arrival in paris

(It is now the beginning of April, and I am finally getting to writing up our trip to Paris - I've backdated the posts.)

This time, we decided to fly to Paris, instead of taking the train. This was not a bad idea. We took the RER and metro into the city, and when we emerged, the first thing both of us did was be tourists.

december

December brought a number of things.

Arles

A few weeks ago, I was with some friends, and the conversation turned towards things in the general region that should be seen/done/visited. My contribution to this, as always, was the flamingos of the Camargue - a good three-plus hour drive to the east of Toulouse, but I think it's worth it to see wild flamingos. I mentioned to one of my friends that maybe G's parents would let us stay with them to allow us to go on a field trip. I asked G, who asked his parents, and after a bit of discussion, a date was set.

food we have consumed

Just a roundup of some of the tasty things we've eaten in January.

CHEZ MARCEL

We've decided that we need to eat out more, and one place we discovered (thanks to a recommendation on Ravelry, and a test run with G's parents a few months ago) is Chez Marcel. They're pretty much a lunch place - open late morning til 8pm most days - and very tasty. It might be our new favorite restaurant. The decor is nice, the plating is quite attractive, the food is usually a little creative and very tasty. The sides tend to be the same on all the dishes, but it's neat to see how they go differently with each main dish.

My appetizer - something with salmon with shrimp on top

G's appetizer - 3 vegetable soup with goose rilletes

My lunch - filet of bream on polenta

G's lunch - pork loin and something else tasty

The "gourmande" that came with the café gourmand. Lemon meringue pie, a chocolate cream thing on a cookie type thing with strawberry, a canelé, and strawberry bits with cookie crumbles and whipped cream

MEAT PIE

I made a meat pie. I added frozen carrots and peas because I could. It was tasty. I'm really becoming a fan of the lard/butter crust I've been playing with lately.

Pie.

Blurry cut pie. It was less blurry in real life.

G's BIRTHDAY

St Aubin's Sunday market has a butcher that sells the most flavorful chicken you have ever tasted. Also, tasty rabbit, duck, and a bit of turkey. We decided to splurge on their pre-made rabbit roasts - one with Italian herbs and one with Chorizo, if I recall. G asked for apple-thingies for dessert; I made mini apple-blueberry pies. With fun shapes cut out for the top. Camille helped with setting the table.

FRIENDS VISIT

At the end of January, we had G's friends L&E with children W&I over for snacks and hanging out and stuff. I may have gone a little crazy. Lemon bars, blueberry muffin-loafcake, Great-Granny's spongecake as cupcakes with frosting, and chocolate chip cookies. Apparently, frosting isn't a thing that the French do, to the point that I apparently kind of blew E's mind with the idea. The kids liked the cookies. The grownups liked the lemon bars. I actually kinda liked all of it.

cats are full of grace...

Yes. Completely and totally full of grace. Always.

(sorry bad photo quality... we were sitting on the couch watching a movie, with the adjustable lamp turned down to half light, and Perry settled down and the only photographic object I had was my tablet, and the flash photo was really terrible :) )

things got knit

Things I've knit since the Paris trip. At least, the things that I both knit and photographed... Actually, some were knit prior to Paris, but got photographed after. And some things have been knit without being photographed.

Links under each photo to more pictures and description of each project.

socks

coin lace stole

small towel

sweet pea socks

revontuli

big tease socks

mad color weave socks

julissa sweater

cadence socks

catkin shawl

elementary watson socks

artichoke socks

soleil tank top

leventry shawl

stitches

For my first post in a very, very long time, I'm going to talk about my new hobby, sewing. Or hopefully will be a hobby. I'll do a "year in review" photo catchup post soon (possibly divided into "stuff I knit" and "other stuff"), but I wanted to get this posted because I'm kind of excited about it :)

walk like an egyptian

Despite the date on the post, this post was actually written 27 July 2015 because I got behind on posting from the Paris trip last summer, and then I kept not doing it even though it was the last post, and then the guilt hung over me for not doing it so I avoided the blog entirely, and now I am finally doing it because I want to be able to post things again. This means that a lot of the details of the day are fuzzy, but I think I remember enough to give an idea of what we did :)

many steps

The plan for the day involved climbing the towers of Notre Dame, looking at the inside, the Crypts, Sainte-Chapelle and then possibly other things on or off the Ile de la Cité if we had time.

We got to Notre Dame pretty much when we intended - a bit before the towers opened.

This is half the line.

We decided to stand in line and reassess the plan after.

day off

We were starting to get pretty tired, our feet hurt, and my back problems (which had been giving me virtually no trouble for months!) started flaring up again, so we decided that instead of going to the Louvre on Monday and Versailles on Tuesday, we'd take the day off, skip Versailles on this trip, and move the Louvre to Wednesday (when they're open late anyway).  This was, after all, supposed to be vacation.

Lazy mornings are nice.