Leaving La Cascade

 

The food was fabulous

The desserts divine

 The art projects were inspiring

 The green jar was purchased at the market with yogurt in it.

Yummy yogurt, great pen holder!

My "black & white" box

It reminds me my artistic sensibilities keep my from copying no matter how hard I try!

 Our rooms vacated

 Suitcases in trunks

Au Revoir

when we next meet our heroine, she will have arrived in Paris . . . from the overnight train . . . that is a story . . .

French Market

When we last checked in with our heroine, she had just returned from a lovely walk in the French countryside.  A few days later the group went to the Saturday market in Revel.

In looking over my photographs from France I discovered I took very few of the wide picture.  So here are some close-ups of the market we went to.

 The Revel market is held underneath and around this structure.

 These houses surround the market.

 Flowers to plant

 Vegetables for salad

 The image of the French countryside

Not only are these radishes absolutely beautiful, they are very tasty.

I bought a package of seeds to plant in my garden next spring!

 Around the outside of the market vendors sold wonderful things like vintage linens.

This delightful woman had beautiful linens at reasonable prices.
Her website, in French, is also delightful.  If you google baroque brocante, you will be able to get an English translation.

A couple of these pretties from her stall came home with me!

Note to Readers:  I am experimenting with a new layout and have sized my photos extra large.  Please leave a comment if you like this or not.  I'd like to hear if you can see the whole photo, etc.  I have a wide laptop screen and they show up fine to me, but I'm not sure how they will look on your computers.  Thanks, Marilee

Soreze, France

Having spent all our cash on books in Montalban, the next afternoon we headed to Soreze which has an ATM as well as beautiful architecture!

 

 

I wandered the town by myself.

Discovering the church grounds . . . 

 

 

 The public garden & park, 

 

 

 

and finally joining up with the group.

An outdoor cafe for refreshments was were we all met up.  It seemed so part of the day I didn't even think to take photos.  Oh well.  Imagine a table with espresso cups and Orangina glasses.

Soreze is not far from La Cascade, so a few of us walked back.

After all the rain it was lovely to be outside.

Shopping For Books

Our heroine is having a heck of a time getting the trip to France posted.  It's not like there are a lot of followers of this blog, but for those who are being patient, thank you so much.  Today, we venture out for a glimpse of one of the field trips the group took:

  Note the raincoat Kelly is holding.

We may have been in southern France, but the beginning of our week was perfect weather for ducks!

Up the mountain to Montolieu, the book town.

  One of our projects specifically called for a book to use as our canvas.  Plus even the most ordinary of books here would be in French and pages would be so lovely for our other projects!  

 

I found a wonderful book with letter press printed woodcuts, an almanac of the year I was born and the find of the day --  a cashe of papers and letters. . . I'm not sure I would have discovered the cache if the shop owner didn't speak perfect English and had been married to a woman named Merrily.  Serendipity!
 
I had wandered off by myself into Librairie Lattitudes, a shop specializing in books on history & exploration.  I wasn't really that interested in these topics and he certainly didn't have books to cut up for art projects!  But the shop had a great feel and we spoke the same language!  I found a couple books I could afford.  He seemed to approve of my choices and we got talking.  He asked my name and laughed when I told him.  I don't know what made me ask, but I wondered if he had paper for sale -- written documents, letters, that sort of thing.  He went in the back and brought out a plastic grocery bag full of stuff:  Letters, ration coupons, an old book, etc.  It wasn't the sort of thing he usually sold, he had gotten it from an estate sale locally.  The lot wasn't elegant and some of the pieces were quite worn; I didn't look at it very carefully, but it felt like a good find.  So I said I would take it, and was there an ATM machine in town.  No, but he would gladly take US dollars and the transaction was complete!  It still makes me smile to think of the fun I had talking with Michel.

 

After that lovely experience and also since I was out of cash, I wandered around til I found my friends at this cafe.  Of course as soon as I shared my finds half of them went off to Michel's shop to see if he had any other wonderful bits.


It was a great afternoon and we all found things to use in our next projects.

First Projects

Up the blue stairs to the top floor our group of art students went each morning to work.

 

 

Below are the cards I made:

These are the first projects we did -- collaged cards to send home to family and friends.  It was my first attempt to duplicate the sample.  In my failure to do so I discovered how naturally my own artistic sensibility comes through.  And since I was so very pleased with my completed cards, I also learned I might, just maybe trust my artistic eye!


For my friend Jan
Art Reference Librarian
you will be sorely missed!