Let's Talk Lavender: Stories for Knitters, Stitchers & Creative Crafters
Come craft with me. I have a story to tell you.
Let’s Talk Lavender is a storytelling podcast for knitters, stitchers and creative crafters — a place for curious stories about ordinary objects, peculiar discoveries, people, nature, memory and the small things we might otherwise pass by.
The subject changes from week to week. You might find yourself thinking about a forgotten photograph, why birds sing, an eccentric neighbor, an old pair of scissors that lasted twenty years, a peculiar custom, a much-loved sweater, or some tiny mystery hidden in something completely ordinary.
Bring your knitting, stitching or whatever you’re making, and come along for the story.
Stillness. Story. Self.
Let's Talk Lavender: Stories for Knitters, Stitchers & Creative Crafters
Magical exploring and you.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Stillness. Story. Self.
Come craft with me. I have a story to tell you.
Let’s Talk Lavender is a storytelling podcast for knitters, stitchers and creative crafters — a place for curious stories about ordinary objects, peculiar discoveries, people, nature, memory and the small things we might otherwise pass by.
The subject changes from week to week. You might find yourself thinking about a forgotten photograph; why birds sing; an eccentric neighbor; a peculiar custom; a much-loved sweater; or some tiny mystery hidden in something completely ordinary.
Bring your knitting, stitching or whatever you’re making, and come along for the story.
Stillness. Story. Self.
Oh, good, you're here. Let's talk lavender.
SPEAKER_01Today it's raining, and the dog is snoring very peacefully. She loves the rain. It's peaceful reading weather. Have you ever found yourself completely swept up in the pages of a gripping book? Well past the hour that you know you should be asleep, knowing full well you have to get up really early the next morning, but you were just not able to put the book down. Yesterday, or rather last night, I found myself trapped in the world of explorers. The real old fashioned kind of explorer. This particular book told the true story of the remarkable people who embraced the mystery of discovering what exactly was going on at the North Pole of this our planet Earth. What an absolutely fascinating time in history. You know, just over a hundred years ago, the general knowledge and consensus about the Earth and its poles was really incredibly different from what we know to be true today. In the eighteen hundreds, smart people, really smart people, believed that when one arrives at the North Pole and you break through the pack ice which surrounds it, you emerge into a brilliantly blue paradise, a warm oasis of balmy weather and islands. This was a widely held belief, and people, many, many people genuinely believed this. Lots of adventurous people tried repeatedly to reach this nirvana and struggled through the endless pack ice and losing many lives. Turning back when they could, but of course, never actually reaching this mythical paradise. People wanted to know what was out there. They were fascinated by the unknown and tried all sorts of ways to discover the truth, often at great personal and financial cost. A little while before this particularly popular theory, there was another long-held belief that the earth was actually hollow. Mm-hmm. And one could gain entrance to the center of the earth through the poles. People believed that there were these tunnels and channels at the poles. And once you found them and submerged into this network of tunnels, you could essentially make your way down, down, down, down into the depths of the earth. And finally you would burst through into a beautiful and completely habitable world within the earth. Kind of like a paradise inside a hollow egg. Mr John Cleve Simms, who popularized this idea. And he actually lobbied for an expedition to enter the polls and travel into this inner world. I suppose today we would have called him an influencer, or maybe even a politician. It sounds ridiculous to us today, but then our fascination with the unknown. And you know it was only in nineteen sixty eight, fifty-seven years ago, that it was actually confirmed that a man planted his feet on the actual North Pole. It took us that long to have irrefutable proof. Today we don't even think of this as remarkable. We can see pictures of the North Pole on the internet. We can see live cams of scientific research stations. Research stations. We see Arctic animal cams. We see Google Earth pictures. We see satellite photos. We see so much that we never had access to at all. Just sixty years ago. It was a huge mystery to all mankind and to the explorers. Those people who ask questions. Those people who ask questions. People who don't accept what they're told. Always looking for answers, looking for different ways of doing things, trying to discover what's actually out there. These are the people that have struggled and pushed and prodded and have eventually changed everything for all of us. As humans, we understand how incredible it is to have these qualities, and we hero-worship and admire those who we can clearly identify as great explorers of our world. We love the romance of it, the intrigue of it, the questioning mystery of it. We find the whole notion of exploration and being an explorer almost romantic and certainly vastly appealing. I'm here to tell you that you too are an explorer. You are definitely an explorer in your own particular way. Let's think about that for a minute. Have you ever tried a different way of trying to solve a problem at work? Hmm? Have you ever tried to look at something differently from the other people around you? Have you considered different ways of approaching a relationship? A difficult situation? Have you pressed on even when you're tired or discouraged? Have you tried again and again? Let's think of an example. Have you ever been fascinated by the arts or music? Have you explored new music in many, many different ways? Every time you find someone new, new to you, and perhaps to others, a new artist, musician, a new person who can do something beautiful or truly useful. You add value to them and their world and our world. Every day you are an explorer. You are exploring our world. You are also exploring your own world. You are testing boundaries. Looking a little further than yesterday or last week or last year. And in many ways, your exploring creates immense benefit for others. I want you to think about this for a minute. In what way are you an explorer in this world today? In what way are you an explorer in this world today? I want you to think about the way that you are bringing fresh eyes, fresh ideas, and a fresh approach to the world, to your world, to discovering something new, a new way of doing, a new way of being, or uncovering a truth. Your creative curiosity is adding value to our world for us all. Your creative curiosity is adding value to our world for us all. So today, take a minute to reflect on how your exploration, you being an explorer in this world of ours, is adding value to something or someone. And that is something you can be very proud of.