Ok, so there's always that scene in midieval movies where the heroine is seen (usually in a lfashback) romping around a field with a wreath of real live flowers on her head, and maybe there's someone shown doing some totally random bit of jiggery-pokery (obligatory Dr. Who reference) that effortlessly causes flowers to form into a neat little chain. Now, if you hadn't guessed, these scenes annoy me. See, I've tried everything I can think of to make flowers turn into neato little wreaths and chains -- braiding, twisting, weird-pokey-stem-through-stem things, everything. And it *never* works. (Does it? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's tried this.) So we all do the same thing, and go buy a dried flower wreath at faire, right?
So last week, my mother and I are in the house, and she shouts, "Hey, there's a little old lady in the front picking all our dandelions!" Ok, cool, we win, someone else is weeding the lawn, right? She's a cute little old lady, out there with her grand-daughter, picking all our dandelions. And then lo and behold, right out in front of the house, this little old lady does a bit of effortless jiggery-pokery, and poof, presto, magical flower chain. And she did it with *one*hand*. At this point, your friendly neighborhood costumer type can do one of two things: scream in frustration and scare the little old lady away from my weeds (not friendly) or scream in delight and try to get her to explain how the jiggery-pokery works (judging by her expression, also not obviously a friendly gesture). Quite disfortunately, she spoke only polish, and the grandchild who was with her refused to translate to strangers, but we got through it. For the rest of you who have ever wondered, here's how the jiggery-pokery works......
The Goal -- a flower wreath made from real, living flowers, and made without wires, ties, tapes, or any other props. |
A closeup of the inside. The magic works because each stem is twisted around the whole bunch of stems so as to hold them all together. |
The jiggery-pokery, explained. Please understand, I'm starting in the middle beause it's just easier to photo that way. Hold the bulk of the stems in your working hand. (I'm using my left hear, because "ambidextrous" means you forget which hand you normally use.) Place a new flower under the bulk of stems, perpendicular to the other stems. Curl the flower part straight up with the tip of your index finger. |
Using any fingers you particularly like, swing the stem of that new flower up around the stems and *between* the new flower and the one right before it in th chain. |
Pull the stem straight down along the remainder of the stems in the chain. You'll follow this same set of directions for every flower you add to the chain. |
This is actually how you start the chain -- instead of a bunch of stems in a chain, you'll have only one, then twist another around it per these instructions. Then you just keep going..... |
At the end, you'll have two ends. You can secure these together with a ribbon, or just shove the stems at the end of the chain into the loops at the beginning. And there you go. That's all the magic. |
