Beaumarches
I feel slightly as though I’ve been MIA recently. I’m not entirely sure why as life hasn’t been any busier than normal, but still the last few weeks have flown by.
I’m in the UK this week, flying home this evening (hurrah!) and though I should be working, I always view these “going home Fridays” as a bit of a dead loss work wise. So, I have spent the morning getting up to date with all your blogs and catching up with what you’ve all been up to. (There’s an awful lot of Christmas knitting going on – I’m doing none, so far at least).
To distract you from the lack of knitting content in this post I thought I’d show you some photos of our village. These were taken at the end of October (just look at that sky – wonderful!)
The road leading up to the village
The church
Beaumarches lies on the Bastide & Castelnau route, and as a result many of the buildings in the village date back to medieval times
A (more modern) mairie.
In France, the mayor of a commune wields an awful lot of power, and they are definitely not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. Our mayor is lovely. He has been elected, unopposed, for the last 22 years. For deepest rural France he’s an incredibly forward thinking mayor. He was absolutely determined that the entire commune would have access to ADSL and when France Telecom couldn’t pull their finger out and get it done he bought three wireless masts for the village, strategically placed so that even the remotest houses can have high speed internet access. He works very hard to keep the village alive and growing.
The bakers
The lady who runs the bakers must be one of the jolliest people we’ve ever met. No matter what, she greets everyone with a smile. It makes a simple thing like buying the daily baguette an absolute pleasure, and as this is one of Eddie's jobs she's also helping him with practising his French!
You can find out more about our village (should you be so inclined) here. It’s in French, but if you Google Beaumarches then find the link to this site you can translate the page from Google. The translation is a bit of a hoot but you’ll get the gist!
I hope to have some knitting to show you next time, though it won't be the top down Malabrigo sweater. I am simply bored with it at the moment. Daft really as the body is done and half of one sleeve so one final push would see it finished. But I'm itching to knit a shawl for some reason. Most likely a lace shawl, though I'd love to try out our own kid / silk on Lily Chin's Reversible Rib Shawl but I'm just not sure if it would be "ethereal" enough, given it's 4 ply rather than the cobwebby lightness of Kidsilk Haze. I have enough Kidsilk Haze to knit it, but have to admit that while I love how it knits up I really don't enjoy knitting with it, and I do really want to knit something in our own yarn. So, when I get home I'll have a good rootle through my patterns. I did find this on Ravelry this week and am quite taken with it. There are also lots of scarves I'd like to knit at the moment (probably best for UK knitting which only happens in short sporadic bursts).
Oh, choices, choices....
posted by Carolyn at 10:32 am
6 Comments:
Oh, don't worry about the lack of knits! I love the photos and info on your Gascon village life so much! I didn't realise it was so near to Lourdes, which I visited a few years ago (touristy, I know, but strangely interesting, nonetheless). I guess you must have a distant view of the Pyrenees, you lucky things?
But back to knitting - I really like both those shawls, so thanks for the links!
Your village sounds so much like the one we stayed in this year. I love the community sound of it. The shawls are nice :)
I think that your kid silk would look good in either - you just need a big enough needle to make the holes look holey. 4 ply shiny fuzz has some big advantages over teeny yarn - it knits up very quickly.
It sounds like you have a good mayor, to still embrace change after 22 years in the job says something about him. I was beginning to worry that there were no people in your village but there were a few cars knocking about near the bakery so there is life after all.
Don't worry about the lack of knitting, I can always be bought off with a goat photo.
Your village is charming! It's like a fairy tale!
I enjoyed trying to read about your village in french. My dictionary would have been very handy!
Have been wondering what you've been up to -- thanks for the update! My blog is still down -- no time to work on it with all that's going on at the job right now, but will try to get to it next week.
xo
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