Praying for Peace prayer and drawer sachets

Our Praying for Peace sachets are one of our new collaborations between Handmade Palestine artisans and Ritual Mischief herbalists. The front of the sachets have lovely hand embroidery by Palestinian artisans who live in the West Bank. Their part of the proceeds support families there, keeping traditional crafts alive, and planting trees there too. When we receive the pouches we fill them with freshly dried botanicals that we grow and ethically gather here on Whidbey Island at Ritual Mischief. Our part of the proceeds of sachet sales support several families here, keeping traditional herbalism skills alive, and supporting working in harmony with beloved plants and forests here. 

Ideas for use:

• Squeeze these sachets near your face, inhale, and hold them to your chest or in your hands as you pray for peace for the people you love around the world. Let the peace of the plants support your own peace. When people living in active war zones and genocide zones directly ask for prayers, here, we pray!
• Set them on a home altar or dresser or desk or other place you see regularly so you can remember to regularly send well wishes or prayers or funds to people in war zones, genocide zones, hurricane zones, and others in need.
• Tuck them into dresser drawers to keep clothing smelling fresh (socks, pajamas, delicates, workout wear, work-from-home-wear, and garden wear all like share drawers with herbal sachets).
• Hang them between clothing on hangers in the bedroom closet or tucked into the linen closet to add scent when you move hangers or linens around.
• If, like us, you have Palestinian friends or a love for the Palestinian people and sense of solidarity with their plight, consider pairing these with our other Handmade Palestine hand-embroidered sachets or with the olive wood soap rest made by Palestinian artisans that we now carry. Or, visit the Handmade Palestine website for even more options. So many beautiful offerings! 

Our history of friendship. We’ve had Palestinian friends for decades—friends we first bonded with by exchanging recipes and commiserating about the apparently global experience of smart women with great ideas often being ignored or talked over by the men in the space and so women turn to each other to do the truly important work of life-long relationship building across old boundaries. So, here at Ritual Mischief we don’t get to stay silent or look away from the ongoing genocide happening in Gaza right now. Cities across Gaza have been flattened, people moved around again and again like cattle, more than 100,000 people dead and wounded. Our hearts break daily here as we watch kids, elders, women, doctors, nurses, teachers, reporters, first responders (which is now everyone), and civilians from all walks of life cruelly treated and unnecessarily suffer, starve, and die. The artisans of Handmade Palestine live in the West Bank where many are currently a little bit safer than people in Gaza, but we witness them being terrorized daily too via brutal apartheid policies such as check points and intimidation, random land and home seizures, price gouging, walls, random road closures/destruction, physical abuse, land and food market destruction, and worse. Carrying some of their beautiful work and supporting people we love during horrific times like these is a remarkable honor.

Ingredients, weight, and bag info: Dried Whidbey-grown Douglas fir, lavender, chamomile, and rosemary, and plus a little rice to support plant crushing and scent distribution when squeezing the sachet. Each sachet weighs at least 1 ounce. The small drawstring bags have hand embroidery on them by Palestinian artisans of Handmade Palestine. 

Warning: Keep out of reach of young children and pets. Although the plants within are all edible, when dry these plants can be a choking hazard.

Our history of sachet making: My Grandma Kane was a wise herbalist, although I never heard her call herself anything but a farmer, teacher, gardener, mom, or grandma, and she taught me to make sachets. They kept clothing and drawers smelling fresh--which mattered a lot to her in her home surrounded by husband, three boys, farm hands, and later, almost a dozen grandkids. They repelled insects too--which mattered a lot in a drafty old farmhouse like hers.

Like us, our sachets are all about the plants themselves. There are no fragrance oils and no essential oils included in our sachets, although you could add them if you're so inclined. I find a good squeeze of the sachet is more than enough scent to make all our sock, pajama, underwear, and workout wear drawers smell divine. I re-squeeze them a couple of times a year to reactivate the scent. I can't yet speak to how long these will last, but I will say that I still have lavender sachets I made with my grandmother more than four decades ago. So, I expect them to last quite a while. :-) You can also open these sachets in a few years and add more of your own local dried plants too, if you're so inclined.