Only Last Week - Blue Skies and The Market in Nice

It has been a grey, drizzly, grizzly day here today and we have had the lights lit for most of it. Unbelievable to me that just last week I was lapping up bright sunshine in Nice in the south of France, following my nose around the antiques market in the pretty Cours Saleya. I thought you might like to enjoy some of the things I saw there.

Here is a close-up of the tablecloth you can see in the bottom right of the image above - perhaps you can see that the design has been pattern-darned.

As always there were bales and bales of attractive tea towels (torchons) and one can only wonder at the vast amount of linen which has been laid down in linen chests over the years. Some sets have been carefully initialled, I always wonder who it was who stitched dreams of their life ahead into these cloths.

It is hard to define a bargain, particularly where a woman's careful labout is involved. These torchons sell for about £10 each.

I always love to see the baskets of napkins and wish I had more suitcases to bring finds home.

Here is one of my favourite stall holders - she is there every year without fail with lovely rolls of antique shirting fabric - a delight for patchworkers.

I wonder what you would choose to bring home with you?