About Love and Passion --- Brocante du fil à Sprimont

... and plenty of other things which made me happy these days.
Ce blogpost-ci est une éloge à l'amour et à la passion et plein d'autres choses qui m'ont fait heureux.

Lets start with passion:
In October already *shame on me* there was this absolute fantastic haberdashery flea market in Sprimont. As every year FAB.FAB (this is my abbreviation for a great lady, Fabienne, she IS fabulous) organised the 'Brocante du fil' in Sprimont, just a stone-throw away from here. The entrance fees and other money collected during the day were a fundraising for a family in need and they must have been very happy about the great success!

Commençons par la passion: déjà en octobre (j'ai honte d'avoir pris si longtemps pour publier des photos) la "brocante du fil" avait eu lieu à Sprimont, juste à quelques kms d'ici. Encore une fois FAB.FAB (c'est comme ça j'appele l'organisatrice Fabienne en secret, car elle EST fabuleuse) a fait un succès fous de cet evénement. L'argent recolté par les entrées et locations de stand était pour une charité, pour soutenir une famille dans le besoin et ils doivent avoir été très content de ce soutient.

Here are pictures from the event, taken early. Voici des photos pris assez tôt quand les stands commençaient à se garnir, après je devais commencer mes achats ;-)

Décoration en cours	ça promet!
tous ces miniatures à découvrir	élégants détails

et des tissues	elle aussi pouvait venir
il y avait aussi des sacs...	et des boutons...
et des rubans...	et du linge...

sorry pour l'image trouble, qch. sur l'objectif	busy busy
et ces chaussures!
si jolie!

des adorables détails	des jolies présentations

quel choix

J'aime l'intérieur de porte. Merci Fabienne!

Some things came home with me, it could have been more if I had not run out of money quite quickly. The reason is an ancient tool I was able to buy, a button press with all its dies, accessories and ... buttons! Hundreds of them. If I find time between all that button making and other things which totally occupy me right now, there might be some pictures sooner or later. Perhaps I'll show also the beautiful haberdashery furniture which sits now in the loft.

But now about about LOVE.
We celebrated a wonderful milestone these days: 15 years ago, EG came to meet me in London where I was for a training course and took me out for some days to Wales. The rest is history as they say.

By coincidence, he came across more passionate food for my soul: another wee vintage sewing machine- if I find the time between all this servicing, oiling and sewing, I might get some pictures made and posted - sooner or later.

On Saturday, we went to the Ardennes to visit a wonderful horse rescue place, called 'crins de vie', here is the link http://www.crinsdevie.be/ . In the Netherlands, an organisation called the 'Bloedtrappers' makes a lot of money, all legal, by making mares pregnant and pumping out their blood during their first 4 months of pregnancy, all for to filter the hormones out for pharmaceutical use. After that, the mares are no more of interest to them and they 'dispose' of them. The organisation crins de vie has some 32 rescue horses in their premises, all were saved from the slaughterhouse and I am thinking about how I can best support them. There is an empty space in our stables...
We shall see.

Revenons à l'amour:
Voilà 15 ans que EG m'a 'kidnappé' de Londres au Pays de Galles, le reste c'est de l'histoire.
Par coincidence, il m'a trouvé encore une petite machine à coudre. Si jamais je trouve le temps entre la révision de mes machines et la couture, je ferais des photos.

Et samedi passé, nous allions dans les Ardennes. A Gouvy pour être précis. Là-bas se trouve un centre de sauvetage pour chevaux. 32 créatures ont été sauvées de la boucherie, voici le lien http://www.crinsdevie.be/ Une organisation néerlandaise, les Bloedtrappers, fait du profit avec des juments inséminées et dont on pompe du sang pendant les 4 premiers mois de gestation afin de profiter des hormones. Après les 4 mois,les juments ne servent plus à rien et on y dispose. J'y pense comment je peux les supporter au mieux. Il y en a encore une place libre dans nos écuries...
On verra.

Yorkshire - RHS Garden Harlow Carr

Once the house sitters are instructed, the car packed, the vet has done the last check for the dog, we are off! It lifts my spirits to have a smooth journey, traveling on a Sunday and setting out early to avoid the main traffic. Again, we manage to take the earlier ferry, we love to take P&O but set over from Calais to Dover whilst we could have taken the overnight ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull. But the dog makes our priorities for the way of traveling and therefore we chose the later, cooler season. I have longed for visiting Yorkshire since so long, I was all excited.
We arrived after 12 hours of travel close to Harrogate and were happy to still have some daylight to see where we had landed. One entire week of holidays ahead,oh joy!

As the gardens  we wanted to visit are RHS ones, we decided to start in Harrogate's Harlow Carr Monday morning and go straight to buy an annual RHS membership. 

The garden offered wonderful late summer impressions, colours, smells and a matching temperature. Here is a selection of pictures as we walked through, however afterwards we felt as if we had not had enough and went again on Wednesday morning.

The very promising entry

Many volunteers contribute to the maintenance

Great inspiration from the vegetable patch

The fruit trees had wooden labels specially made
	greenhouse inspection ;-)
How well the water reservoir blends in	BIG BIG greenhouse envy here

A real tomato house

plenty of willow is used all over the vegetable patch

More examples to use willow Betty's tea room is everywhere!

a nice break right in the center of the garden

September light at its best

A lovely shady place among the huge trees

cyclamen in nice soft ground

bird boxes 

a squirrel running off, only a grey one

there was a sitting area with plenty of different chimes and EG made a wonderful background sound performance

shelter for wildlife 

in front of the lake were huge piles of sea weed which had been fished out, it had all gone when we came back 

soft autumn colours just starting

borders alongside the stream

huge gunneras where they like it most, half shady and humid

loved the clever way to make use of hazel

back to the vegetable plot

all the delimitations are done in a different way

dahlia abundance

outside after having bought nice things from the shop

One cannot ignore Betty's!

We had a lovely treat and I would have longed to have one of their menu cards. I asked the charming lady who had seated us - who's mum was from Berlin ;-)- said, she was afraid she was not allowed to give us one as there were always so many just taken away and they had to reprint them at high costs.
We sadly had to accept.

Suddenly, big surprise: the wonderful lady comes back with a Betty's bag and whispers to us: as you have asked so kindly, I went to see the Manager and he allowed me to give you this:

The whole selection of menus! J'étais aux anges! 
P.S. I have a collection of famous places' menu cards which started back in 1987 on my last trip with my mother to New Orleans. That was at 'Arnaud's' in the French Quarter and it was even hand signed by the waiter :-).


./. soon to be continued with Fountain's Abbey