Socks, hygge and Elfie

Tom's Christmas leftover socks, made not from cold cuts, dry sage and onion stuffing and petrified Christmas pudding, but from the ends of sundry sweaters, bits of tapestry wool, hats and other socks. Leftovers, store cupboards and stash, the best of things.

This seems to me the kind of picture used to illustrate the concept of hygge, narrowly beaten by Brexit as the neologism of the year. While googling around, I found this Slate article, well worth reading if rather disturbing to quietist stay-at-homes like myself - 'Responding to [the events of 2016] in any meaningful way will mean dousing the log fire, leaving the house, and feeling a chill'. Also a lengthier, rather less abrasive, analysis in the Grauniad, and an amusing last word ('hygge is byllshytte') from the Daily Mash, of course. Personally I find the conviviality aspect of hygge rather offputting* but reserve the right, at this stage of the proceedings, to maintain necessary levels of warmth and comfort, and indeed, to turn inward and give up on the world sometimes as we make our sad way through this ever darkening vale of tears.

We do brace ourselves and get outside. Elfie is a perpetual delight, though she continues to behave in a decidedly non-hyggeligt manner towards many forms of wildlife, and cats. Letting her off the lead on the old rail track, she trotted along amicably with me for a bit then suddenly picked up something, probably the trace of a roe deer, and in a trice was over the drop of the wooded escarpment, a couple of metres at least though soft with undergrowth and leaf mould, and rapidly bouncing off out of sight and hearing like an orange and white springbok. I stood on the edge whistling and swearing, out loud.

'Bonjour, Lucieee' from behind me.

It was our former insurance agent, neat and poised with her dear little pedigree westie on a neat red lead at her side, a woman I truly like but who seems to have a knack of making demands on me at the wrong times.

'Oh, bonjour Simone, c'est ma vilaine qui est partie...'

'Oh yes,' with clear what-can-you-expect sympathy, 'that hunting dog you got from the SPA. Will she come back?'

'Uhm, in general she comes back. It might take a few minutes...'

She went on to regale me with the details of her daughter's career, punctuated by rather unhelpful remarks and questions ('Aren't you afraid for her? How long have you had her now?) which I tried to listen and respond to while still whistling and swearing, inwardly.

I finally shook her off, climbed a nearby bank into the wood, whistled a couple more times and a few moments later Her Predatoriness came crashing back, pushing through brambles and over branches in her eagerness to return and share her joy in her adventures with me, as always. I'm happy to say I've never poisoned such recall as she does have by showing her anything other than delight, praise, treats and much whooping on our reunion, most of which is genuine, coming from pure relief.

Yet it is a bit more than that. The love we bear one another, and a pocketful of tasty treats, won't quite stop her running away after something irresistible, but I'm beginning to think it will make her want to come back, and there's nothing like her eager wild face coming towards me, or the extra-affectionate cuddles we have the evening after one of her rasher exploits. And her acute, intense awareness and perceptions of the natural world (even if she does mostly want to chase, kill and eat it) are infectious: I never knew before in which spots in the bank the field mice lived, or in which flooded ditches the water voles had their holes, that there was a family of partridges that lived around the hamlet of le Boissy, or indeed that the roe deer sometimes graze in winter in that low lying wet paddock by the farm below Quengo or in the long fields beside the mirabelle hedge; I knew these places, of course, but not their finer, more living details, albeit prompted by my need to be one step ahead of her whenever possible. I am curious as to why blackbirds get her going and are fun to harry and stalk when they rustle around in the hedges, yet their fieldfare cousins in the open are put up in only the most lackadaisical manner, and why crows are given a wide and respectful berth, even an injured one in the middle of a field was left alone with very little calling off from me.

I am torn; I want her to express her nature and the behaviours which make her what she is, but I also need to restrain, intercept and control them, for her own safety and for the sake of the poor struggling wild creatures who are persecuted enough - when spring comes and they have their young I know I must constrain her even more. I hate the whole business, in the modern world, of humans hunting with dogs and killing for fun, I'm squeamish about dead and injured things, but I also find myself wanting to know more about why she does what she does, how much is nature and how much training, as well, of course, as wondering why someone with a dog fine-tuned to respond to pheasants, hare and partridge, and fairly indifferent to pigeons and rabbits, simply let her get lost and never reclaimed her, which we'll never know. Her buggering off isn't always rebelliousness or ignorance, I'm sure, but that she thinks that's what we want her to do, what a dog like Elfie is supposed to do when out in the countryside with her humans. Her predatory impulse towards injured and lame things (toads on the terrace get no more than a perfunctory sniff unless they are trapped and floundering in puddles in black plastic, wagtails always catch her attention because their long-tailed bobbing movement looks like the trailing flight of something damaged) is repugnant to us, but natural and in fact quite kind in hunting terms, both in man-made hunting and in nature; wounded, damaged prey needs to be pursued and finished; trainers and hunters on épagneul and American Brittany websites I've researched pride their dogs on their ability to track, tackle and bring back crippled quarry.

It seems to me I could sometimes work with her impulses, rather than confuse her with aversion. The live (though presumably not well) blackbird she dived into the leaf litter and pulled out was not killed but only shocked and winded, it fluttered off apparently undamaged when Tom took it away, probably if I hadn't panicked and shouted when she did it so that she tensed and held on to it and had to be forced to give it up it might have fared better. One day, after her nerves were jangled and her mind distracted by coming across a number of hunters and their dogs (whom she hates and reacts to with volleys of uncharacteristic barking and growling) out and about, I took her out on the terrace to brush her. When I'd finished and we turned to go in, she broke away from me, rushed over to the edge of the terrace where the birds feed, and picked up a dead sparrow, which I'd not seen but she evidently had, and brought it back to me in a perfect retrieve. Another time, running around in a pasture some way from me, she picked up something large and grisly looking; instead of running at  her shouting 'leave-it', I called and cajoled and encouraged her to bring it over, which she did, with some effort, as it proved to be an enormous, ancient thigh bone of an ox, very grubby and much chewed (lord knows what it was doing there). She was a little reluctant to give it up but with much praise and laughter and lots of treats we sealed the bargain very cheerfully so I took it from her and led her away from it.

It often seems to me a rather wonderful and mysterious thing that we have this strange, wild, golden-eyed creature in our home, lying by our fire or on our couch, eating from a tin and a packet, snuggling our feet and soaking up endless love and affection while very visibly dreaming, and enacting, her dreams of flight, pursuit,bloodshed and mayhem. A dog the like of which I haven't had before, and the source of much joy.



*As I've said before, I can do conviviality, but seldom find it reassuring or conducive to complacency.

A bit of terroir

It's become quite apparent since we had Elfie that if you want to reach a whole new level of assimilation into life in Brittany, get yourself a Brittany spaniel.* Many older local friends glow with admiration at the sight of her, or love to hear about her, and tell me fond stories of all the dogs of her breed they have had or known, and complete strangers stop us to compliment her and talk at length in the same vein. I have the feeling we have adopted an emblem of regional pride as well as a dog. Not that this would have made any difference to our taking her of course, but I am rather enjoying basking in her reflected glory, and the increased contact and conversation I'm experiencing.

In fact, when a couple who had parked nearby at the supermarket and were admiring her through the car window, so I got her out to say hello and display her general wonderfulness, then the man opened his car door and she almost jumped in** and he chuckled that she was very welcome to come home with them, it made me think twice about making sure the car was securely locked when I parked outside the next supermarket; their appreciation, it seemed to me, was decidedly tinged with covetousness. They were quite rough-round-the-edges people, but clearly lovely; they couldn't believe she had been abandoned and in a refuge, had not long lost their last Brittany after keeping them, along with Labradors, for eighteen years, and weren't sure how long they could go on without another one. The woman praised us warmly for taking her, said that being such an intelligent dog she would know she had found a loving home with us, and that everything we gave she would give to us back again, we wouldn't regret it. However, not everyone who takes a fancy her might be so nice, and she is much too sweet and trusting not to let herself be led away.

Anyway, to celebrate our chienne de terroir, some cuisine de terroir, since she'll be keeping us at home rather more (though not entirely, we are quite hopeful of her adaptability, and her car habits and plans for appropriate equipment are coming on), and since all the walking is giving me a good appetite, one might as well make the most of some local food (apologies if this gets to sound a bit Peter Mayall...)

~

Côtelettes d'agneau pré-salé - salt marsh lamb chops

Just a few weeks ago, when Elfie was no more than a twinkle in our eyes, we went to the Mont St Michel area. I took lots of photos, as one always does there, and haven't got round to doing much with them, perhaps I will. Here is one from near the top though:

What you can see in the inland distance is salt marsh, pré-salé. That's where the sheep live, and one of the reasons I go there, frankly, is to eat them. We don't eat much red meat, and hardly ever lamb but this stuff is too good to resist, for me anyway. The hotel we stay at is in Pontorson, about five miles up the road from and with the nearest railway station to le Mont, but despite that the latter is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, Pontorson is a rather scruffy, down-at-heel, undeveloped place, and the hotel is remarkably cheap, with rather good food, including the lamb. Breakfast is bread and jam, good coffee and lousy tea, and trying to save ourselves for our evening meal, we picnic on fruit and biscuits at lunchtime, once stopping out on the salt marsh to the east of the landmark, observing something of the life of the sheep.

They are very free range, grazing on sparse grass, herbs, samphire and the like, which gives the meat its excellent flavour. They grow slowly and don't have to travel far at the end of their lives. They help maintain the unique habitat and landscape, for other wildlife such as these shelduck.

As well as indulging while we were there, this time we looked into the butcher's on the high street in Pontorson, and bought some chops which I put in the freezer when we got home. The lamb's availability is confined to the very local area, I gather there's a butcher's in the indoor market at Rennes that sells it a couple of times a week, but that's the furthest afield you'll find it. Six chops, not large, cost €20, which is a lot, but I really feel this is the kind of meat we should be prepared to pay more for, less often, in terms of sustainability, animal welfare, and not least, taste.

When it comes to cooking it, you shouldn't really have to do much, since it's flavour and tenderness is such that, as Brillat-Savarin said, it should taste of itself, and not be buggered about with (Brillat-Savarin didn't say that last bit). That said, I rather feel grilled or roast lamb without garlic and rosemary isn't right, so I smushed up a bit of garlic, and laid a couple of sprigs of rosemary in the pan, and also rubbed a bit of lemon thyme over it, and some sea salt and black pepper, and splashed some rosé wine over it to moisten it... yes, OK, I did bugger about with it some. It tasted bloody amazing anyway.

I also think redcurrant jelly is something of a necessity with lamb, after the fact, not in the cooking. Mint sauce, however, is an abomination. The jar in the photo is labelled in French not because I am an insufferable Peter Mayall type who has to show how very assimilated I am, or some would-be cheffy type who thinks all food should be in French, but because I gave the rest of them to the ladies at Quessquitricote, who were very appreciative. In fact it's white currant jelly, I still don't really know what to do with all the white currants I grow, but at least I can make jelly and give it away.

Having gone relatively easy (by our standards) on the garlic in the cooking, I roasted a load more whole cloves with some sweet potato and pimento, and served them with these and some green pease pudding. I feel so sorry for people who can't eat garlic.

 There wasn't much left over.

Dogs mustn't have chop bones. Bugger it.

~

Chicken with Roscoff pink onions and pommeau de Bretagne (or Normandie)

Long time readers here will know about the Roscoff pink onions. Or you can type it into the dinky little search widget top right, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I don't have any photos to illustrate this one but here's a drawing.

I did it the other day, I've not drawn anything for ages, but set myself half an hour before Elfie's late afternoon walk (that being quite long enough to sit in front of a cut onion), got out the pastel paper and pastel pencils, no rubber, to see what happened; my hand is not in, but it was nice to do it. The appetite and motivation for certain things I had set aside seem to be returning a little, tentatively.

Roscoff pinks are known for their keeping quality, which is how the onion sellers were able to store, carry and sell them abroad, so there are still some about, including a couple from my own last year's crop. For this recipe, take a fair number of them and slice them as you like (I like top to bottom for most things), caramelise them for as long as you've time, and deglaze them with pommeau. Pommeau is the cider producing regions' (Brittany, Normandy) version of pineau de Charentes, that is, an aperitif made from the must, the fruit juice base, grape or apple, of wine or cider, mixed with the eau de vie distilled from the same production, cognac or Calvados or its equivalent. The fruit juice sweetens and lightens the spirit, the spirit stops the fruit juice fermenting. Both drinks are quite sweet, and about 16%. I guess you could just use some sweet apple juice (or what in the US is called cider, as opposed to hard cider) and some other alcohol, applejack if you've got it, or whatever.

Roscoff pinks are not unlike shallots in flavour, so perhaps banana shallots would substitute.

Put the onions into a slow cooker (or heavy pan in a low oven), slosh in a bit more pommeau and some chicken stock, which I do make myself, properly, but I am also a shameless user of chicken stock cubes, which I also add some of, then sauté a chopped up chicken breast or two , or any other chicken meat you like in the oniony pan; I am a leg woman myself and Tom is a breast man (I'm talking about chicken here, for shame!), and thus between the two of us we do the Jack Spratt thing, but you can't buy boned leg meat here so if I'm feeling lazy it has to be breast. I think I meant to chop up and sauté an apple and add that too but I forgot.

Leave it to cook and go out for the afternoon, perhaps peel some spuds for mash, which goes well. I think I was going to walk refuge dogs, a volunteer activity I started before we got Elfie, while we were still purportedly at the stage of thinking of getting another dog in a year or so, as a kind of preparation. However, now I'm sort of committed to it, and after an afternoon of having my arms nearly pulled out of their sockets by Tifou, Idyll, India, Olga or whichever old lag I've been walking (most French dogs have daft names, Elfie was a lucky exception, and many of these dogs are unlikely to see a life beyond the refuge, which isn't necessarily so bad for them) I am most appreciative of coming back to a hearty, tasty meal and to luxuriating on the sofa with our, clever, affectionate,(mostly) gentle medium-sized darling; even if I never dare let her off the lead, at least she doesn't pull me all over the countryside like a plough horse.

Terroir is one of those pretentious, snobby kind of words/ideas about food, like fusion, which is its antithesis. Yet there's something about putting things together from the same corner of the earth that often does work; sweet potatoes, pimentos, garlic, redcurrant and split peas with the lamb is clearly more like fusion, and they work too, but the simple combination of the pommeau and the pink onions really is spot on, you don't even specially need the chicken.

~

Finally, if that all seems a bit heavy on the meat and rich stuff, here's a bit of foraging fusion.

Bean tops, sorrel and noodles

In the last couple of years, a number of the fields hereabouts have been planted with legumes - field beans, peas, vetches etc - as cover crops. They get ploughed in at some point and things like maize planted on top. This year, the ones with field beans - rather like small broad (fava) beans, and not bad eating, have been left fallow for the moment and begun to sprout from the old crop. Here's Elfie in such a field, with a view of Plémy in the background, looking every inch an emblem of rural Brittany, despite (or perhaps because of***) the rather orthopaedic looking harness:

I'll wait on this nice slack lead for as long as you say, but if you think I'm going to pay you any other attention just because you're pointing that thing at me you can think again****.

Broad bean tops are good eating as greens, if you can get to them before the blackfly, so I wondered if these would be. I picked a good bag full, along with some sorrel, and washed it in the salad spinner. 

I have a great appetite for the first wild and foraged greens at this time of year, one which Tom doesn't share. They seem very cleansing and refreshing. I heard somewhere that women's biology really does need and want vegetable matter rather more than men's, and we certainly seem to be more easily constipated. I'm not entirely convinced they aren't just mostly babies who never learned to like their greens, though. (She says, while Tom's cooking mushroom, pea and cashew curry.)

Soak some chow mein noodles. I've nothing against ramen, and eat them sometimes, but chow mein soaked for a bit longer is just as simple and really has a bit more texture and integrity. Sauté a shallot or two, in a wok or just a saucepan, then add some soy of some kind, I used a sachet or two of Japanese left over from sushi.

Then, and this is the important bit, throw all the raw greens and noodles in together, and stir it up. Serve, sprinkled with some of those crispy onion bits, my current favourite savoury topping.

An experiment, but really a very successful one. The bean tops stayed very chunky and substantial, unlike a lot of leafy greens which seem to dissolve and nearly disappear when heated, but they lost that rather nasty bitter, raw bean, leguminous taste. The wild sorrel melted, but the acidity of it offset the other ingredients very nicely. I must make it again before they plough the field up.

~

* or rather épagneul breton. According to those in the know,  épagneul derived from an old French word for a net, the original manner of bird hunting with such dogs, and 'spaniel' is a mistranslation, since that word originated in the fact that English spaniels were supposed to come from Spain, or something like that.

** an absent minded reflex common in dogs; an article I was reading the other day recommended if you are faced with a runaway dog, your own or someone else's, especially in dangerous traffic, a good ploy is to open your car door and they dog will often jump in without thinking about it.

*** Breton back or hip problems are well known, openly attributed to consanguinity.

**** I still wouldn't let her off. This field is full of skylarks, as well as partridges and pheasants which have survived the hunting season and gone on to breed another day, so that gives me another excuse for curbing her freedoms: even if I could get her back, there's no reason that all the spring wildlife should be rampaged all over. Also fox poo and other temptations.

Good things # 3: the cider press cometh

'I think they're making moonshine up the road,' said Tom 'they've just dragged some big machine thing up with a tractor, and now there's all kinds of noise coming from up there.'

So I went up to have a look, and next to Victor's house, with Victor in attendance, was a big noisy contraption I'd never seen before, powered from the tractor by all kinds of filthy wheels and belts and other gear and tackle though not a lot of trim,

as well as a thick hosepipe emanating from Victor's sister Hélène's shed, and there were apples everywhere:

They were emptied into a big wet hopper, where they seemed to receive some kind of very perfunctory washing, then scooped up in these baskets and conveyed to the top of the contraption, then squashed between a stack of metal grids, from which the residue of pulp was tossed aside

and the juice squirted out from a tap at the other end.

'How old is it?' I enquired above the din.

'I dunno,' replied Victor, 'old.'

He's well gone ninety himself. I also asked if they did anything with the discarded pulp. He said they used sometimes to give it to the cows but not any more, there wasn't much left in it anyway. The blackbirds like it, he added, but he thought it was perhaps the pips they were interested in, which had never occurred to me before about blackbirds going for windfall apples. I assumed the juice would be sour and horrible, but he said no, it's very sweet, and as I ducked away I stuck a finger under the stream and licked it, and indeed it was, so I gave him the thumbs up and he gave me a grin. 

The people who brought and worked it would be moving on to the next job, they make a tour. It won't in fact become moonshine, but will stay as cider, though Victor is one of the only farmers still alive who has the right to make 'Calva' (a term which is not only geographically inaccurate but rather glamorising of the product in question), he no longer does so; the travelling alembic doesn't come round any more, though there's one at St Laurent, but, he said, no one really wants the stuff now. I bought a litre bottle from him for 50 francs when we first came, and in fact it wasn't bad, at least as hot grog with lemon and orange and brown sugar. 

Anyway, if my description of the workings of this formidable engin is not adequate, here's a video I spliced together  from three separate ones I took, so you can work it out for yourself, though make sure your volume levels aren't too high, it really is very noisy, and no one's wearing ear protection! Victor, as regulars of this blog will probably recognise, is the little Tom Bombadil-ish chap who stalks off across the shot at the end, and the fat dour bloke is his nephew, one of the many Marcel/les of our village, who looks as if he's more used to drinking cider than making it, and probably won't make as old bones as Victor. The two anonymous entities covered in apple pulp are the machine's owners. 

I came away from the event quite unwarrantedly cheerful and excited.

Eve of departure, and the Moncontour magnolia.

Little more I can do now: the alarm is set for 3 am tomorrow morning; I have cereal bars and fruit juice and Kendal Mint Cake and books on the Kindle; I have packed everything I can, unpacked most of it at least once because I still needed it and packed it again, written extensive notes to myself about things I have done perfectly easily before or could very easily have kept in even my increasingly sieve-like head anyway, emptied everything that needs emptying and charged everything that needs charging, written my will... 

Molly has extra meat for tomorrow's dinner and Tom has been given special dispensation to have a Mars bar for breakfast on the way back from the station at 5 am.

On the way back from further last minute provisioning (done at least in part to give Mol a ride in the car to distract her from rolling furiously and indignantly on the carpet having had her ears cleaned, another job that couldn't possibly wait till I got back, after all, that moment, just 36 hours after my departure, will be a world away), I decided to do something I have been meaning to do every spring for the last seven years, that is, photograph the magnolia tree in flower on the ramparts of Moncontour. 

This isn't such a difficult thing to do, but difficult enough, since a clear view to it can only be obtained from a point on a fairly narrow winding road up the hill away from the town where stopping the car is very dangerous - not that this prevents smitten tourists, sometimes in camping cars, from doing so anyway.  Since the only place you can safely stop and park is several hundred meters further back up the hill, and there's no easy turning, I hardly ever think to do so in time, at least not when I have the camera with me. Anyone who knows a magnolia tree knows that their moment of early spring glory is a brief one, and year after year I've failed to get around to taking the photos.  This time, though, I thought to do so in advance, 

 And since to look at things in bloom,

Fifty Springs is little room...

Sadly, it was not a very bright spring day and rather too late in the morning, so the contrast of lights and shadows which show the picturesquely irregular shapes and planes of the ancient town's walls and roofs to best advantage, and which seem to make the magnolia stand out all grand and emblazoned and Tree-of-Gondor-like, was absent, but you can't have everything. And perhaps that perception of the tree is enhanced by the way it rather flashes upon the eye, surprising every time.  

In the long view it's scarcely noticeable, in fact.

The yellow specks on the walls below it are primroses.

The one above caught the great flocks of jackdaws and pigeons which swirl around the old bell tower, built by the Spanish in the Wars of Religion in the 16th century. These birds are a perpetual headache in terms of their destructiveness, since all they want to do is roost and poo all over said tower, which was lately restored at great expense of time and money by a special firm of scaffolders and builders from Provence who specialise in such lofty edifices, but they are very much a part of the atmosphere of the place.

By approaching on foot, and by climbing up on a wall and focussing the camera between trees, I found there was another spot with a view onto it.  The higher eye-level shows more interest in the roof shapes, but also the rather dour modern extension to the old religious hospital building on the hill behind.

Unlike Houseman's narrator, I've had my fifty springs, rather than anticipating them. It seems important to try to get round to at a few of the things one hasn't got round to yet, at least some of the smaller ones even if the bigger ones remain out of reach, and even if they don't quite stand out as brightly in reality as they are in the mind.  As a dear friend said, now's the time.

A plethora of plump and pleasing pumpkins, and the why I greatly appreciate Lyse.

Getting on for a month ago now, we went to the festival couleurs d'automne at Coëtmieux.  The latter isn't a large place, in the countryside between St Brieuc and Lamballe, but this fête was really quite impressive: stalls and exhibitions and demonstrations of all kinds of things, this slideshow gives just  a taster, there were apples and mushrooms and wine and cider and arts and crafts, and lots and lots of plants.

This rather sinister fellow was to be seen watching us:

Despite all the lovely things there were to seen and despite having the camera with me, I wasn't much moved to take pictures, until we reached the pumpkin stand,

where all kinds of varieties of curcurbits were on offer,

warts and all.

I was especiallly impressed that so many varieties were on display so early in the season, when my small crop of butternut were still a callow pale green. 

I had just gathered a reasonable harvest of photos, turned round and found myself looking at Lyse, who was right behind me.  This was a surprise and a conincidence, as although she lives in Coëtmieux and we had communicated and knew the other would be there so were looking out for each other, there were so many people there I wasn't holding out much hope of seeing her.  We instantly fell to discussing everything very intensely, while Tom reappeared and shifted from foot to foot, rather lost. Happily he was wearing his Transfiguration Waistcoat which was thus available as an object of discussion, so his presence wasn't altogether redundant.  Monsieur Lyse remained in the shadows and was not to be seen on that occasion and we regretfully declined Lyse's kind invitation to return chez elle afterwards, since we were about done and had lunched rather well, and they were only just beginning on the afternoon. 

I greatly appreciate Lyse as a fellow blogger, not only because she knits and writes in Gallo and lives round here, but because she has become a very faithful reader here.  Although I have few other much valued French speaking visitors that I know of, mostly they are bilingual or polyglots, whereas Lyse's English,by her own account, is over fifty years old from school, and she painstakingly reads through my sloppy, idiomatic and demotic ramblings to get as much meaning as she can, then applies an on-line translator to it.

To try to get some inking of how difficult and opaque this must be, I decided to put a section of text from the middle of a recent post into Google's English to French translator, which even I could see was fairly bizarre, but just to get an impression how much so, I then put that French text back through the French to English function, and this is what resulted:

I wanted to knit in the storage cycle stitch (so it is actually a flattened tube), rather than a rib, but quickly abandoned the idea of the do in double underlined the needles as much too slow. I have tried to learn magic loop with a circular needle but has decided that I do not have the right to the circular needle and i do not have a lot of care for the practice of any way, too much tinkering with the needles and cables and not enough actual knitting. And then I hit the bold idea to take one of my incredibly cheap, bought-by-the-set directly from Hong Kong, the bamboo circular needles, of the reduction in the tubular plastic cable, forgetting the bonded connection section with a specialty of the knife, and discharged the shortened cable on it. Friction held easily in place, and the resulting needle was perfect for the job, i along whistling suite and continues to go there until I have more or less lack of wool. (The link above gives an overview of all of these terms, with the exception of my technical patent shortening of bamboo circulars, if you do not know already that I am going to speak about and care enough to know).

It has proved to be very long.

Bon courage, Lyse, et merci!

Straw hat Sunday

Last Sunday was most terribly hot.  Nevertheless, my local blogging friend Lyse and I left our husbands sensibly taking siesta and ventured out to the Fête du chapeau de Paile in Quessoy (link in French). Lately I've made the acquaintance of a few bloggers in this area; we had a meeting a few weeks ago involving a walk, some local history and exchange of impressions and a couple of very enjoyable large fruit-filled Breton cakes.

Quessoy, not far from here, where I shop and pass through often, used to be famed for its straw hats, preferred by its inhabitants to the traditional black Breton felt ones.  This year, it was decided to commemorate this with a straw hat festival.  The wearing of straw hats was de rigueur - and on such a day not at all a bad idea - and if you didn't have one you could buy one for a Euro-fiver from this jolly young woman and her jolly barrow, which we did.

Wherever we saw her she always looked very cheerful despite the heat, as were all the volunteers there;

Some people were very merry indeed, a combination of sun and cider, I imagine, one chap who was doing very nicely kept trying to pay me for his straw hat while I was waiting for the above vendor to come back from her lunch. 

Sadly, these hats were not made locally, but presumably in a factory in the PRC or similar, but the money raised went to good causes, including the association Handichiens,

who provide and train these beautiful, noble dogs, mostly labradors, one golden retriever, to assist handicapped people.  

There were plenty of other stalls, including one selling real, handmade, local basket work -

which were enviable, but the price tags showed how much cheaper it is to bring things in from the PRC that have them made in the old ways by hand here - a large sturdy log basket with a strong plywood floor and lovely natural colourwork which I coveted would have set me back 130 euros.  I rather regret not buying a small egg basket or similar which I could have afforded, I'll have to look out for them elsewhere.

There was a woman selling painted glassware, and in the spirit of snap-now-edit-later, we pointed our little cameras at it like everything else.  She broke off talking to some potential customers (who took the opportunity to slope off) to ask defensively why we were photographing.  Lyse replied that it was possibly for her blog, and the woman looked a bit askance and asked if she was from the newspaper... In fact Lyse does write for the local paper too, she has a funny column written in Gallo, which she also blogs, of dialogues between a couple of earthy country gossips, Fifine and Torine, but she didn't choose to make anything of this.  I stood back and rather enjoyed the talking-to she delivered defending the rights of the blogger, the joy of sharing pleasant and interesting things with a wider public, and the possible advantages that might even accrue to such as the seller of glassware from it.  The latter was somewhat confounded, saying that sometimes people stole one's ideas... 

Frankly, seeing her work, I'm not sure why anyone would bother,

But I did find looking at an expanse of glassware on such a day, regardless of its aesthetic merit, did give me a pleasant sense of coolness.

Local fêtes here often seem to have a not-for-sale exhibition of a local persons hobby creations or collection, this woodworker is apparently quite well-known, and his models are certainly impressive:

In the one above the barrel bit in the middle was going round, not sure what manner of machine it is, something agricultural I imagine.

The wooden rocket transporter struck me as quite surreal, especially in front of the large emblazoned motto of the Republic on the wall of the Mairie behind, which I hadn't noticed when I took the photo.   In fact historically, Quessoy was a noted stronghold of anti-Republicanism; another local blogger, Quercus, crêpier of great renown (folk come from far and wide to Quessoy to buy his sweet crêpes and buckwheat galettes, and it was he who made the fruit-filled Breton cakes I mentioned) and very erudite local historian, recently wrote a post (in French) about how, back in the day, wearing the tricolour cockade, an obligation in Paris, could get you beaten up in Quessoy.

We took some refuge from the heat, and drank cold drinks under an awning in the school playground, where the ambiance and festivities were making the sometimes dour folk of this particular corner of the Pays Gallo act somewhat like rowdy Latins, took in the scene and chatted at length, about the matter of minority language and dialect, Anglo squeamishness about the matter of eating offal and calf-meat, anecdotes of growing-up in different times and places, and more besides.  

I picked up a kouignn aman from a bakers stall which was also selling little sponge cake Breton heraldic ermines,

and went home before the cake, and we, melted. Tom had requested I bring him back a straw hat, so I brought back two.  Lyse is modelling hers here, (with a bonus video of Sacha Distel singing Mon Beau Chapeau!) and here are some webcam pics of mine:

I know it's quite a lot of me, but I don't actually do a lot of self-portraits here, and I started to enjoy myself rather!

Lyse's account and photos of the day are on her blog here. It was fun, I hope they do it again.