21 May 2007

No photos of completed work yet

I would have loved to have some photos to show you of finished work, but I simply haven't had time. I have some photos of the Moxley Retreat, but this one seems to capture the essence of how the weekend went. I drank far more than I should have but it was a blast.

Zandy and I took off to France for four days at the end of April to celebrate 20 years of marriage. We packed the small tent into the Mini, along with the air mattress and the huge sleeping bags and found ourselves a small campsite in a village called Condette, not far from Hardelot and used that as a base to go exploring. The mornings were started with a walk to the Boulangerie to pick up croissants and pain au chocolat, then a simple lunch of bread, cheese and salad (and on Saturday, sand as well) and lots of opportunity for walking. The weekend was a little marred by Zandy getting mild sunstroke on the Saturday. He had less than one glass of wine at dinner and then started acting like he'd been drinking all day. He had sufficiently recovered by the Sunday evening to eat something, but for a while there I thought we were going to have to come home early.

I seem to have developed a fetish for French ironwork. Nearly every house we walked past had the most beautiful ironwork on it, from large doorways like the picture here, or small details above the door. I love digital cameras because I could take loads of photos. Charging the battery for the camera was a slightly trickier task as we got a pitch without power. I took the charger with me to the shower each morning and set it to charge while I washed, hoping that no one would "adopt" it while I was in the shower.


But I didn't stop at photographing just the ironwork. I now have hundreds of photos of stone fretwork. I am hoping that the beauty of some of it, will inspire me in my artwork in the future. This one, was taken in Abbeyville, where we stopped for dinner on Saturday. The light was perfect for getting crisp, clear images of the detail.