Parisian Winter

Winter, so far, has been incredibly warm. Not as dismal as last year, when the whole month of January was rain. This year, we've had plenty of rain, but also sunny days. There was a week of clear, cold weather in January that hit just at the right time, when our refrigerator died and we could store our food outside in a cooler, to keep it from freezing.
We bought a very nice refrigerator, but hanging the outside panel to the door is different from the old one so, in spite of it being very nice and not too expensive, it seems we are going to pass it down to E and G and get a different make and model in order to hang the panel without making any modifications. Until then, though, I'm very happy with what we got and do not see why we can't adapt the panel to the new configuration.
We are in the midst of planning our summer already. When and where do we take charge of grandchildren. It's pretty much settled. It looks like we'll be taking the Parisian grandchildren to visit with their U.K. cousins. That way they all get to spend some time together. Then, later in the summer, just before school begins, we might take them to visit E and G. That's still to be determined.

Only one side seam is sewn up

Meanwhile, I'm knitting. I'm trying to make a cardigan similar to one I bought 15 years ago that has simply been worn out. It's not easy. I started before my shoulder went out last summer. Then, last month, I did the second front piece and the back. I even hung the collar, but noticed I wouldn't have enough for the sleeves. I ordered more, but the online shop no longer had the same stock number and while waiting, I had added a pocket to the right front and could not Kitchner-stitch the ribbing that goes up the front as it should be. I ruined it! When the new cotton yarn came, I started the whole project over. I've now done the two fronts and the back. I'm ready to do the sleeves and then the collar. Since I did not waste so much yarn on swatches, I should have enough.
The complication of this sweater is that about a third of each front, which make up the center, is 2/2 ribbing and the sides are stockinette. On the back, it's the same -- the center third is ribbed and the sides are stockinette. This meant that I had to pull the needles into "hold" position for each row. I learned this, too late, on the first effort. It takes a lot of time. Not as much time as hand knitting, but it takes time and concentration. Then there are the decreases and increases, the double decreases for the armhole and back shoulder. The shoulder seam is towards the back, not at the top of the armhole. I had never formed the shoulder like that before and I had never used double decreases for the armhole, but I do like the look. I'm using the old sweater as my pattern so I have to keep measuring and calculating. This yarn is not as thin as the yarn on the original sweater and the gauge is not at all the same. In addition, after washing, it will all be tighter. It's cotton and it will shrink a bit, so the result, right now, looks too big, but it should be fine once I wash it.
The big deal about this project is that I'm using my right arm almost as I did before. It does tire out faster. I can't push or pull the carriage over the knitting bed as fast with my right arm as with my left and putting the needles into position for every row gave me a workout. But I am thrilled at the result of shoulder replacement only 5 months ago!
I saw my surgeon again, last week, and he's very happy with the result. Next appointment on the anniversary of the surgery in September. I had my x-rays with me for this visit and he took a look at the hip x-ray that my GP had prescribed. He's a knee and shoulder guy, not a hip man, but he showed me that the cartilage is almost gone on the left side and that I can look forward to consulting a surgeon in the next few years. The osteopath I go to has also seen it and agrees that the cartilage is almost gone. He hopes to help me maintain mobility in order to put off surgery. He did a good job on the shoulder for 6 years. Until then, I limp a bit.

The sweater fits, so we can get on with more projects

The sweater fits, or will fit even better by winter, when she'll wear it. You may wonder why there's no head. That's because I don't publish recognizable photos of the grandchildren publicly. The family has received the link to the photos of the birthday party last week. She appreciates, particularly, the big pocket.
The party was a success. Cousins from the Paris area and all the grandparents were present. Among the cousins were the ones who moved back to France from Pittsburgh, where they had enjoyed the extended family connection. They miss Pittsburgh. I got the impression that the neighbors where they are, now, are not quite as welcoming.
On Tuesday, I went into Paris, spent some time with a friend who is trying to sort out her mother's succession and is having considerable trouble with her sister and the notaire her sister chose. She's now got our notaire's office on the case on her behalf, but it's still a slow moving process.

From there, I caught a bus to the American Library, where I was scheduled to man the voter registration table before the Pamela Drukerman talk. She's a pretty well-known NYT contributor and author of Bringing up Bébé. Her new book is about becoming a grown-up in her forties. She's a good speaker.
I got a new camera. A bridge, this time. I find the compacts are just too hard to get my hands around. The old Sony got some sand in it when we were in Spain, which is why I was looking for a new one. It's a Panasonic Lumix FZ200. Not the most recent model in the line -- I would have liked WiFi and a universal USB connection, but I settled for lower price. I'm pretty happy with the zoom and the enlargement created by cropping the image.

That sweater -- again

Here's the sweater! I used a pattern generated by sweatermaker software, based on C's measurements and my gauge swatch. She's turning 4, but she'already a little bigger than a standard size 6.
She chose the main brown color and the rusty orange from my stash. I could see I would not have enough of the orange to do much, so I added the white and ripped back the gauge swatch I had of the dark yellow, so there's just a couple of yards of that yarn left. Even then, after knitting the sleeves, I could see that I wasn't going to have enough of the yellow and orange for stripes on the body section. So, I made a pocket.
The sleeves, following the pattern instructions, were too short, so I lengthened them and I lengthened the body a little. I have plenty of that chestnut purée colored yarn. Once I sewed everything up, it looks to me that the yoke is too short, that there isn't enough armhole.
Following the pattern, I knit the two yoke pieces, first, sewed up one seam, and did the neck ribbing. I followed the instructions, but the folded neck was too tight, so I undid the cast off and sewed it shut. Then, sewed the second seam. I put the required stitches from each yoke back onto the machine to knit the first sleeve, from the top, down. And the second one. I had to be extra careful to get the stripes in order -- opposite from the order on the yoke, which was knitted from the bottom, up.
This is exactly where I got to the first time. It went faster because I remembered what I was doing. I was very careful to have the right number of stitches on the yokes. Then it was time to put the body stitches on - front or back, didn't matter. I ran into the same problem as before. The yoke circumference would not stretch enough over the straight needle bed. I had to put the stitches onto a needle and hand knit several rows. I did 17 rows, in all. It was still a tight fit onto the machine, but workable and the rest of the was fine, finished in the time it took to cook the vegetables (about 10 minutes). That was the back. Before repeating for the front, I had to create the pocket so it would be ready to integrate into the front -- and the first time I did that, it was backwards. Again, I'm not used to thinking Top-Down. I had to rip out about 10 rows and put it back on the right way. Just before doing the ribbing, I had to put the bottom of the pocket on the needles, but I forgot. I had to rip out the ribbing and start that bit over.
With all this ripping out and doing over, it took five sessions over two days to do. A much faster feat than had I hand knitted the whole thing. Now comes the test. Will it fit. Especially, will it fit in the Fall and winter. If the yoke is too short, I can unknit a row and add a few extra brown rows and graft it back together by hand.
Can I trust this software to churn out the patterns correctly, or will I have to constantly correct them?

One down

The first sweater of the year is done. Claire had taken a photo of a cardigan she liked for C. and I figured out the alternating ribbing at the top from the photo. Rather, friends in a couple of Facebook machine knitting groups helped me figure it out. I have a strand of raspberry pink left -- maybe 15 cm. That's it! I have a little more of the dark yellow -- the gauge swatch I made and maybe 10 grams unknitted. In all, maybe enough to do a dark yellow trim on another sweater. As I said previously, my aim is to reduce the stash.
I did have to buy the buttons, though. I didn't have the right color or size in my button box. I'd like to reduce that stash, too.
I've reorganized the yarn. I'm taking over the IKEA closet in the room. I didn't realize I had so many cones of yarn to get through in addition to the skeins. I still have box to sort out. I've got years of yarn ahead of me!
We have made a little room in the basement. The kids took some things with them when they were here at Christmas and identified other lots for the bin. There's still tons more. The idea is to make room for the grandkids to play. Once upon a time, our kids had room to play down there.
The freezer died last week. Thirty-three years old. Luckily, I was in the "have to empty the freezer to defrost" phase, so we didn't lose too much. I made a very thick raspberry and blueberry pie. We ate some barbecue spare ribs and gave the last batch of that to the Paris Lebelles. The couscous vegetables went with the frozen chicken broth and veal paupiette sauce to make a rich soup. The only thing we had to throw out was one thawed pizza. The new freezer should be delivered by Thursday. It's a good thing we have a clear path in the basement to get the old one out and the new one in place. Before Christmas, we didn't. It's just a clear path, not really a clear space!

Doorbell?

I woke up this morning thinking I had heard the doorbell. I don't generally remember dreams and this doorbell didn't seem to be connected to any previous scenario. I just woke up thinking there was someone outside at the gate.
There's a dilemma to waking up like that. If I go to the window to see if someone is there, I might have a little accident. I really have to rush to the bathroom, first. But if I do that, then whoever might be there, will be gone. Does it matter? Instead of getting up to go one way or the other, I just lie there thinking about it until it doesn't matter any more, anyway.
I didn't have my watch on, so I didn't know what time it was. It was still dark but in Paris, in winter, that's not saying much. On my return from the bathroom, I opened the window for some fresh air since it wasn't raining, for once. I really hoped I could get back to sleep, but all I could think of was that doorbell sound until it was replaced by a chirping bird. Just one, lonely bird who had been tricked into thinking it was the right season by the warm temperatures we've been having in France. Birds are not chirping in the US along the Atlantic coastline.
I gave up on trying to sleep and peeked at my phone to see the time. It was a perfectly reasonable time to get up, but since I was holding the phone I opened Facebook. That's a mistake. I forgot it's the weekend and I want to try to wean myself from Facebook on weekends. The French have a great word for social media; it's "chronophage". It eats up time. It does. I didn't emerge until well over an hour later.
Part of that hour had been spent on looking at a Tedx Talk and a four-part conversation between James Navé and Court McCracken. Yesterday, I attended a storytelling workshop led by Navé. I'm glad I attended the workshop; we'll see what comes of it. There were thirteen of us, in addition to Navé, all very interesting people. I think I may try to do this kind of thing more often. One of the participants had seen the Tedx Talk and that had inspired her to attend. It was fortunate I hadn't been so curious before the workshop; I would have been intimidated and wouldn't have attended. Having attended and having been inspired, I understood and appreciated what I watched this morning.
I thought I'd be writing this morning, but of course, Facebook and email and YouTube ate up a big chunk of time. Breakfast and the newspaper ate up some more time; I didn't even try to do the crossword. It's Saturday, the first of the month, so routine household accounting took up some more time, which I didn't finish until after lunch, which between preparing and eating also took up a bit of time.
Yesterday, we all had at least one list of words with "time" on it. In fact, one list had "time" twice. That's how important time is. We have time, but it slips away, disappears. Next thing you know, it's time to go to bed, again.
On the to-do list is finishing up the New Year greeting for those I'm sending snail mail to. It's short. I'm already in the French version.
Another project is finishing the sweater I started this week for C. It's a small cardigan sweater - size 4-year-old. That's a good thing because I am dead serious this year about making room in the yarn boxes for the yarn that hasn't found storage space, yet. The goal is to reduce the stash, not get rid of it. You can't get rid of a yarn stash. There's always left over yarn. The request was for yellow, but not a light, lemony yellow. She favors a mustard yellow, almost leaning into orange. And I had some! Four 50-gr. skeins of a dark yellow alpaca yarn. Since I'm not sure that's enough, I'm doing a few rows at the bottom hem in raspberry pink. I first tried with a dark purple but the yarn was not the same weight and it didn't look right.

The back

There's a lot of manipulation to do. The top part, above the start of the armhole, is a 2/2 rib, alternating every four rows. It's a raglan sleeve; I have to remember to decrease for the raglan. Add to that, I wanted a garter stitch at the front opening and I have to do that manipulation, too. My back gives out after about half an hour at the knitting machine, so I can only work on it in spurts. I've got the back and one front piece done and I'm about half way through the second front piece. Then come the sleeves, but I won't have to worry about the garter stitch for those, so they should go faster. I think I may even have the right buttons in my button box.

Mostly Knitting

Yesterday, I went for a walk in the Bois de Vincennes.  First stop was at Stade Pershing to see some of the game between the PUC and the Wallabies. PUC I get; it stands for Paris Université Club and the baseball section has been around for more than a hundred years. It might not sound great in English, but we speak French, here. This is the club I belonged to when I was a scorekeeper and this was Louis' club when he played. Wallabies? They are from Normandy, from Louviers, not far from Rouen. Why did they choose an Australian animal?
Back to the game. I don't know what the score was when I strolled in, but I think I watched 2 innings, maybe it was only an inning and a half. There were so many errors on the part of the PUC defense, I couldn't keep track of how many runs were scored. Then, when the PUC finally came up to bat, without hearing the slightest clink of the aluminum bats, I saw too many walked in runs. The bleachers, if that's what you can call them, have been condemned, already, for several years. The city replaced the old splintered wood with plastic that melted out of shape, almost immediately. So, you climb over the barriers and sit, sort of, for as long as you can stand it. It was warm and sunny, but after losing all interest in the game, I got up and continued my walk.
The fall colors are starting to show up nicely. Lots of people were out rowing on the Lac des Minimes. I finished going around the lake and had, what I assume will be, my last ice cream cone of the year from the stand. I turned towards Fontenay-sous-Bois and came home that way. According to MapMyWalk, that was a 5.67 km. walk.
I got home and picked up my crochet work. I'm adding a scallop edge to the skirt hem of a dress I knitted on the machine last week. It's an Anne Lavene design. I'll add the same edge to the sleeves and to the waist, when I join the bodice to the skirt. I made it with a fully closed skirt, seam on the side. I used Yeomans 100% Cotton Slub CK2, which, I have decided, I don't like. The idea is to dye this once it's all assembled. That's why I chose it, but the yarn kept getting all knotted up, coming off the cone, and I found it tedious to work with. Even crocheting, it gets all knotted up, so it's not because of the speed in machine knitting that made it do that. Also, it knitted up slanted, so it's awfully hard to block and get straight, again. I'm still not sure the center of the bodice will find itself in the center. One think I can say in favor of the yarn is that it is economical. I bought 2 cones and have not even used half of the first, even though I made 2 bodices! I thought I had made a mistake, when the first one looked so off-balance, so I made a second one, paying extra special attention not to make any mistakes -- and I didn't -- but it came out just as skewed. I'm going to finish this thing and see what it's like all put together.
Before that, I had tried to make a sweater for Paul, a double-knit. It looks all knit on the wrong side and on the right side, it looks like vertical stripes. It looks all stretched out in the picture. Doing the 5-stitch crossed cables every two rows turned out to be too much for me. There were some dropped stitches; I had to start over; again, dropped stitches, again, start over. When I discovered the dropped stitches, again, I gave up. The color doesn't show well, here. It's a dark, inky blue. Beautiful, fine, merino wool, also from Yeoman's. I had the yarn shipped to France. Yes, it was a bit expensive to do that, but still cheaper than a trip by car to England. (I ordered a lot of yarn!)
For anyone still interested, AARO had its own presidential election debate on October 19. We invited all four parties, but the Green party did not respond to our invitation. We posted the video the next day. It was a good evening. Cordial. Nothing like what we see going on in the US.

A Very Full Month

View of Najac from the VVF

A week after my last post, I fell. We almost had to replace the mailbox, which is in the lower part of our gate, but Paul managed to pound it back into shape. I more or less plunged into it as I tripped on a flagstone! My glasses flew off after cutting my eyebrow; One of the lenses got scratched and had to be replaced and my brow needed 6 stitches. I sprained my wrist, but that was not officially diagnosed until 2 weeks later when I was wondering why it was feeling worse instead of better. I had scratched up knees and a big bruise that is still a bit tender.
I couldn't knit! Hand knitting was out because it does require a bit of wrist flexibility and machine knitting was out because pushing the carriage with my right hand hurt and even when I used my left, there are manipulations that require using my right.
Just before that, however, I won an ebay auction for a Brother 950 machine and a compatible ribber! In order to save a bit, I had it delivered to C's house and they brought it down in their car in mid-August. I have now set up the machine (just yesterday, in fact) and will work a bit on it if the room doesn't get too hot. We're expecting the temperature to get up to 37°C today. That's 98.6°F!
At the end of July, C flew into Paris with Au. She spent one night with us and then went off to a friend's birthday party and went straight back to England from there. Au stayed two weeks with us -- first time visit all on her own!
The next day, it was back to the airport to pick up K & S, on their way from Italy to Israel. We didn't really get to spend much time with them -- a shame, but the weekend plans were set: a day at

Start of the festivities at Disneyland

Disneyland Paris with the Parisian cousins, uncle and aunts, to start off. She also spent a night with the Parisian cousins and went to the aquarium with them. S. came home with us after that and spent the next night, here, with Au.  We did some high culture, too: the Musée d'Orsay and the Studio Blue Sky art exhibit; animated film art from the first pencil sketches to the finished product -- very interesting and there's some really beautiful artwork. Paul took her to the top of the Arc de Triomphe one day when I had a meeting in Paris. The second week, we stayed more at home and she helped me knit. By this time I had a brace on my wrist to prevent awkward movements. She was the motor, pushing the carriage back and forth and I was the manipulator, creating the cables. She knit herself a scarf and the two of us collaborated for the cardigan and hat. We also watched some of the Olympics. It's a shame the gymnastics were on so late, here in France. She loves gymnastics and swimming. We had a nice picnic lunch with A in the Parc Floral and Au had a nice day out - aunt and niece - in Paris. We also had a visit to see the

A full moon over Ginals

On the second Friday of her stay, we left for Najac. We arrived at E & G's in Ginals fairly early in the afternoon for a nice visit with them before heading to the hotel in Najac. They then joined us at the hotel, later, for dinner. It's become a tradition. The menu at the hotel Le Belle Rive is somewhat of a tradition, too; it doesn't change. It's still a very nice, friendly, inexpensive hotel, and it has a swimming pool and a tennis court.
Saturday, we visited Najac. First, we got the little treasure hunt booklet from the tourist office for A and then set off. We covered the whole town from the market place to the church at the other end -- down hill, up hill, down hill, up hill...., a visit to the potter for the stages of pottery making, investigating the bakery for the story of "fouace", finding the architectural elements of midieval buildings....  We did not go all the way up to the fortress. (You can read about last year's visit.) We had lunch on the way back to the tourist office and then, after Au collected her treasure, we went back to E's to wait for the rest of the Northampton family to arrive! The kittens (also mentioned in last year's posts) have grown and are very friendly. They still follow E and G around everywhere if it's close to meal time, but are very independent, otherwise. The wet, wet spring has given way to an extremely dry summer and the vegetable garden has suffered a bit, but there are still plenty of tomatoes.
The family arrived and after a short hello, we accompanied them to the VVF (Village Vacance Familiales) for their check-in, which took more than an hour. They were sent to the very last bungalow down the very steep hill. All the activities are at the top.
We had a picnic lunch at the bungalow on Sunday. It's very near the viewpoint -- a spectacular view of Najac and the setting off point for some hikes to Najac and to the St. Blaise bridge. If you believe the hiking times posted, it would take about as much time to hike over to Najac as to go up the hill to the parking lot to get the car to drive there. Same for the bridge! We stayed in Najac while we waited for the Parisian family to arrive. They had a bit of a mishap on arrival. They had parked the car temporarily while they went off to find the "gite" they had rented. Going back to the car to drive it up to the gite, it wouldn't start. It was parked at such an angle that the gas wasn't making it to the engine. What is nice about family vacations is that we were there. The gite owner lent L a couple of 5-liter recipients and Paul drove him to the gas station for more gas. In the mean time, G unloaded the car and dragged everything up the steep hill to the gite, which is right across from the church. I stayed with the kids so she could absent herself to do this. It took quite a few trips! On filling up, however, the car still wouldn't start. The gite owner got out his car and towed L's car to a flatter position, where is finally started. When he went back to the gas station to fill up, he didn't need to put in much gas. It wasn't empty when this happened, just parked at a really bad angle! The British family was already at E and G's (all my in-law children's names begin with G!) for our big family barbecue dinner, so we set off with the Parisians as soon as we could. All the Lebelle cousins together! Lots of fun with the kittens and just the freedom to run around. The evening ended with a beautiful sunset and a full moon.

St. Blaise bridge, 13th century

The next day, we picnicked at the St. Blaise bridge. Paul and I walked over from the hotel, a little over a mile along the river. We got there very early and staked out a table. I sat on the riverbank and tried to draw the bridge. There were canoe-ers out for the day; a couple of them stopped to jump into the river from the bridge. They really had to know where it was deep enough, because the river is not at all deep these days. The British family arrived. Ch sat in the same spot I had occupied and in just a few minutes had a much more reasonable drawing! We started our picnic and A arrived. She had left Paris on Saturday and spent the night a few hours from us. This made it a big family vacation. We had all our kids and grandkids more or less with us. In fact, on Monday, L & G invited us all to their gite for a full family barbecue. On Thursday, we all, minus one, visited Cordes-sur-Ciel and Albi (last year's visit). Friday, another full family barbecue lunch before A set off for Paris.  Saturday, L and G, et al, went off to the beach for the second week of their vacation and we went with the British family to St.-Cirq-Lapopie and PechMerle in the afternoon. We didn't visit the cave this year, we stayed outside with the little one while the others visited. Sunday, another picnic at the bungalow and later in the day we went to E and G's to say good-bye. We left Najac early on Monday morning.
As usual, no family pics in the blog. I've sent the links to family members.

So what was the rest of the summer like?

I have to go back to July -- to the time between our trip to the South (Avignon, Six-Fours) and mid-August when we went to Najac with friends. On arriving home from the trip south, I found the yarn I'd ordered waiting for me, so I started knitting a sweater that I've since finished (Aug. 4). The picture does not do it justice; it's not gray and white, it's a light lavender color and white. I should have probably used a darker contrast color. This will look nice, though, with gray slacks, I think. It'll be very warm because the jacquard, double-strand knitting makes it thicker.
Working on the small needles made me think that it might be a good idea to get out the knitting machine that had been sitting on a shelf in the basement for about 30 years. I bought the machine before Claire was born and used it a lot, but I think that I never unpacked it when we moved to this house! A friend from the library was interested in buying a machine and I thought I'd like to see if I could still use mine (would my shoulder not complain). If not, I'd sell it.
The first step was finding lots of help on YouTube. These machines are no longer made. I knew I'd have to get it back into working order and was curious about how to do that. It needed more than just oil. I found several excellent videos from The Answer Lady. It's her husband who usually does the machine repair. I took pictures of the two chariots at every step of taking them apart so I'd remember the order to put them back together. In Europe, it's impossible to find the oil he used for the oil bath, and after much soul-searching and a visit to the place across the boulevard from our street to see what he could suggest, Paul convinced me to go with plain, simple diesel fuel. He even hiked to the gas station to get a couple of liters for me. Diesel fuel stinks, so I did the oil bath (soaking the chariots in a basin of oil) outside. Surprisingly, there was little lint and very little trapped fibers in the cams. Apparently, I'd been taking good care all those years ago. I had to let the chariots drain out the oil before putting everything back together. I had time to wash all the plastic parts. Aside from age discoloration, it all looks new. I found a British company that sells all sorts of spare parts for these machines. I needed a couple of end pieces for the old plastic that had deteriorated and sponge replacement for the bars that hold the needles in place: the metropolitan machine knitting company

Before I found the zipper

Before we left on the trip to Najac, I managed to knit the back, two sleeves and one half of the front of a sweater for Aurelia. After the reunion, I managed to do the other front and put it all together. Then I had to go into Paris for the zipper. I did finish for her birthday, but since I'm here and she's there, that only meant I was able to get to the post office to send it off on her birthday, not that she received it on the day!
We went to England at the end of July. I had my knitting (the sweater at the top) with me. Both Aurelia and Charlotte wanted to try their hand at knitting, so I figured out my mistakes from the first time I had tried to teach Charlotte and this time it went like a charm. Aurelia went with me to choose the yarn -- not to slippery -- and medium gauge needles -- not too long. She learned the knit stitch, but didn't want to go to purl. When Charlotte arrived, she shared Aurelia's yarn and had her own small needles. I put a mirror on my lap so that she could look into the mirror and see what my hands were doing in reverse. This was a perfect solution for her left-handedness. Even Claire joined us. It rained a lot during that week, so knitting was a fine activity.
On the Saturday, it didn't rain and we all went to Warwick Castle. It's a fine visit -- somewhat between a cultural, history lesson and an amusement park. The girls tried out archery; we saw an archery show (but no one really understood what the guy was saying; we were too far from the amplifiers). We had a picnic lunch, walked around, visited the towers, saw the birds of  prey show, visited the birds of prey and the peacock garden. Constance liked everything she saw and I'm sure we'll return when both she and Aurelia are older and can appreciate the history. Charlotte is already old enough; she immediately identified Henry VIII and named all his wives! The main hall was all decked out for a wedding reception in the evening. In each room, there were riddles and things to keep the young kids interested. There were also many refreshment stands and game areas on the grounds, as well as souvenir shops -- a bit too commercial for my taste, but these places have to make some money for the upkeep.
On a not-too-rainy morning, we went to a petting farm. The girls rode ponies. Constance pointed out the animals but never wanted to get close enough to touch. On the way home, Charlotte and Aurelia were treated to archery sets, so the visit to the castle may have set off a sport interest.
Now, it's September and the weather is already turning. It's really chilly in the morning. I hope it'll warm up this afternoon, but I doubt it will. Sacha has started ecole maternelle (pre-kindergarden, for US friends); Aurelia is in year 2 (UK system). As she just turned 6, she'd be starting 1st grade in the US or CP in France. In the UK system, she's already reading and writing and doing simple math.