La Mazette lunch.

The sun shone. Course after course appeared. Lots of wine was consumed and a great time was had by all. The longest lunch I have ever been to - 7.5 hours! Is it a record? Probably not in France.

Our first fig.

It was delicious. We only had a few this year as our tree is young; but had an SOS from freinds to pick some of theirs. The fig jam turned out very well and the fif and almond tart went down well at our street 'get together' last weekend.

A cute baby!

Visit to the donkey fair at Pellegrue

During Tracy's visit, the fete at Pellegrue featured a

donkey fair; these two are Pyrenean donkeys.

A quick catch up....

Our first beans

and lots of tomatoes.

Our first grapes!

We have one bunch of red grapes on our new vines. Gill, who delivered them in May, will be impressed. Fighting off the courgettes and tomatoes this week... but what a pleasant occupation. And we have been enjoying a free daily concert by the Gironde Chamber Orchestra who are rehearsing in the village hall behind us every day in the run up to their annual summer concert season.

Close up of stitch detail

Too busy to blog!

I couldn't wait to start the Marion Foale, I had been so keen to do the pattern since it appeared in Woma's Weekly. Gald I bought the correct yarn; it has great texture and stitch definition and a beautiful drape. It is growing quite fast too.

I also learned that there was an article in the July Good Housekeeping on Marion Foale and a 'want it now' search on Ebay produced a copy. A very helpful lady called Rhian in Wales posted it to me and we had some very pleasant exchanges of emails.

Marion Foale yarn arrived

Delivered in less than a week from posting the cheque! Impressive.

More black tank top...

This photo shows the nice fitted shape, but not the colour. Anyway so glad it is finished. Knitting with black is not something I will repeat. Spurred on to finish it as I am waitng for my Marion Foale yarn to knit a pattern that was featured in Woman's Weekly a while back. I have been trying to find a suitable substitute, without success (and the kind folks at the Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns Discussion forum were so helpful on this), but in the end decided to treat myself to the 'proper' yarn, as I hope this will be an heirloom sweater.

The sun has re-appeared today thank goodness; the weather has been pretty grim, although nothing like as bad as the UK.