Lavender

Gardening has always been a passion of mine. As other hobbies have come and gone, or been put on the back burner, gardening has always remained something I want to do as often as I can.

At the moment, sewing and gardening are competing for the majority of my time. I tend to look at the weather forecast each night to help me decide on the next day's activities. As today promised glorious winter weather, I decided last night that gardening would consume most of my time today.

Despite the sun and warmth calling me outside today, I didn't leave my sewing machine for long. As with all my hobbies, once I am engrossed in something, I tend to lose track of time.

My favourite colour is and always has been, blue. I have been sewing today with the gorgeous combination of blues and yellows. By itself, yellow is not a colour I particularly like. Combine yellow with blue, however, and yellow moves up my favourites list. Together, the two colours make a great floral pattern. I was keen to see how the floral fabric combined with a contrasting royal blue and light blue check. I've almost finished and am suitably pleased with the results.

It's dark now and too late to garden. Looks like I won't be gardening tomorrow either, as the forecast is for rain.

While having a break from sewing, I went for a walk around my garden. There was enough lavender on the bushes to enable me to pick a large bunch of flowers. The many bees on each lavender bush didn't seem to notice whether the flowers were on the bush or in my hands. I've left plenty of flowers for both the bees and for me to admire as I stroll through my garden.

I'm hoping to dry the bunch of lavender, so I can make lavender sachets. There's a great tutorial, by Cali at Make It Do on Diary of a Quilter, which involves very little sewing. In fact, there's only two seams to sew. The top of the bag doesn't even have a hem. I would never have thought of not hemming the top, but the finished sachets really do look good.

I've put my lavender in a vase with no water, which is probably not the best way to dry it, but it does look good on a shelf in my sewing room. If this doesn't work, next time I'll tie and hang. Now I need to wait several weeks for the lavender to dry.