Knitted hearts filled with dried herbs make a wonderful gift for yourself and do double duty by protecting your knitwear and yarn.
When you ‘re a knitter, you begin to acquire little balls of leftover yarns. Some you can dispose of easily, but it’s those small leftovers of luxury yarns such as leftover handspun that really get you. They multiply, filling bowls and baskets until they cry out for attention that only a resourceful knitter can give. I like to periodically recycle my own tangled collection into small useful items that increase my knitterly happiness and make me glad to surround myself with. As Marie Kondo describes, these little knitted sachets definitely “spark joy” !
I wrote about my Handspun Hearts before and I’m here to tell you that the practice has endured. In fact, they make their way to my friends, family, swap partners and other random admirers so often that I can hardly keep enough around to please myself! The hearts I knit from handspun and filled with herbs all those years ago still smell wonderful when I press them between my palms.
Since I last wrote about these little knitted sachets, I was lucky enough to take a trip to France, where I bought a small package of Herbs de Provence at an open air market and was so entranced with the spicy smell that I’ve gone on to create my own aromatic blend to fill my little knitted hearts of happiness with.
In sunny Arizona, rosemary grows prolifically, so I pick it by the bowlful and feed it to the dehydrator, filling the house with the scent. Since rosemary can be one of the herbs found in the blend, (Herbs de Provence has many different but similar recipes), I began adding it to dried lavender flowers, along with fennel seed. The three herb blend is lovely and brings to mind the best memories of the original blend I’d purchased.
Have I inspired you to dive into your leftovers and stitch up these sweet little knitted sachets for yourself? The pattern I’ve used all these years is Love Hearts by Jackie Ziegler . I tend to use thicker handspun yarns and smallish needles – 3 mm. to make the fabric tight enough to keep my herbs from sifting out. I believe you can use any aromatic herb or blend you prefer, or even cedar shavings to protect your knitwear and yarn.
Do you have an aromatic herbal blend that you can recommend? I’d love to hear about it.
Happy Gal-entine’s Day, Crafty Friends!
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