The Colour Collaborative: September: Market

Markets make me think of France. I remember childhood holidays and visits to local towns that were planned to coincide with market day. I remember the way a sleepy rural village could be transformed into something bustling and vibrant by the collection of a few stalls. 

The goods on sale and the way people shopped seemed so different to how we shopped at home (in a supermarket). People called out and shouted to each other, touched and squeezed everything on sale, and carried big wicker baskets, both men and women. On a recent holiday to rural South-West France I noticed that not much had changed. Market day is still a weekly anchor in the local calendar, and those markets still seemed suffused with the same warmth, light and colour that I remembered. 

Look at the pink and white radishes with their green leaves - such a crisp, summery colour combination, light and fresh. This is slightly off topic, but if you ever get the chance to eat a Boursin and sliced radish sandwich, do. It's amazing. 

The jars of honey glow in the sun like all the shades of amber lined up in a row.

Even the everyday, household items seem more colourful and enticing. 

I find that markets aren't quite the same event here in the UK. Does your local town or village have a market and do you know when it is? I'm not talking about Farmers' Markets, with their carrots with the tops still on, heritage tomatoes and artisan breads; they are lovely (and I love buying from them) but they seem to me like the outdoor equivalent of shopping in Waitrose. I'm talking about your normal, workaday gathering with fruit and vegetables, clothes, hardware and that stall that always sells mobile phone cases. I had to look mine up. It's on a Friday. I went for a look around and it was ok, a bit grey, but that was the fault of the drab 1960's shopping precinct as much as the merchandise. But two stalls really leaped out; the fruit and vegetable stall, and the flowers. So much choice and abundance, and really good value, and so much more colourful when everything isn't wrapped in plastic and lined up in grey boxes. 

I bought cyclamen, lots of cyclamen.

I love their wobbly pink flowers, the way they bob about on such spindly stems, and they seem like an autumn/winter plant to me. Potting them up is a seasonal tradition of mine. 

Look at those hues, from violet to flamingo to rose. All the pinks, in a pot.

Don't forget to visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

Annie at Annie Cholewa

Sandra at Cherry Heart

Jennifer at Thistlebear

Claire at Above The River

Sarah at Mitenska

What is The Colour Collaborative? 

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.