Lists.

I am counting down the days until I get home.

Melissa and I have decided that we feel like we don’t feel like we are in France any more. (Weird sentence. Sorry.)

But it’s like, the “wow” factor of living here is beginning to wear off and everything we are seeing, although still completely beautiful and amazing, is becoming the norm for us. So with that said, I miss home!!!

I get in Tuesday, November 17th, in the evening… 6.30 or something.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to:

Good coffee

Guacamole & Hummus! (Duh)

Text messaging

Yandala (my car)

Singing really loud when I’m driving

Seeing wonderful family and friends

G12

Calling my sister

Updating my iPhone to 3.0 (yeah, still haven’t done that)

Downloading Phil Wickham’s new album (which is released the day I get back or I would just do it now.)

BIKE RIDES!!!!!!!!!

Florida!

Baby Bella

Being able to understand what people say to me

Sleeping in my comfortable bed

My sack of nothingness (my pillow. It is pretty much a piece of fabric. I’ve been sleeping on a real pillow.)

Wearing different clothes and shoes!

Straightening my hair and figuring out how long it really is!!! (It’s so long. I know it.)

Catching up on the office.

Going to H&M in Florida… I’m just curious.

Sharing a house with Katie Shaw, my new sister.

Talking like a “gangster” with Bianca without being called crazy.

Northwest.

Feeling clean after I get out of the shower.

Flat land.

There are a lot of things I’m excited for. That’s a few.

There will certainly be things that I miss here, for sure. Such as:

Eleanor! She is great!

The beautiful valley.

Fall- it’s like I’ve never seen fall before here.

The cool air.

Mountains.

TREES. (I will miss all of the trees and the rows of trees the most.)

Maison Renard.

Using an iMac all the time.

Hearing French.

Learning about different cultures.

Hoping for mail.

Deadlines for projects.

Field trips to really cool places.

Leclerc.

The markets.

Fresh lavender.

Interesting ice cream flavors.

Chocolate.

Dance parties with Lexi and Kara every day.

Singing “Party in the USA” and having it mean something (hahah).

And I’m sure there’s more things I will miss once I’m out of here and absorb everything.

I still have to upload photos from our day in Lyon at Prelle’s weaving factory. It was awesome. But there’s a huge chance that I won’t upload anything until I’m home, although that’s not certain.

Vernissage (our exhibition) is next weekend and we are all frantically making things to sell and show, and still have to put the entire thing together. It should be great, and I’m sure I’ll continue to learn a lot in the process.

Halloween week.

Hard to believe it’s already been a week since we got back from Paris. It has gone by so quickly and much has happened. Here are a few of the highlights:

Wednesday, October 28th, we had pumpkin carving in the cafeteria with cute little french kids and I carved my first pumpkin!

Then Thursday night, Pam had a surprise for us fibers girls.

We had no idea what to expect.

Here are some hypothesis’s:

But here’s the unveiling of what the actual surprise was, and it’s something we could have never imagined!

If you can’t figure it out from the video, we were given tons of Brun textile remnants. A lot of them are really big pieces. Pam divided them into piles and then we all picked a number for each pile, and then picked in the order. It was fun, and we were all so happy.

So now I own cashmere and alpaca. At no cost. How amazing!

Here’s what I got. (All of this fabric is worth hundreds of Euros, FYI.)

The next day, Friday, October 30th, was my wonderful Lexi’s 21st birthday!

We first went on a field trip to the Abbey, and I saw a monk.

Then later in the day I went to the grocery store (Leclerc- aka: the walmart of France) and bought Lexi a cake and after dinner we surprised her.

and following that was our favorite thing- a dance party!!!!! It was a great night.

 

Saturday, October 31st, Halloween, was a busy day.

I woke up with all of these bites on my arms and thought that a bug had bitten me when I was asleep because we had the window open for our dance party the night before. But the day was too busy to think too much about it.

SCAD Lacoste always does a big thing for the people in the village for Halloween. We put together a haunted house for the kids in the printmaking studio, and people were also passing out candy and things like that. So I had volunteered to help in the haunted house only because the help I was providing was to do “Thriller” for the whole night in the front room. (Which was not very scary.)

So because of this, I had to actually dress up scary.

And Kara wasn’t doing the dance, but she dressed up scary with me… just because she didn’t have anything else to be her costume.

Gross.

So I probably did “Thriller” about a million times.

Here were the 2 others I was dancing with.

pretty scary.

We were exhausted by the end of it. We probably did it like, 20 times, and 2 days later, I am still sore. Haha! But man, am I glad I know the legit Thriller dance. That’s for sure going to come in handy one day.

 

Then yesterday I woke up with new red bites all over my legs.

It turned out that a few others had these mysterious red bites show up the same day mine first did.

 

So by the end of the day, with the research we had done, we decided this was from our sweet wonderful 2 star hotel Home Latin in Paris… had bed bugs.

We were all up in arms about it, freaking out that they were in our mattresses here, our clothes, sheets, towels, fabric, etc. and we were all freaking out. Maison Renard (my house) was ranting and I ended up crying! Haha!

Catlin and Megan were infected as well, so we all washed our sheets and were just freaking out, took benedryl and I still slept poorly, because I was thinking about the bugs attacking me in the middle of the night.

(But let me tell you, I am VERY well red on bed bugs.)

Today I went to the doctor, and he seems to think we just got bit while we were in Paris, and didn’t bring any home. The bites don’t show up for probably a week after you get them, and some people are allergic to them, and some people aren’t. So, FYI, if you aren’t one of those people that are allergic to the biting, then you’ll never even know if you have bed bugs.

They are nearly impossible to get rid of, that’s what the problem was.

But we’re all just hoping and praying that they bit us in Paris, and then didn’t bite us again. I guess only time will tell!

 

So that’s been the events of the day.

Poor Cali got hit in the head with an iron today (it fell off a shelf onto her head) and we think she has a mini concussion. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but dang a lot of crazy things have been happening.

 

Our Vernissage is in a week and a half, and we have to have all of our stuff done for it by next Wednesday. I have much to do! And I can’t work at all this Wednesday because we are going on a Fibers field trip to Lyon! We are going to see the Prelle fabric actually being produced.

 

It should be amazing.

 

Paris, Day 5.

Ohhh no! I just realized something sad and awful. I have been back in Lacoste from Paris for 6 days now and it had taken me FOREVER to upload my photos and I thought I had them all, but they were still on my camera because I wanted to make sure.

Well today was Halloween, and I deleted A BUNCH of photos off one of my memory cards that I THOUGHT I had uploaded already. Wrong. So I lost most all of my photos from Paris Day 5, which is all that was on that memory card. Sad. But good thing is, they are mostly photos of artwork in the Louvre, which are boring anyways. There are better images of what I took on google images. Oh well.

So anyways…

Our final day in Paris was Sunday, day 5, and the Fibers girls got up early to go to a flea market with Pam. I didn’t take any photos there because everyone was really weird about taking photos of their antiques and trash that they were trying to sell. I still can’t figure out why they were so weird about taking photos. But whatever. So I didn’t delete any photos of that!

 

After the flea market, Kara and I went and walked towards the Louvre, stopped at a Starbucks, and continued on.

We then toured the painting section of the Louvre and did a bit of the sculpture. We were there for quite some time, and afterward, we went BACK to the Decorative Arts Museum because we had missed a major exhibit, which was the main reason Pam wanted us to go there. It was an AMAZING exhibit, and you weren’t allowed to take photos in there, so I only lost the photos that I took before I knew no photos were allowed. But the exhibit was of a fashion designer, Madeleine Vionnet and she made INCREDIBLE dresses. So beautiful. Kara and I were freaking out. There is a book of hers that I plan on ordering off Amazon when I get back home.

We saw stuff like this:

 

After we stood drooling on the glass in front of the dresses, we eventually left, and just moseyed around Paris until it was time to leave.

We also stopped at the Notre Dame. I freaking love that cathedral. Thankfully, my photos of it are still in existence!

No better way to instill fear in your congregation than putting sculptures of people being tortured in Hell for you to look at as you’re walking through the door:

 

Man, I don’t even like architecture that much, but that building is amazing.

 

The rest of the day consisted of us being frustrated that every store is closed in Paris because it was a Sunday, and then catching the train home and being exhausted!

 

Oh man, I loved Paris. It was so amazing.

Paris, Day 4

Day 4, Saturday, was our Versailles day!

We were excited to say the least.

My favorite part though, wasn’t the palace, but was something you may not have done if you’ve ever taken a trip to Versailles. AFter we walked around the palace, we walked down a beautiful road, with our colorful umbrellas-

to Marie-Antoinette’s “domain”. We were all so taken back by the beautiful fall, sheep and rosw of trees, it took us ages to even get there, but we finally arrived.

It would be impossible for me to talk about all of it, but it was really quite precious. And it was cool to see the textiles (in the palace as well) that we had already seen at Prelle 2 days before, and to know that we were looking at Marie Antoinette’s stuff.

She had this whole weird little village thing to herself. The picture above was the house she sort of hung out in I guess, but behind it was tons of land, full of all of these little cottage like places that people lived in, because she wanted to feel like she was a peasant. The area behind it is called (I believe) Marie-Antoinette’s Hamlet.

While we were walking through, I honestly felt like I was in a weird part of Epcot or on a movie set.

But my favorite part HAD to be all of the animals! AND I completed a goal of mine while in Europe:

I also pet a donkey. They were flocking to me. They absolutely loved me.

we also saw some other freaking cute animals and this little hay head was my favorite:

After Versailles, we went back to Paris, to the Louvre’s Decorative ARts Museum. My favorite (that day because Kara and I ended up going back on Day 5) were the old toys and the little music machines.

They were a little hard to photograph, because everything was in glass, so… sorry.

Kara, Caitlin, Lexi and I then ran nextdoor to the actual Louvre, but we only had maybe 30 minutes there, which we spent lost inside of the sculpture room before the museum closed.

We were all so exhausted that nothing too interesting happened that evening, besides day light savings time (yes, we got 1 extra hour in Paris).

It was a good day, and I got a good nights sleep that night.

Paris, Day 3

Day 3 was October, 23, which also happens to be Kara’s birthday!

She turned 22 in Paris!

For one of our Fibers Paris assignments, we had been put into groups to different vintage stores that we picked out of these lovely lovely books about handmade things in Paris. I was in a group with Erica, Cali, and Whitney. We all picked 1 place out of the book to go, but we only needed to go to 3. (But we were going to do all 4 anyways, because they were all going to be awesome stores anyway.)

So we first walked to Cali’s, but it was closed. We were bummed.

Then we went to Erica’s store, which was open.

after this we went to this cool weaving store next door which subbed for Cali’s closed store because it was also in the book. I snuck some photos and was also SO CLOSE to buying a 30 euro hand woven scarf, but I didn’t because I didn’t like the edges. Oh well, I’ll just weave my own scarf sometime.

Then, we walked to Whitney’s store, which happened to be my #2 choice, so I was very excited to go.

It is called Images et Portraits, and I would suggest anyone going to Paris to go here. It was amazing.

I bought 2 photos. One is for me. It will hang on my wall in my home one day when I have my very own home. I know exactly what it will be like.

 

After this, we got something to eat, and then realized that my store was closed. I was really bummed, but oh well…. I guess I’ll just have to go back to Paris someday. Shoot! (ha.)

 

So we then went to FIAC, which stands for “Foire d’art contemporain” aka: modern/contemporary art… awesome. (I’m being slightly sarcastic in my tone because while modern art is cool… a lot of it makes me really dislike art.)

But it was a really amazing opportunity for us to be able to do this, so I was trying to make the most of it. And while in line to enter, I ran into Melissa and Kara! They were happy to be at FIAC.

And we saw a lot of modern art.

Some was cool:

and some really annoyed me:

Wow. That’s all I’ll say.

 

After looking through the Louvre’s FIAC (there were 2 places FIAC was being held in Paris, one was at the Louvre, and the other was at the Grand Palais), Melissa, Kara and I walked down Champs-Elysees to see the fancy shops and the Arc de Triomphe (and we also stopped in the Grand Palais to the other part of FIAC on the way).

We saw some fall…

The Grand Palais…

Champs-Elysees

and saw the Arc!

 

By this time, we were all ridiculously sore and aching from all the walking that day. I had basically sat down only when I went to lunch that afternoon.

So we took the metro to Home Latin, rested for a minute and I gave Kara her birthday card and made her cry:

Then we met the rest of the girls and went to dinner!

Because Kara and I missed it so much (who are we?) we got sushi! (We had decided when we were in London so long ago, that we would have sushi for Kara’s birthday while in Paris.) It was delicious.

Mmmmm.

 

I also, naturally, bought my mustaches all the way to Europe from home (but purchased for me by Madeleine Glascock in D.C.) so after dinner we were outside just being silly with our staches on before we headed to The Long Hop, and Irish pub, for cider. (I believe in the states it’s called “hard cider”? But I don’t know.)

 

It was really fun and we were exhausted from our day, so we went back after that to the hotel and got a bit of rest before our next day began!

Paris, day 2

Day 2

The second day was probably the most mindblowing day (not necessarily my favorite day, but the craziest).

Pam Wiley is truly the greatest professor there is. She took us (fibers girls) on Thursday morning to Li Edelkoort’s… I don’t know what to call it… main office? We were there for nearly 3 hours.

I didn’t know who she was at first, but I quickly learned that she is pretty much THE trend forecaster. Meaning, if you are seeing the same colors in stores during a certain season and your find yourself wanting a mustard yellow or a navy blue cardigan, that SHE is the woman that has put that desire for that color and style in your head.

And don’t think she just does clothing. She does it all. Working with companies from Coke to Nissan. Yes… the drink AND the car. Also working with designers and perfume companies. She’s all over the map!

Whether you believe it or not, all of the different brands and designers talk to this woman, ask for her help, receive her design advice, etc. and put their own twist on it. But ultimately, she decides what colors will be popular, and when. She forecasts two years in advance, so now I know the super top secret information of what will be worn in summer 2011.

It was while there that I realized that I am truly experiencing things here that I will never ever have the chance to do any other time. I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was bizarre to recognize in that moment that that was TRULY a once in a lifetime opportunity. I will probably never be in a place like that again. It was awesome.

AFter our time at Li Edelkoort, we had to hop back on the Metro to go to Prelle textiles, which are the people that made the wall coverings for Marie-Antoinette. But on our way, we saw a real French strike!!!

We FINALLY made it to Prelle, which was really cool but I can’t post my photos of their fabrics from there because they are copywritten and we were asked not to. If we are friends and you want to see, ask me and I will show you.

But here are some that show no designs:

It was cool also to see the Marie-Antoinette fabrics that Prelle has redone (they made the originals back in the day for her, and what we saw were exact replicas, but they are all Prelle’s designs) and then we saw the originals when we went to Versailles a few days later.

After Prelle we went to a cute fibers store- La Droguerie:

where you couldn’t photograph inside, but I bought my first Liberty of London fabrics there! So did Kara!

Then Kara and I then left the group, went shopping for her birthday dress (which she found 2 at H&M) and we had Starbucks, saw the Notre Dame, Hôtel de Ville, the Shakespeare & Co. (which is awesome), and then went and rested at the hotel for a little bit.

Oh, and I also saw the restaurant that I totally robbed the last time I was in Paris. (2 years ago, and I “dined and ditched” them, 2 euros short! Because I didn’t have it. I promise.)

While at Home Latin, we met up with Caitlin, MEgan, Melissa, and Sarah and the 6 of us headed to the Eiffel Tower together. I think it looks kind of kitschy at night, but we had fun anyway-

We were also getting annoyed by all the people trying to pick pocket us, and sell us the crappy mini, light up Eiffel towers…. it was weird. I was being really funny to all these weird people. I’ve seen it before and decided I liked it much better in the day. At night it just seemed like a gimmick.

Day 2. Complete.

Paris, Day 1

We have just finished five days in Paris and it was such an overwhelping event. I’ve had to wait a few days to process it all before I could write anything about it.

Since it’s so much and things in Lacoste are seeming uneventful, I’m going to just take it day by day in Paris, separate posts. I just think one post would be far too overwhelming.

 

So day 1.

 

We had to leave Lacoste at 6.30am and just to be safe, Kara and I woke up around 5. When we got up, it was insanely windy outside. I hadn’t heard so much wind probably since I was in my last hurricane. So naturally, we made a video:

We then took a bus from Lacoste to Avignon, and then all 46 students and the faculty had 3 minutes to board the train to Paris. We were all super excited, and acting silly, and thankfully, everyone made it on the TGV (the high speed train!)

3 hours later, we were in PARIS!

It was slightly rainy (but not bad) and we took a 30 minute walk from the train station- Gare de Lyon- to our Hotel “Home Latin” in the Latin Quarter in Paris.

 

It was maybe only 10:30 or 11am by the time we got in our rooms, so we rested an hour or so, then went out to lunch at a Thai restaurant that was really near our hotel.

After lunch, we went to the Cimitiére du Pére Lachaise for art history. We have to do a presentation on Paris and take one piece from here, on from FIAC, and one from the Louvre.

I am doing my presentation on music or something, so I first stopped by Chopin’s grave:

But more importantly (but it’s not really important to me at all) Oscar Wilde’s grave is in this cemetery. I was more curious to see it, than I cared to see it, but I was with Melissa, and she’s kind of obsessed with him, and this is what happened:

We were all exhausted so we didn’t do much else worth talking about that day, but I will say that as I was walking around that day with soaked feet and uncomfortable (but cute!) shoes, I was happy- because I was wet in PARIS!!!

 

Trim in Nîmes!

Lace, ribbon, and other kinds of trimming are really quite enchanting.

I have heard it said around the villiage that “all fibers majors love lace,” which is maybe true, but we all deal with love in a different way. Kara, Caitlin, & Lexi, buy up these trims at every opportunity, while I (and perhaps Cali & Whitney are like this as well) tend to just admire the beauty and intracacy of the lace, and then move on. I often get overwhelmed with trimmings (unless I have a plan of what I will use them for) despite my love for them.

So in Nîmes, we went to this beautiful trim shop. Before going, I kept hearing all this talk about this amazing place with beautiful trim, and was anxious to see it.

After going to the Colosseum ,the Contemporary Arts Museum, and watched that 3D movie at the Maison Carreé, we rushed over to the trim shop and devistatingly, it was CLOSED for lunch and would reopen at 2! (And we had to be back at the bus by 2.30.)

So Caitlin, Megan and I all went out to Lunch and killed time for 2 hours, and then at 2pm, the doors were open, and we may have been the first ones in the door. It was a really tiny shop where one wall was covered with hundreds and hundreds of buttons, and the other wall had ribbons, lace, binding, elastic, and thread galore. It was beautiful. It quickly filled up with people so it didn’t help my ability to make decisions by being stressed and unable to move, so I settled with buying quilting thread and deux boutons. The owners of the shop were really sweet helpful people, and donated a bag of scraps/remnants to the fibers girls. It was a lovely shop. I wish we had had more time.

Low Key.

It has been an extremely low key weekend, because we are all resting up before PARIS on Wednesday!!!!!!!!

Paris is supposed to be realllllly cold and rainy when we are there! Boo! I am hoping this will NOT happen. The cold I can deal with… but Rain?! Boo.

Today I made cute little things to send in the mail! So I can’t post any photos.

My time here has all of a sudden been sucked up into nearly nothing. Before I know it, it’s over.

What a bittersweet feeling. I really want to go home, but I also really don’t want this life changing experience to be over!

Don’t neglect your closet.

A few days ago I was reading Spurgeon’s “Morning & Evening” and it said,

“Why is in that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in their divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God’s word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they would not go fourth into their fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord, and be this our resolve this morning, ‘I will meditate in Thy precepts.’”

After reading that, I got to thinking.

It is so important, especially times like I am having now, to spend time alone. Taking time to yourself, to sit in the presence of God, and to listen to his voice, is not only hard to make yourself do, but it is often hard to find time for. Often I think that just sitting is being lazy or is a waste of my time, which seems so precious to me… especially in Lacoste where time always seems to be running away from me at full speed.

But that’s kind of the point. God isn’t in my time. And even in those stitch diaries, I was forced to sit and think at the end of every day, about my day, until something about that day stood out to me, and I saw a picture of what it is I got from it. Then I had to figure out how I was going to illustrate these emotions and experiences through stitching.

This can all be translated to my time with God- the whole process really.

I need to take the time, that time that seems so precious to me, and to just stop. Stop and listen. Listen to his voice, read the word, and meditate on that. Some days a picture might come easily, and I can clearly see how I am going to apply/illustrate this truth in my life. Other days I might have to sit there longer before I see anything. I might have to pray and seek God harder, and then once I find something, it STILL might be a tricky thing to figure out how to “put into stitch”.

But the fact is, each day has the ability to be brilliant. If I am learning anything while I am here in Lacoste, it is that I am daughter of the creater of creativity. Each day is another opportunity to see, smell, taste, or make something new, beautiful and brilliant. Some days it’s standing in front of my face and is impossible to miss- even to an untrained eye- but other days it requires searching, patient waititng, and a sacrifice of time or something else.

But when it’s all done, I’m going to be able to step back and look at how all the pieces remind me of that pursuit, and will have been well worth the wait.

And with that, here are my embroideries from my first 21 days in Lacoste. Some are great, some I don’t like so much, but as a whole… I like them.

Those last 2 are unfortunate for their puckering. And numéro 21 got burnt on the iron! How frustrating.

Anyways, there are my 21 first days here in Lacoste.