Wreaths - Before and After

I'm supposed to be at the farm right now, cutting cockscomb and plumed celosia and hanging them to dry for wreaths. But it's raining - and when cutting flowers to dry it helps if when you start they actually are. . . dry. So no cutting this morning. Instead I'm procrastinating and reading blogs and playing on mapmyride and pretending like I'm about to make a pair of booties.

The type of booties I'm allegedly making this morning.
Except the ones I'm making are purple with lavender flowers.

If I *was* actually cutting flowers for wreaths, here's what I'd be looking at (because I love a good before and after):



The celosia in the field (with some cockscomb in the foreground). A lot of it was volunteer this year, so it's not exactly in neat rows - but there's a bunch of it.

The celosia after a few weeks of hanging to dry and some Martha Stewart action on my part. In fact, one of these wreaths is still hanging on my kitchen door from last year. Yes, that means I'm lazy about taking things down. But it also means they last a long time - bonus.

Cockscomb in the field. I love this stuff - it feels like velvet, and it pretty much looks exactly the same whether it's fresh or dried. People call it "brain flowers" because it really does kind of look like a brain. As far as I know.



And behold, after transmogrification into a wreath. You wouldn't believe how many people think I'm lying when I say this is really made of flowers. It does look (and feel) rather velvet-ish. I'm growing a lot more red cockscomb, so hopefully I'll actually have enough of these this year.

All this talk of wreaths probably makes it obvious that I'm about ready to transition from sweating my ass off in the field to a slightly more subdued season of making things. And along with that I've been looking into some good craft shows to add to our itinerary this fall - so if anyone has suggestions, by all means let me know.