Clocks going back - countdown to winter

We're both looking forward to a well deserved lie-in tomorrow thanks to the clocks going back. But this always makes me feel that it's nearly winter and that we're on the rapidly accelerating countdown to Christmas.

The weather has changed. Early mornings are misty, cold and we've already has our first frost.

The snow line is creeping down the mountains. We crossed over the Pyrenees into Spain last weekend and there's definitely snow in them there hills!

The neon board positioned at Lavelanet roundabout has spluttered into life and is now displaying the tariffs for the 2011/2012 ski passes.

I've ordered the wood. This year it is a LOT of wood because I think we're going to have a cold one. This year I've managed to order the logs cut to a size that will actually fit into our log burner without Jeff cutting them...

OK so this is not our wood pile. This incredible display of perfectly graded and stacked logs belongs to a neighbour. Every year I attempt to replicate this and totally fail. Maybe now we're in year 2 of life in Ariege I'll manage.

New name, same old stuff

To those of you who have been enquiring, my Etsy shop has not disappeared... I have taken the rather drastic step of renaming it. It is now Histoires. I realise that this is not as meterioc as the much loved Marathon bar becoming known as "Snickers" or the changing of the Coca Cola recipe but it has been a source of much deliberation and discussion.

I had discussed my new shop name with a select few, taken on board their suggestions and preferences, and then on the whole totally disregarded them. And I'm very happy with the new name. To me it conveys many things about my merchandise: that is vintage, historic, French and also that it has a story.

Thanks to the talented Suzie Chaney for her support and design input (and copious amounts of wine!!). She listened to me babble on about how I DIDN'T want my shop to look and managed to produce a cool, contemporary yet sympathetic shop banner for Histoires.
 

So it's all systems go for Histoires.

Tah dah... Maison Dumay is open

It was a meteroic day for me yesterday as I finally opened my Etsy shop: Maison Dumay. To recap I hadn't been able to open the shop due to a lengthy sojourn in the UK followed by almost total immersion in our renovation project. But yesterday was the big day. I pressed the button on all the draft listings I'd been creating and filled the shop with my rummagings.

I've been generously helped and encouraged by fellow Etsyians which made yesterday a little less daunting but I was still unprepared for my first sale. Overnight my first customer (from China no less) purchased 3 items and I had to smile when I checked my emails this morning.

The first item she had selected was this joyous piece of English kitsch. A truly fabulous hand knitted mustard coloured wool tea cosy with porcelain lady top.

I had bought this stunner at an English auction house over the summer in a mixed lot with 3 glamorous evening bags and I confess I thought the bags would sell quicker than this item!

Sadly I don't think I'm likely to able to find another one like this in France as tea drinking is not widespread here. Oh well, better get back to the rummaging and start daily prayers to the Goddess of Thrift that another one crosses my path.

Roof works

We're making steady progress with the roof work at our old barns.

The first job for the team was to carefully remove all the lovely old handmade canal tiles which could be saved. They will be reused on the roof of our "remise" which will eventually cover the summer kitchen.

Then the substantial old poutres (beams) which have held the roof up for over 200 years were removed leaving the "gite" section of the house open to the sky.

It was a nail biting moment for our foreman, Gareth, when he hoisted the first of the new poutres up on the materials hoist we had hired.

We all stood well back as the 150 kilo beam was moved slowly up the lift.

Fortunately this went without a hitch and the first of the new wood was balanced on the roof of the stone house. Mouse (left) and Paul (right) lifted off the huge beam.

After constructing an internal platform which they could work off, the team repaired the tops of the walls and man-handled the new beams into position.

The picture below shows the top of the triple row of Genoese tiling on the front of the gite.

Harry has cleaned them off so that a layer of lime mortar can be put on top to form a bed for the wood wall plates which will support the roofing panels.

2 poutres and the wall plate on the back of the gite roof are now in position.

Let's hope it stays sunny as there's a lot more to do

The garlic man

I realised a few days ago just how attuned I am now to life in this tiny village in South West France. At about 10am on Tuesdays the calm is shattered by a long, loud blast on the car horn of the mobile Charcuterie van who rounds the treacherous bend around the art gallery at high speed before screeching into the village car park. Once there he jumps out and flings open the side of his van and impatiently waits for the eldery village ladies to appear. 

Last Tuesday however there was a different sound. Definitely a car horn but quieter, more hesitant and definitely made by a slower moving vehicle. I peered curiously out of the front of the house and saw the garlic man pull onto La Terrase and open the boot of his car to display his wares.

The garlic man (on the left) is discussing this year's new crop of purple garlic with my next door neighbour, Yvan. He has come from Gers and the boot of his car is set up with a mini display of shallots, honey and lots of garlic in bunches and plaits.

My neighbour prods, sniffs and handles the beautiful plump bulbs of garlic while moaning about his failed crop. He is oh so French. Eventually he moves away bidding the garlic man a cheery "bonne journee" without buying any. At last I can select a plait and a bag of shallots. Now, where shall I hang it?

Car Boot Britain

I had not been totally neglectful of my Etsy shop, Maison Dumay, while I was trapped in rainy Britain for 2 months. In fact I think I must have spent most of my leisure hours combing car boot sales for vintage goodies. Rather surprisingly this yielded some fascinating additions to Maison Dumay's stock.

My main incentive was, fairly obviously, the prospect of finding some glorious vintage and antique goodies but I must admit I had a second motive. And that was simply that I just LOVE the whole experience of trudging around a muddy field at some unseemly hour on a Sunday morning.

I LOVE the sellers who typically ranged from young couples selling off their no longer needed baby equipment, to middle aged, "middle class” couples who were zealously decluttering their homes and lives, to little old ladies intent on supplementing their pensions by turning out their sideboards and bottom drawers.

For me there are 2 types of seller that make car boot sales so enjoyable: the people who are genuinely having a good old clear out of years of accumulated “rubbish” and the professional “booter” who has recently purchased a job-lot of “dead stock”. I was quite literally stopped in my tracks by this particular traders range of goods:

Eat your heart out Del-Boy and Rodney Trotter... sadly I didn't see anybody actually buy one of these.

As well as the interesting people there was the allure of the almost infinite range of goods available. Rather sadly British car boot sales are frequently dominated by traders flogging low quality “must haves” and it is not unknown to spot counterfeit “designer” shoes, clothing, perfume and accessories as well as bootleg CDs and DVDs. I accelerated past many of these stalls in the course of my vintage treasure hunting. 

This is my favourite finding. It is a photographic postcard of Jack, aged 10.

Handwritten on the back of the photograph is the information that Jack, aged 10 years old, travelled home to Barnsley (Lancashire, UK) from Ramsey I.O.M (Isle of Man) alone in August 1921. Britain was certainly a different world in the 1920s; I don't think Jack would be allowed to travel anywhere alone at the age of 10 in 2011.

The connection is made

Work on our rather ambitious restoration project began one day before I boarded a plane bound for the UK in June. I was away for 70 days and during this time the project has surged ahead. Jeff had kept me up to date on progress but I couldn't wait to get up to site to see it all for myself.

I must confess that I found it difficult to enthuse about the deep trenches filled with concrete, foundations and footings but the one piece of work that made my heart beat a little faster was the opening between the "gite" and the "stone house".

Before I go any further I should explain the names. The "gite" is so named because it had outline planning permission to be converted into a gite (holiday accommodation). We have subsequently decided to incorporate it into our future home and it will house a workshop (ground floor), a fabulous bathroom with separate toilet (very French), an office and a mezzanine area. The "stone house" is the original old house and the middle building of our three.

 

Meet our builders, Gareth (left) and Paul (right) looking rightly proud after making the first opening in the stone.

The reason I got so excited about the raggedy hole in the stone between the gite and the stone house was simply because until now these two buildings had been totally separate with no connection. But now it is possible to look through the "doorway" from the gite, across the stone house, and into the new barn. At last these buildings are connected.

This photo is taken from the gite. I can stand here and can actually really visualise for the first time how the layout of the houses will relate to each other and how we will eventually be able to live here.

I can hardly wait!