Thursday 29 August 2013

Mother and daughter trip to Lille

Just got back from a wonderful little trip to Lille, France with my mum. There was lots of shopping, eating and drinking, but also culture in the form of a magnificent museum in a converted swimming pool building and a very educational and exciting trip to a textiles factory, where we saw working looms from across the centuries. I uploaded some photos to Facebook and mum said they make a lovely collage, so I took screen shots of them.




Stunning architecture, signage and stained glass windows in Old Lille.





Musee La Piscine:an absolutely stunning building with a tranquil atmosphere and amazing artworks, including fabric swatch books. The museum is in the district of Roubaix, which is about thirty minutes from the city, but well worth the trip. Roubaix used to have a thriving textiles industry, but since more and more production is done offshore, this has sadly died over the years. The photo below shows the beautifu, Art Deco, stained glass window and the photo underneath is of reels of thread at the Manufacture de Flandres, which housed the looms we saw.




Of course there was lots of gluttony too! This amazing raspberry tartlette was enjoyed with loose leaf Earl Grey tea (there were hundreds of varieties of tea) at Meert, an eighteenth century salon de the.






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Friday 23 August 2013

Visit to Kingston Lacey

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I'm on my summer holidays at the moment and visited this beautiful Natuonal Trust property just outside Wimborne. It was such a beautiful day; clear, blue sky.



They had two sows who had about sixteen piglets between them. So gorgeous!



There was a bed of aliums, absolutely covered in butterflies Not a great close up, but an amazing sight to behold.



They have a period laundry room there where there was a display of beautiful vintage linens and baby bibs and accessories.







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