Scent and Scentibility

Fresh Lavender, Mint and Lemon Verbena

Sometimes a break is good... sometimes not. The recent quiet has been due to an overload of deadlines and work, which I am just crawling out from under. It's hard to follow your bliss and do the things you like best first in those circumstances... you know the times, when you feel like you're only just hanging on to the back of a runaway train by your fingernails. I've resolved (again) to get more organised!
So, before the day becomes hectic and this blissfully sunny weather too oppressively hot, it's nice to take an early morning walk down the garden, preferably bare foot.
These quiet interludes are cost free but utterly precious. A little treat I enjoy disproportionately, is to pick a handful of scented leaves, lavender, mint, rosemary or lemon verbena, snip them all together into a cup and place it on the windowsill (or on the work desk if I really have to go there). First is the delicious burst of mixed scents as you snip away, and that lovely homespun feeling… then more gentle reminders throughout the day. Treat yourself and feel the difference. If you really want to get into it, it is said that different scents can make us more productive, I can bathe in rosemary oil but the accounts paperwork doesn't get any better, Lavender is definitely calming but for me the ultimate elixir has to be fresh roses… or burying your entire face in a multi petalled peony… divine… check for

Crystals in Griege, Denim Blue, Khaki and Vintage Rose

bees first though.
The relentless nature of midsummer work has meant that even my treats become tied in to the beadwork. I had to order crystals for the upcoming Jezebel's Jewels workshops and found, when they arrived, that they perfectly matched my potpourri.Jezebel's Jewels will be at Beader's Best in Hamburg in August and StitchnCraft in Dorset in November and is proving so popular that I'll be teaching it fairly regularly through next year too.

Jezebel's Jewels pendant