Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

08 April 2018

Lots of catch up pictures

Lots of things have happened in the past month or so.  A lovely garden tea to celebrate my mother, a brand-new first grandchild, a visit to welcome him, a ski holiday, and some sewing!

Our family and a few friends sharing memories of my mother under the trees in the tea garden on a nearby grape and rose farm.  They had put the roses on the table for us.


Three days later, a whirlwind visit to Wales to see my daughter T, and her new-born son, E.  First, one night in London with my son M - these daffodils growing in the pavement outside his flat:


Then a six-hour drive to Cardiff to arrive only an hour after they got home from the Maternity Unit!  M and I camped out on the couches in their tiny 1-bed flat.


 And the first quilt for E, originally he was referred to as "Pickle".  It's been a long time since I free-motion quilted anything, but this called for it, rather than being frame-quilted.  Or rather the thought (under pressure) of clearing all the stuff off and from under the frame to pull the frame out just seemed overwhelming.  Back is brushed cotton (flannel).



Just had four days with them, as a prior booked family ski holiday couldn't be missed.  This is view out of the plane window as it's coming in to land at Tarbes/Lourdes airport - those are the Pyrenees  Mountains covered in snow in the background:


And some skiing and snow hiking took place:


 The view from the apartment window in Bareges, it's snowing out there:


 The Tour de France comes this way in summer, a lovely day for skiing:


Morning coffee with chocolate macaron and pistachio tart decorated with fresh myrtille berries with my daughter, C:


And on to some sewing...  
Six Block Lotto blocks for February, where we had to take small orphan blocks and dress them up to 9-inch square:


 Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler (RSC) for February.  Same block in two sizes and a couple of wonky windmills from the left-overs.

 A sort of summary of purple February and green March blocks created from RSC inspired colours.  The top three green propeller-like blocks are the Block Lotto ones.  The three green ones underneath are the RSC March sampler blocks, in three sizes.  As purple sort of was about a quarter of my pre-cut scraps I was able to churn out loads of blocks.  Cut green scraps were decidedly less in number. For this year I am still trying to use only the scraps that have been trimmed and sorted, working well so far!

 95 (purple) and 93 (green) 3" 9-patches (for Jack's Chain); 29 and 14 short 9-patches from left-over ends of strip piecing; 35 and 4 5-piece mono slabs 10"x 4"; 23 and 3 8" blocks with 4-patch centres; 101 and 22 3" light/dark squares; 27 and 2 6" economy blocks; and a handful of other odd purple or green blocks

21 February 2012

Where we've been...

We're back!  Have been skiing in France, practiced a little of my French.  For the 12 days we were there it was at least a little warmer (-7 to 0 C) than the week before (-18 to -5 C).  Who am I kidding, it was the coldest skiing holiday we've had!  Reminder to self: "don't visit Paris in winter".  Either walking or waiting for buses in -5 C when you've just left 35 C in Cape Town dampens the fun of being there.  Not having been to Paris before, did the Eiffel Tower:  up, walk once around observation deck, and straight back down, just too cold, and nothing much open.  The highlight was, after visiting the Science Museum (preferable to the shops, even if they were in the throes of winter sales!), we were walking back to a different Metro, and hmm,  what is THAT building, and those crowds of ladies leaving look suspiciously like ladies who sew, hmm.  Closer look, and it's "L'aiguille en fete" at the Grande Halle de La Villette.  DH says not keen to go in, so persuaded him to go and look a shops for "One Hour"!   I was in heaven!  It was bigger than anything similar in South Africa.  Flew around, and managed to find a stand with French fabrics (lots of american and japanese fabrics which I can get anyway) and in halting French, bought some.  (This was our third trip to France, and because we were in the mountains with limited transport before, hadn't actually found fabrics.)  Lots of embroidery, threads, fabrics, wools, and similar - most of the "quilts" on display were in fact crocheted, but really beautiful.

Skiing in Valmorel was more for intermediates, not for beginners!  But the village is just like the pictures!  L'appartement was a good 600m from the centre.  Although the slopes really high up were great, one has to ski back down, and the last 100-200 m of pistes were steep!   Managed 5 days before falling and pulling calf muscle, not long after getting off the chair-lift.  Felt like an hour (but was probably only 20 mins) to get skis back on, and then it took me all afternoon to slip-slide back down from 1900m to 1400m, and then walk back to l'appartement.  Still ouch! but at least no broken bones.

Took some hexagons to tack, but did them all on the train trip going!  Ah well, never mind, was able to read four books!

And some photos of my helper, I had just pressed this fabric!