I noticed on the last post that the pictures are a little blurry. I'm posting through Word, because of the length of the post and the number of photos. I keep getting locked out when I post directly, so if you want to see the photos clearly, check out my album on the left side of the post screen.
After we dropped off our goodies from the farmer's market, we took off for the Toulouse flea market. We were all very excited about this trip, as most of us are always on the lookout for certain treasures. For me, it's antique ribbons, textiles, etc. I did find a few little things, but not as much as I'd hoped. It was fun to see how the French do it.
There is a little park across the street from the flea market where Lizzie prepared a picnic for us.
That's Molly (Kaari's sister), standing, and several of us sitting on the ground. Love the wheeled picnic basket!
I will occasionally put a photo of various parts of the Chateau in this rambling post so you can get a glimpse of how truly beautiful it is. This is the living room.
When we didn't have a particular field trip, Kaari would open the craft room for us. She had a craft bag made up for each of us, and inside was a kit for the felting, for a necklace, a bracelet, and the hat pins. There was also a little embroidery kit. We could work on whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. This is Kaari giving us a lesson on wool felting. Lisa is looking on.
Here are some of the contents of the craft bag, and a peek at the hat pin.
Early on Monday morning, I got up and took a short walk around the Chateau. Right at where we turned to go to the Chateau driveway, there is this structure.
Can you believe it? It's just sitting there. It's got to be a couple of hundred years old. Some say it was a pigeonnaire (I have no clue how to spell that), where pigeons were kept. Others, because of the dog weathervane, thought it was a dog kennel. Either way, it's breathtaking to see this at the end of the driveway.
On this day, we travelled to nearby Septfonds, to visit Chapeaux Willy's. This hat making company has been in business for 185 years. Unfortunately, they had a fire that destroyed most of their inventory, so there was nothing that was incredibly old there, but it was fun to see all of the hats, and to watch the ladies sew up a hat in just a few minutes. This region is known for their sewn straw hats.
That evening, Lizzie invited a local sommelier for a wine, cheese and bread tasting. They were all local area wines, cheeses, and breads, and we had a great time. After five glasses of wine to taste (and they weren't just little sips) we really had fun. I'm pretty sure I liked the cheeses and breads, too.
Yum.
After all this fun, it was all I could do to go inside and go up two flights of stairs to bed.
