Let's knit together and talk about retro knitting patterns, and sad old books.

What are you knitting or stitching today? I invite you to sit with me while we contemplate life, our loves and what we learn from our crafting moments of stillness. Knit, stitch or quilt with me.

This is not a knitting tutorial or a craft lesson. It is a gentle audio companion for your handwork, your quiet hours, and the you beneath the noise.

Follow Let’s Talk Lavender for calm, reflective episodes for knitters, stitchers, and creative crafters.

Let’s Talk Lavender is gentle, warm company for knitters, stitchers, and creative crafters. Bring your project, contemplate life, and settle into calm companionship. You are not alone. We are a community of crafters finding stillness, story, and self together.

Let’s Talk Lavender is gentle, warm company for knitters, stitchers, and creative crafters. Bring your project, contemplate life, and settle into calm companionship. You are not alone. We are a community of crafters finding stillness, story, and self together.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Oh good, you're here. Let's talk lavender. I'm on the lookout for an old fashioned tea cozy knitting pattern. It all started last week on Tuesday as I walked down a street in my neighborhood. I paused outside the tiny little library built on the sidewalk, in front of a curiously irregular house set quite far back from the street. It was quaint, and someone had gone to a lot of trouble with the embellishments, and the tiny little latch design on the wooden door. I stopped, opened it up, and looked at the books inside. There were a few incomprehensible nonfiction books of some significantly niche interest, a few paperbacks with tired corners, and then tucked away on the right hand edge was a dusty, dilapidated hardcover book that looked ancient, the board cover scraggly, and the gold letters faded. I pulled it out gently. A collection of small heartbreaks remained faintly on the spine. The author had been rubbed off long ago. I paged through the musty pages, the paper stiff and unyielding, as unyielding as the dense text. The words were small and the paragraphs few, which gave me a sense of breathlessness and almost lamentation. I closed the cover and slid the book back into its spot, closing the little door as I turned and walked up the street. The heaviness of the book stayed with me. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to put together a complete list of miseries, missed opportunities and disappointments. And here many, many years later, I, a stranger, had picked up this burden of sorrows and felt its energy of loss once more. I had no doubt the writer had long since left this earth, as this was truly an old book. But their sadness had remained in our world. It's the small things that can truly damage people. But it's also the small things that can truly lift us

A collection of small heart lifts.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

up. So here is a collection of small heart lifts, not breaks. The jaunty skinny walk of someone's cat crossing the street and winding its short fur against your legs in greeting as you walk to the bus stop. The nice person who kindly holds the door for you at the seven eleven as you rush in, the bell jangling, even though they're as equally hurried and anxious as you are. Your mailman waving and smiling as he drives by you. The sound of children whooping and jumping and bouncing a ball as they tumble down the road past your house in the late afternoon, shadows growing taller than they are. A solitary owl hooting in the middle of the night when you wake up feeling alone. An old dog snoring loudly, interrupting your thoughts. But every breath an audible confirmation of a furry life that loves you unconditionally. City workers with flashing trucks and flashlights repairing power lines in the middle of the dead of night, so your coffee machine will grumble and hiss into burbling life at six AM when you need it to, so that your day starts right. And of course those strange random gifts you've been given through the years the useful ones, the ones that serve a purpose and always have, even if needed infrequently. And then I remembered my tea cozy that a dear friend of mine gave me almost thirty years ago,

A retro tea cozy.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

one of his very first knitting projects. It's chunky in a thick cotton yarn, a little off kilter and a little off center. And in a in an odd, complicated florally design. But I've kept that thing and used it religiously for many, many decades. And every time I use it, I think of him and his optimism and his kindness and how he tackled new projects with gusto. And because it's so quirky looking, almost everyone that lifts it to reveal the hot teapot underneath asks about it, and there's always a lovely story to tell. At any rate, I thought I would knit a tea cozy. So I'm on the lookout for a fun, preferably retro tea cozy pattern. A good friend of mine has a big birthday coming up, and I will try and match it to my friend so that she'll use it religiously and really brings her joy whenever she steps outside into the cold night air with her cozied up herbal teapot and sits in the stars and breathes the cold night air and thinks about life and those she's lost, and also those she still has and the people who love her, like the person who knitted her tea cozy. So let me know what small fun projects you are thinking of making as our summer begins to wane. All right, love, keep crafting one stitch at a time, and stay away from books with titles like a collection of small heartbreaks.