Bonjour!

Bonjour! We are back from a wonderful holiday in the Vendee region of south west France.

I knew we wouldn't be out living it up in the evenings so I took some stitching with me.

This is a piccy of my endeavours, it is part of the bag for my bag swap partner. It looks, on the picture, that it is sewn onto the pink fabric but I just put it on that for the photo. I will be using some of this fabric in the bag.

I have only recently started hand embroidery and wanted a book of stitches. We went to the local supermarket on our arrival at our holiday home and I wandered over to the magazine department as I like to look at the French home, gardening and craft magazines, I don't speak/read French but they have gorgeous pictures. Well, there on one of those twirly racks, staring straight at me was this book.

I think it was waiting for me. Even though I don't know what the instructions say the pictures are very clear so I should be able to work out what to do. As luck would have it one of my friends in our sewing group is french so I can ask her to translate any bits I need to read. You may be able to get an English version but I wasn't going to wait to find out! I had to have the book immediately.

Other people's holiday photos can be very boring so here are just a couple of ours. This is one my hubby took of our holiday home, it looks like it comes from the brochure but he managed take it before anyone went in the pool and withought anyone in the background. Our liitle house was the one with the green shutters. It had a little garden with a patio and the rest was sand, it was like having your own beach outside the door, great for a little one to make sand castles.

We took our car with our bikes on the back. There are some fabulous cycle paths around this part of France, we were very impressed with them. This picture is of William and me by a beautiful lake during a lovely cycle ride. He's not really the tall, he's standing on a rock!

We visited a beautiful chateau in the pretty village of Apremont, here's me and William again.

I should have some more previews of my bag swap bag soon.

I've had a message from the organiser of the swap, Linda, to say that she has heard from the lady making my bag to say that due to a natural disaster in her area she will not be able to get my bag sent on time. If she is able to read this I just wanted to send my best wishes and hope all returns to normal soon. I'm sure you all send your best wishes too.

I better go now as loads of washing and ironing etc. to do post holiday.

Bye for now, Maria x