:: coffee :: at words to shoot by

the first digital photos i take since christmas... so you know where i'm at ! i did enjoy it though. it gave me a good excuse to go downtown on a sunday morning. people in vannes are really cool on sunday morning, even more than in the afternoon. i've always wondered why... hum... maybe it has to do with taking their time to fully enjoy their croissant and coffee ?
cheers !

:: moment ::  at  words to shoot by

or how i became a blogger again... so thankful for this invitation

rainy days

feeling quiet. knitting winter wear. crocheting for a friend. fighting some greedy real estate business that want to ruin our place & life. saving seeds for next year. making dry arrangements to enjoy indoors. baking some pears & chocolate... the rain came. a lot of rain. it's definitely Fall now. what's going on at your place ? any autumn projects ? baking ? picking apples ?

:: pretty card on the first photo by my white room ::

ps : i have disabled for now the letter/digit security code in the comments. i think it's getting nervewracking (blogger if you hear me) sometimes i can't even read them and it takes 2 or 3 attempts...

before school starts we usually go on a little (tent) camping trip. in our household, we have a very bad habit to let go about schedules during the summer and it is hard for everyone to go to bed earlier/wake up and go back to the school routine. at least when you sleep in a tent, you have no choice but to get along with mother nature. this year we went again to the very western part of brittany, from where you can wave hello to our american friends on the east coast across the atlantic... one of our little day trips was  spent in la torche, which has become a hot spot for surf.

not even on the beach yet, across the dunes, this sets the mood...

when you go down on the beach past the dunes, you are hit by the view of so many little black spots in the ocean. alien attack ? no ! surfers everywhere. in their black surfing outfit (we're not in hawaii here, you're so happy when the water reaches 18°C). la torche is not only a beach but also a different world. no overstatement here. surfers, surf school, surf shop, after surf snack place, people thinking surf & talking surf, girlfriends waiting for their surfing partner, kids barely walking are seen trying to surf...

this little girl was not older than 5 and so eager to go in the water again...

this is mine... she has new glasses on & she's a little older, isn't she ?!

transition

trying to linger into some summertime laziness & a certain freedom while a new school year (grade 9) is starting... no big words for now but the hope to be able to blog more often in the weeks & months to come. i have missed my blog friends x

11.00pm

11.30pm

11.45pm

0.15am

 1.00am

2.00am

3.00am

as we were having a late dinner around 9pm yesterday, i couldn't help but notice how the daytime is already getting significantly shorter... which is bad news for us in western france... some of you may have heard what a cool & rather rainy summer we've had and i doubt we are ready for autumn & winter. later in the evening i went through our summer vacation photos -- which i have not shared here yet -- late june when we went up north above the artic circle. it was our first time experiencing the midnight sun and certainly one of these truly amazing moments in a lifetime one can be thankful for. something i want to bottle up somewhere in my memory and often get back to.

dye

one week ago i took my L. and one of her best friends to an afternoon workshop taking place here and organized by the yves rocher gardens to learn more about how to dye with plants. the conversation with the instructor explored many options, plants, colors, but the practical exercice was about three primary colors, two of them being known for their spectacular red (common madder) and blue (indigo).

although like in most process there are a few rules to observe, a big part is left to discovery and creativity. it is very interesting to find out what colors will come out -- to make it very short, this may vary according to the material you want to dye (cotton, wool, silk, linen etc...) and the mordant you have used.

as blue is one of my favorite color, the indigo tie & dye stole my heart ! indigo is seen as a wonderful deep blue-green just as it comes out of the dye bath and goes bluer as it is drying.

the two teenaged girls who were with me got completely hooked -- the one i brought home had her neck indigo-stained like a tuareg girl -- and the conversation in the car was all about when we would dye at home & what plant we would use ! we may invite the friend we met by (happy) accident there (hello Diane !) too and last weekend my girl picked a whole basket of chesnut leaves hoping to dye again this autumn... who said teens need FB & electronics or they get bored ?!

thirteen

i made some tulle pompoms last week and suddenly she turned thirteen.
awaken with a candle in the morning. icecream scoops, macarons and calissons d'aix on her request later in the day as a birthday "cake". a special treat since diagnosis.
mom & dad know you sometimes try to hide how life has been tough, how hard it is to live with a little pump attached to your belly, to weigh food & count carbs in everything you eat, every meal, every day... yet you're such a good girl and don't take this help to stay alive & healthy for granted. we  l o v e   y o u  petit poussin !

she blogs here about her craft world... a little secret... if i still have any readers, maybe some of you can pop there & surprise her with a hello ?

birthday in jersey :: part II