Flea Marketing

There's really something about flea markets that gets me all excited.

Maybe it's finding a porcelain head, arms, a torso--and knowing that almost everybody else sees just broken doll parts, but you know you've stumbled upon your own personal treasure trove.

Maybe it's about coming across bits and pieces of lace, and imagining how the young girl whose dress the lace once adorned must have felt so pretty on that night she put on her best clothes and went out with the most charming young man of the village.

Or maybe it's just about spotting a gorgeous set of 12 cotton napkins and a tablecloth, and paying just five euros, because the woman who they belonged to has just kept them in her cupboards for a decade (they're so precious!), and now she's clearing up storage space


Whatever it is, it's something that made me drive an hour all the way to Fontvieille, once there spend hours looking through what others would label "old broken stuff," and in the evening sit down at a café with friends to have a drink and toast a Sunday well-spent.

So caught up was I in looking for flea-market treasures, that all the photos I managed to take were of these embroidery thread, being sold by a lady whose mother used to be a "brodeuse." "Unfortunately, I did not get the embroidering virus," the lady smiled. I did, so I bought lots.