Art supplies, lunch, and pastries

 I kept thinking about the art supply store. We don't have anything like this in our little city. Floors full of supplies, to repeat myself. Look, many airbrush sets! I haven't seen one of these in years.

 Color is the way to group items, yes? These are pieces of foam, felt (in 2 thicknesses) and paper. I can't remember what was on the bottom shelf. See my honey touching the item at the top?

 This is only a portion of the brushes available.

 These are some of the pastels. They're a bit out of focus as I moved so quickly from one fabulous thing to the next.

 Pencils! I want more colored pencils in my life. I may have to make one more trip to Rougier et Plé before we leave Paris.

 This was our Sunday lunch. I'd made some soup with potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and some red lentils. We had cheese and, of course, a bottle of wine. Our friends gave us two bottles of some very good red wine, notice the date 1999! It was quite good. We're getting to really like GOOD wine.

Here's pastry that we got at Miss Manon yesterday, since it was open. Not many bakeries, or shops are open on Sunday. As we left, the line was very long, out the door, with customers. We'd made it just in time to beat the crowd. These were excellent pastries.  We have a few more bakeries to try out, like hundreds!!

The weekend and lots of mail art

 This afternoon, we took a walk to drop mail in the box for early pick up tomorrow, and then walked over to our friends' to drop off stuff they'd left at our house. We stopped to chat with a neighbor who has a small garden in front of her house and she gave us some hot peppers. The orange ones are very hot, she warned. I gave one to John, one to our son, and kept one. That's about all the heat I'll need.

 At our friends' house. We were chatting, when I suddenly notice that there was a critter asleep on the couch in the kitchen. He didn't stir even though there were four of us talking. I think there'd been some Saturday night Halloween festivities.

 Our neighbor gave us this bottle of Glühwien made in Nurnburg.  He'd bought several bottles for our outdoor dance party that didn't happen on Saturday night. It was too cold to be outside and we had to cancel. Boo Hoo.  I can't wait to try this, as it'll bring back memories of Brussels, where we went late one November and got to see the holiday markets and light shows.

 This was the weekend for squares and circles. I decided to create designs based on my own 2D design course, which finished up last week.

 Saturday was all about squares.

 Check out how the circles change up the spatial quality depending on their value.

 I used my neighbors maths book for titles for these compositions.

 Here comes Sunday, all about circles.

 It's so interesting to me how simple placement changes the energy and direction that we follow.

 This composition was random. I dropped the circles on the paper and glued them where they landed.

This is another of the random compositions. They really work for me.
Which do you prefer, squares or circles? Why? This is not a test. ha ha ha

The travelers return! and Mail Art #105 of 365

We're back from our 26 day travels, and have so much to share about our adventures and my mail art. Where to begin! LONDON: This icon was at Heathrow airport. I'd never seen one like this and found it really cute.  Our hotel was very basic, we like it a lot and it's location down from Waterloo station was perfect. We could walk to the Tate Modern and the Thames easily, and we did. 

 At night, the London Eye was lit up, you can see a crescent section of it between the buildings from our room window. We didn't take a ride on it. It looked awesome up close. 

We went off to meet with Andy and Elena, my mail art friends, the very first night we arrived. What an adventure, jumping onto the tube and coming out to be greeted by Andy, whom I'd known only via our internet projects. Here's Mini-Andy. What a terrific evening, with cheers and Andy making us dinner, and afterward we made mail art!  This is the piece that I made #105 of 365.

Fete de Noel

We had a lovely Fête de Noèl in the Cité. Lots of food and drink were brought in, as well as chairs from other studios so that we could all sit at the table that had been set up and filled the studio. As one person pointed out, we had at least one person from every continent in the room. The discussions were lively, the candles gave a nice ambiance, it was very festive. The red thermos was filled with vin chaud (hot wine.) This will be one our favorite memoires of our residency here.

Wine degustation

Yesterday, we went off in the rain and chill, me with TWO wool sweaters on, to a wine tasting on a boat on the Seine, by the Eiffel tower. We rode 3 different metro lines and on the third, we ended up on the same train as our friends, whom we were meeting. How fun is that? Quel surprise!! The boat was docked a little ways from the Metro Bir Hakeim, with a view of the Tower looming over us, we walked in the rain down the Quai Suffren and up the gangplank. The boat was lovely inside, a dinner boat actually. It was very crowded with the wine sellers booths lining each side, as well as sellers of chocolate, honey products, foie gras, escargots, all in a narrow space. The views were nice and the gentle rocking reminded us that we WERE on a boat. We are such novices with wine, (or debutantes, don't you love that word?) but we tried wines suggested by our friends and are beginning to discover what we like and why. We bought three bottles of wine from Château Eugénie, a 2003 Cahors. Very tasty. They have three importers in the U.S. so the wines are available there, as well as in Europe (and Japan.) They're located near Toulouse, which we visited in 2006. Maybe someday, we'll take a trip back to that area, stay in a Gite (B & B) and tour the vineyard. Could happen! Meanwhile, we'll enjoy some nice wine. (sorry the one photo with the sign has a person blocking the view, but I wanted to show you how
one stands at the counter to taste and has a view of the river.)

The Marche au Producteurs, Paris

On Saturday and Sunday, we went to the market set up in the Village St. Paul. People had come in from their farms and cooperatives down the southwest of France (and some central south) to sell their hand made products. We got soap from Savonnerie Saponaire, owned by Ania and Jean-Sebastien Canaux. J-S waited on us, speaking English, which is helpful. Their soap is all natural and smells great. Can't wait to try out what we bought. We got a bottle of wine from this stall because I tasted the Vin Chaud (hot wine) which was a bit different tasting than the one we had in Brussels, but good. She told me that it was made with their wine (a 2005 Merlot) plus sugar, orange, and cinnamon.) I made it last night and it was tasty and felt good after a long cold walk home from a flea market/antique fair. I got one skein of mohair yarn. It's very fine and natural color. The honey stall had delicious spiced honey cake/bread and almond nougat, which we got on Saturday. They both were so tastey that on Sunday we bought more of the nougat. It was so filled with almonds that was very little of the nougat. I was happy to speak with the woman who made it and tell her how much we like it (in French.) We bought honey muffins from another stand, which were also excellent. The only vegetable stand was a Bio (organic) one and he was doing a brisk business. The produce looked great. Leeks, greens, kohlrabi, lots of root vegetables, plus the man had a case of his home made goat cheese. We just didn't know what to choose! There were stands selling snails and offering samples. The smell of the garlic coming from the steaming pots was so good, though I don't eat snails. There were samples of sausage, pate (see the stuffed geese,) chicken, cheese, wine, nougat, and preserves (confiture.) We bought some confiture to give as gifts to some of the staff here for Christmas.

More of Brussels

Christmas Markets

We went to the square by St. Catherine’s and got some photos of the wonderful carousel. I bought a postcard and got some information about the creator. There are several market squares filled with little chalet like booths selling food, wine, books, crafts, knick knacks, all sorts of gift items. It was very lively on Saturday & Sunday nights, of course, and quiet on Monday night, though there were people there. No children were on the carousel on Monday, when we had cameras with us; too bad, because it was really cool in action. We drank hot wine both visits. Gluhwein it’s called.





The carousel was designed by Francois Delaroziere in 1999. It's called Le Manege d'Andrea. Isn't it so Steam Punk!

Today's lunch.

Two kinds of spreads, stuffed grape leaves, tiny tomatoes, Comte cheese, cherry yogurt, and organic bread with sesame seeds...Add some wine...and Voila, today's lunch!

Evening in Paris (#1)

We went to Le Tartine, a small cafe/bar in the neighborhood, which we like. We had, of course, tartines (open faced sandwiches) which we forgot to take photos of before we started to eat them. They were so good, but here's a noisette (small coffee with cream) and a bit of what the place looks like. We took a walk afterwards, checked out a little shop behind the restaurant (see us in the mirror,) and got some provisions at Monoprix, which was open late tonight because of the holiday. There were many, many people walking around. So very busy, even though there was a drizzle, then a downpour, then a drizzle, we loved it. "IT" being that there were so many people out and about. I had a very nice white wine tonight, Chateau des Correaux St. Veran. I'm going to see if I can buy a bottle of it tomorrow. Can we get it in the states? Probably not.

We saw these cute keychains in the window of a shop. "Dark Dudes" Funny, tiny dead pirates?? Je ne sais pas, mais, je le pense que ce ca."

NYC memories of the weekend.

Lots of candles at El Diablo Royale in the West Village and excellent Mexican food. We had a good cup of coffee and a honey sweetened muffin at a shop by Washington Square on Saturday morning. We popped into a nice little place on west 10th, a glass of bubbly, a view of the rainy street, cozy us enjoying being together.