A place to Gather & Tend. in spring.

Hello, I am so glad you have found your way here… I’m Lyndsay — mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR.

Step inside Story & Thread., a cosy, layered home where the threads of creativity, interiors and mothering meet. Here, we unearth the stories from the seasons of our lives, with a house & a garden at the heart, and everyday beauty as our guide…

Dearest reader…

How do you feel as we move into spring? The warm sunshine on yesterday’s spring equinox brought me a sense of ease, lightness and renewal that I hadn’t realised I had been missing.

At the equinox night meets day in eggshell equilibrium of (around) twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness everywhere in the world, before here in the northern hemisphere, we yield to the growing strength of solar power.¹

I wanted to send you a note about the first Gather & Tend. co-working session held this week on the eve of the spring equinox — it was such a pleasure to be together, to make space and to steady ourselves as we tip into the lighter, brighter part of the year.

Narcissi in the late afternoon spring equinox sunlight.

As the session unfolded, I realised just how important it is that we make time to gather — both gather ourselves inwards as we are pulled in different directions during the day, as well as gathering together, and to tend — taking care of and nurturing our work, visions and dreams, rather than racing through the priorities on our to-do lists.

You can find out more about the session in the audio recording above.

We spoke about the current seasonal shift here in the northern hemisphere — how there is a move from the downward, rooting energy and stillness of winter, to one of rising up and of movement. The growing daylight hours and the strength of the warm sun can act as a catalyst to move us from our inner world of dreaming towards taking gentle action, but it is not always an easy transition.

The shift from an inward state of rest and reflection into nurturing growth and finding pockets of expansiveness can feel unwieldy and uncomfortable to begin with. The container of winterspring reminds us that there is no rush, it is a time to gather ourselves before emergence. The tipping of the light that occurs at the spring equinox (or Ostara) is needed for the somersault of momentum to gather. Just like the world around us, we can take our time and wait for the perfect conditions to unfold.

Narcissi and muscari on our windowsill.

Two of the prompts we contemplated included,

*Have you noticed a shift in your creative energy as the light grows? Or perhaps not yet, there is no rush…

*What conditions do you need to thrive?

Below is an early spring playlist I compiled for the session featuring some songs I have been listening to whilst writing recently…

I mention two posts related to the ideas and experiences of winterspring which I have linked below…

Finding my way in ‘winterspring’.

Change is afoot on the winding path of 'winterspring'.

Lastly, I share a poem that was shared with me and others by

Artemisia Writes

within the Holding Stories circle for International Women’s Day, and speaks to me of this time of seasonal transition through the lens of myth, magic and mothering.

Demeter by Carol Ann Duffy.

Where I lived – winter and hard earth.

I sat in my cold stone room

choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart –

I tried that, but it skimmed,

flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,

but I saw her at last, walking,

my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers

to her mother’s house. I swear

the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,

with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

Thank you so much for reading — watch this space for more details of A Seasonal Salon. for spring., and the next Gather & Tend. co-working session, both will be included in The Beauty Thread. membership — more details below.

I’d love to know, what are you tending to in this season?

To attend A Seasonal Salon. in late spring and the next Gather & Tend. co-working session join The Beauty Thread., the new paid membership within Story & Thread.

Through a series of seasonal offerings, The Beauty Thread. is an invitation to notice, hold and create beauty in our own worlds, woven together by the ever-changing seasons, both around us and within us. When we come to know beauty, it transforms us, the onlooker, into an exquisite piece of life’s tapestry. Subscriptions to The Beauty Thread. currently cost £5 per month or £45 per year.

1. On the equinox, the length of day and night are only nearly equal. This is because the Sun appears as a disc in the sky, and the top half rises above the horizon before the centre. As well as this sunlight is refracted by the Earth's atmosphere. The Sun, therefore, appears to rise before its centre at the horizon, giving more daylight than you might expect (12 hours 10 minutes on the equinox).

The equilux is when day and night are equal and occurs a few days before the spring equinox, on 17th March 2025. Information from the Met Office.