I love those sheep!

Of course, it's rare to find our shelves without a few little additions of the adolescent boy variety...And over on the left, in fact all around the not-vintage speaker, is the pride of my current collection!

A 1920s tin with Basque dancers on it - aren't they great? They have some Breton cousins... (Elizabethd can correct me if I'm wrong)...

and some Normand ones too, if I'm right.Finally, here are some stylish dancers from a region of France I don't recognise. Are they Provençal, perhaps? I bet some clever reader can enlighten me.

I bought these tins over the winter at the all-year Flea Market. The seller wasn't a dealer - I'd never have afforded them if she'd charged their market value. But I did pay her a good price for them.

The hazy sunshine on my shelves seems to be telling me I was right to splash out for once!

First Fruits...

From our raised beds...and from our friends' cherry tree (and our rose bushes).

The cherries have been eaten at every meal today:

Here they are at breakfast, to go on the Silver Dollar Pancakes.

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I hope you're having a great weekend - ours is pretty busy, processing so much fruit! Thank goodness for quick and easy salads from the garden, to make life easier!

Every work of craft tells a story...

And perhaps a quilt, more than any other. In the 1980s a young mother lived with her family on the beautiful French island of Réunion.

Life was busy, looking after her daughter,

and her son.

The tropical nature of the island

influenced her choice of colourful clothes and fabrics.

But she was culturally French as well, and the most traditional fabrics of France,were available to her, on her tropical island on the other side of the world.

Along with some more modern fabrics printed in French too!The patterns and colours of her ancestral Africa
appealed to herand looked great on her,but she also had some fabricsjust like the ones I wore, or craved, in England, at that time.Throughout the 80s she saved the family's old clothes and furnishing fabrics,And in the '90s, when her family was growing up and life was a bit less hectic,she started putting everything together into a quilt.She didn't buy any fabric,having so much in her stash after years of saving,and the happy memories triggered while cutting and stitchingwere as satisfying as the crafting itself.When her handsome young son had finished his education on the island,he left for France, where he did well at university, met and maried a beautiful French woman, and was given the quilt by his proud mother.I met him, his wife, and their little daughter, on Sunday, at the local school Vide Grenier.
The sight of these two charming people, folding up the quilt in the strong French sunlight, will stay with me as I begin the enjoyable task of mending it and learning still more about the woman who made it.