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The night Jocelyn was resprung.

Time for a chair restoration update!  Remember I had been working on a little 19th century chair named Jocelyn (after my friend who introduced me to restoration and gave me the chair as my first project)?  You can see more about it all here and here .

Things have progressed substantially with Jocelyn and now she awaits the arrival of her new skin upholstery!  However, before I could even *choose* a fabric, she needed a lot of work on her interior.

The joy and pain of restoration, it seems, is that you never know what you’re going to find underneath the layers of fabric and varnish.  These are her insides:

Not pretty.

The real hope, as we dug down, was that Jocelyn’s primary support structu...

Le Tour de Netherlands 2010

Since we’re on a France theme, I figured I should mention Le Tour de France.
I was in Rotterdam for the start of it back in July.
July 4th to be precise.

Why it started in The Netherlands, I’m not exactly sure.
Apparently it’s normal to start Le Tour in a FOREIGN LAND.
And the Dutch do love their bikes.

I have to confess that I’m not actually a follower of Le Tour.
I find it too long and I just can’t commit to it.
You know, since I have the attention span of a brain damaged goldfish.
But my big sister is a big fan.

So when I found out (purely by chance) that Le Tour was starting in Rotterdam,
I decided to go.
And experience it on her behalf.

Rotterdam is only a 20 minute tra...

A language holiday in Montpellier!

Ah… Just returned from a week in France.  And MAN what a week.  Gorgeous weather, gorgeous people, gorgeous city.  I arrived by train late on a Saturday evening and this was the view from my hotel the next morning:

I KNOW!

I actually groaned with pleasure when I opened the curtains.

I could have flown – it would have been faster – but I took the train because I’m tired of feeling like a criminal for carrying a bottle of water.  It was long (9 hours door-to-door) but it was around the same price, it was DEFINITELY more relaxed, the view was spectacular, and it was so incredible to watch the weather change as we sped south.  Imagine leaving rainy 14 degree misery and gr...