rosehip garlands

If you have access to rosehips, now is a good time to start collecting them. We have had a touch of frost on one or two mornings this last week, so the hips are looking rosy and bright and are ever so slightly softening to the touch.

Rosehips are packed with vitamin C, and many people use them to make a syrup that can be drunk throughout the winter to help ward off illness. They are also believed to be helpful in relieving pain associated with arthritis. Rosehip seed oil has a high percentage of essential fatty acids, and is therefore thought to be very beneficial in keeping hair and skin looking healthy. We applied the oil to the scarring above Esme's eye when she had shingles as a baby. I'm not really sure if it helped reduce the appearance of the scars, but the act of massaging it gently into her skin certainly helped me to feel that I was doing something soothing and loving for my baby girl.

Eva and I put our first rosehip harvest to work as part of the seasonal decoration in our home - we strung them onto red thread and made cheerful, rosy garlands. I'm hoping they will dry as they hang across doorways and in our windows, and we plan to string them around the Christmas tree later this winter.

I so enjoyed a quiet couple of hours with my biggest girl, carefully piercing each hip with a large sewing needle and chatting about the tasks we had completed earlier at our school's workday. We both managed to prick our fingers with these huge needles, but it was something to be laughed at, together.

How very blessed I felt yesterday to have a daughter.

First, we snipped the hips from their stems.

I knotted the end of the thread, then triple-knotted it again about two inches further in. This left a 'circle' of knotted thread from which the finished garland could be hung. I then pierced the first hip and brought the needle around and back through once more (and did the same with the last hip on each string), so that the first and last hip acted like anchors.

Eva practised her counting skills...

...and showed me just how happy she was!