Wednesday Olympics

Above is a completed piece of Canadian finger weaving. I am glad I chose to do a very simple pattern as I definitely got better at even tension and no horribilinesses where one colour changes sides. Now all I have to do is lay my hands on some suitable wool. It is somewhere in between 4ply and DK and is more tightly spun than most knitting wools. I have the websites of a couple of Canadian websites so will check on costs there. Note the pseudo fossils on the marble table.

Yesterday we stayed in and pottered except that at 1700 hours we started the family Olympics. Five teams from five countries competed at table tennis, pétanque, peach-and-spoon relay race and timed swimming. After which we had Laura's birthday party, Italian food, birthday cake and champagne.

Another corner of another room. We do not use this one. A couple of people pass through it on the way to their bedrooms but I do not think anyone has ever sat in it.

Today some of the party are off to a bird sanctuary followed by a boat trip on the Camargue. The rest are off to Pezenas, a city north of here. I am birding.

 

 

 

 

 

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Monday Pont du Gard

Pont du Gard from above.

Sunbathing at the Pont du Gar

Ancient olive tree

 

Decor at house in garden

Mannequin in camouflage in the garden. She used to live in one of the bathrooms with a gun slung over her shoulder - guaranteed to wake even the sleepiest person first thing in the morning.

And a day's effort at finger weaving. That was yesterday.

Today the temperature was in the nineties. Thunderstorms are forecast for tomorrow so we aim to stay here.

 

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Sunday in Marsillargues

Lunching in the Gare de Lyon while waiting for the TGV. Note the luggage in the foreground. There is an equal quantity at the other end of the table. Arrived at the house about half past six.

This is the house. Every bit shown is ours and a bit to the left too. So the garden is the width of the house for about 100 ft then it expands to give room for the tennis courts, the table tennis pitch, space for half a dozen cars and an enormous garden. So everyone can find the perfect place which after lunch is in the shade. I have my finger weaving stuff erected by the table tennis and will go and see if it is too sunny in a minute

I promised a photo or two of the house decor. This room is on an upper floor. Boils in the afternoon but is lovely in the early morning.

A collection of hats, not ours.

One corner of the sitting room. A grand piano and a working telescope and oddments. And oddments is the right word for this house. Stuff everywhere.

The only other item to report is that I carried out my habitual duty this morning and went for walk at 0730 bringing home the croissants, the pains au chocolate, four baguettes and a seeded loaf.

 

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First Day

Yesterday I found our hotel was round the corner from St Pancras.

Which looks like this. And inside it looks like that too. The ticket booths have Gothic arches in brick and stained glass windows. Further along the street is the British library.

I looked at their exhibition of 'Treasures of the British Library' which is full of just that. Chinese scrolls, Coptic scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, Mughal miniatures, Books of Hours. That took me quite a while. They seem to have some software which gives you access to books and you turn the pages one by one. Then I wandered upstairs to see the reading rooms.

You can see through the glass windows to the row upon row of books behind.

And here are people working. Lots of desks. Everyone has a laptop or similar. But you need a reader's ticket to access the books.

And at the end a shop full of books about books. I found three which I would have bought if this had been a day trip to London. So I noted down their titles and authors and checked them out in amazon, added them to my Wishlist. And told the family to consult it.

And this is the family standing in St Pancras station just about to go through security and passport control. You go through French passport control here. And now we are on our way. We are just about to go into the Eurotunnel.

 

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On My Way (Again)

I left Malvern this morning for the delights of the South of France. We leave St Pancras on Saturday morning early on the Eurostar, rush across Paris in taxis and catch the TGV to Nimes. When I say 'we', I mean eleven of the party. Ruth has rented a big house, for the third time. The decor is astounding and I shall enjoy posting a photo every day. There are more people but they are flying to Marseille. The house is very large and has a pool, tennis courts, outdoor table tennis and more outside tables and chairs than is decent.

I am feeling slightly put upon and wonder if I would not rather stay at home but have decided to spend the fortnight sitting by the pool with my kir royal and an open notebook and do a bit of thinking. I have brought a print out of the iWeaveit manual and propose to practise on my iPad. There are one or two problems bothering me and I may write them down in detail hoping that the act of putting things into words will show me the way to go.

Otherwise there will be lots to do and a variety of people to do it with. We have three rented cars to allow for a changing set of groups doing things . Anne has posted a list of 17 different excursions which has elicited raspberries because it does not allow for pool time or walking round the town to buy cakes time.

Before I left, I had warped up the hana-ori and threaded the Megado. I have started sleying so it is all ready for me I get back. No more trips abroad until next April when I go to Genoa and Turin for four days. I am trying to stay at home next Summer. There are lots of lovely things to do. I fancy Art in Action and the Cheltennham Music Festival. Dorothy and I have plans to go to Skye together and we are thinking of the Edinburgh Festival. When we were young, the Festival was very new and we acted as usherettes at concerts, showed people to their seats, sold programs. And of course watched the performance for free. I saw MArgot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann do Midsummer Nights Dream and Victoria de Los , Angelos in a solo concert. She changed her dress three times. The last one got the audience to its feet!

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RICHTER Stained Glass windows

Gerhard Richter designed some gorgeous stained glass windows for Koln cathedral and these served as inspiration for some work done this year by Kennet Valley Guild of WSD. Everyone took part, spinners, dyers, embroiderers, weavers, knitters and everyone made at least one six inch square which was mounted on heavy card and then they were fixed to a black felt backing using Velcro. All the parts have been in my house for me to adding strengthening tape down the edges of the two big sheets of felt which hold 36 squares. I had already done the four little ones which hold 12 each. The point about the whole shebang is that every time it is put up you get a different appearance by mixing and matching the squares. I have to emphasise that my contribution was two squares and a bit of machine stitching and that an enormous number of people worked on this. The project was led by Rosie Price (who is a nutcase about Richter anyway).

A

A hanging with 36 squares

A hanging with 12 squares

All very colourful and a showcase of methods. I took a lot of photos and it all took a long time, crawling round the floor, sticking the squares onto the felt backing, standing back and saying to myself, 'I don't like that much and changing it all again!

 

The fabric for the Small Newbury Coat is dry and has been pressed. I have put on the warp for the Hana-ori. I will start on the threading up later today.

More Tidying Up

I can at last see the surface of the desk in the office. I have printed out photos, pasted them into notebooks and generally filed a lot of stuff away. I have also wound more than half the Hana-ori warp. But also

dealt with the above. I have had it for several years , given to me by a Burmese friend. It is backed with black fabric but the problem has been that there are no facilities for using it as a or hanging it so it has been pinned to a padded board. But this has bothered me as a temporary measure. It is unsuitable as a cushion anyway because it is very padded and heavily embroidered with sequins. So this morning, at last, I put a quilt hanging sleeve on it in black cotton and it is now hung up in the studio in a much better place, showing off to advantage.

My sister, Dorothy, gave me instructions ages ago on how to apply a hanging sleeve. It's the kind of technique non-quilters do not know about. Which reminds me, she is currently on holiday in Skye with her grand-daughter (and others, of course, but they are not important). I have several very short emails which are ' Very wet and windy', 'Pouring', 'Spectacular sunset'. The weather seems to change a lot there.

 

Now off to finish the Richter Stained Glass piece of which more tomorrow when I take some photos.