The Thursday Brocante – La Brocante de Jeudi à Rouen.

The glorious sunshine and the anticipation of finding the Thursday Brocante on the Rive Gauche promised to make this morning a great one. The station square was sunny and bright as I headed for the metro station and my intended destination of ‘Joffre Mutualité’.

The metro stop for the brocante is the first one after crossing the Seine, and it took a few moments and a stop to ask directions before I came across the covered market.

…but I knew I was onto a good thing when I came across a multitude of white vans parked haphazardly on the side of the road – when there are this many vans in one spot it can only mean one thing… Brocante!

Full of anticipation I went to see what was on offer…

I have a bit of a thing for old french gilt mirrors – but at 80€ I had to ‘reflechir un peu’.

I couldn ‘t resist this ‘still life’ and was quite taken by the ‘fishy’ picture.

I was just sneakily taking this photo, having asked all the other stall-holders for permission, and frankly just getting a little too blasé for my own good, when a deep voice thundered from behind me,

“ça va coûter 10€ pour prendre un photo…’  (that’ll be 10€ to take the photo)

and lo and behold if it wasn’t my old friend ‘the second hand bookstore’ owner! Needless to say  we exchanged greetings and then I carried on regardless before wandering off to see what else was on offer…

Sometimes there are wonderful monogrammed old linens, but this time they were sadly disappointing.

What I did buy today however was some lovely Toile.

I feel some curtains coming on…

Tissus et Mercerie, Fabrics and Habadashery – Rouen.

I spend far too much time doing tedious chores, and after having another “English tea” party with my fellow french mums pondered on the question several of them had asked over the course of the afternoon.

What do we do with our days ? What do we do to inspire ourselves?

Fresh from those thoughts I headed for my fabric drawer.

These are just a couple of fabulous linens I had lying about thanks to offcuts from my great friend at Lime Tree Design and which were crying out to be made into something!  Read more