Lavender sachets

I hadn’t done anything very creative lately, so I did what I often do when I don’t feel particularly inspired. I SURF… the internet, that is. I think Google is not the product of Stanford educated geniuses with a flare for business… IT’S GOD’S GIFT TO MAN. I looked online for project ideas and I stumbled upon a list of lady-like summer fun. There was an idea to creating an afternoon tea ritual. There was an idea to start your very own image journal, in which you’d collect magazine clippings, personal drawings, photographs, or anything that you found visually beautiful or inspiring. There were tons of lovely ideas, and the whole thing got me thinking about some of my own summer inspirations.

And then it popped into my head. Embroidery! I’ve never tried it, but I’ve decided that an attempt at embroidery is going to be one of my future projects. Specifically I’d like to embroider a sachet with initials, or maybe a simple floral design.

After I settled upon the embroidery, I was inspired to put on my capelet, clip on Eoin’s leash, gather up my basket lined with starched white linen, grab a pair of scissors, and head out into the night to collect lavender. I walked leisurely down my street in the moonlight––with leash in hand––to the front yard at the end of my block. I tried to look appropriately busy doing something respectable and not illegal while some woman got out of a nearby car and walked into her house. After making my best attempt at being inconspicuous, I stooped down and began to harvest lavender. I laid all the dreamy smelling lavender stems gently in my basket, and when I had cut enough for two bunches I walked Eoin home. After some snipping, arranging, and tying of awkward dentil floss loops, I had made two lovely bunches of lavender, ready to be dried. It takes about a week for the lavender to dry. Once it does, you’re supposed to untie it, lay the stems on a dish-towel and wrap them up. Then you pretend like the bulky bundle is a lump of fresh dough and you roll it back and forth under your palms on a hard surface . This friction is supposed to dislodge all the little buds and flowers. Once you remove the flowers, the buds are ready for sachets!