As the lavender flowers in the garden just start to fade it’s time to make lavender wands! Your plants need to be deadheaded anyway so that they may produce some new flowers later in the fall, weather permitting. Yet the flowers are still fragrant and weaving lavender wands is the perfect way to celebrate mid-summer. Note that the lavender stems must be freshly picked to do this…you can’t use dried flowers because the stems won’t be flexible.
Begin by cutting stems of lavender that are as long as possible. Some varieties have very long stems, so this is easy, but others are shorter so do the best you can with what you’ve got.
Just to give you the vision up front, this is what we’re making.
Start with an odd number of lavender stems. I used 11 for this wand. It’s absolutely important for it to be an odd number so that the weaving works out right. I use a ribbon that’s between 1/4 and 3/8 inch wide. You can use slightly wider, or a bit more narrow, but the thinner the ribbon the longer it will take.
Measure out a ribbon that’s about 3/8 inch wide and four feet long. Tie one end around the bunch of lavender, clustering all the flowers together at the same height, more or less.
Now gently bend each stem over, working around the bunch so that the stems are more or less evenly spaced out over your lavender flowers, with the ribbon tied just below where you’re bending the stems.
Now take the long end of the ribbon and start to weave it in and out over the stems. Over one, under the next, over a stem, under a stem. Keep the ribbon up near the top for the first round of over, under, over, under.
Because you have an odd number, once you’ve done one round you will begin to put the ribbon over and under in the opposite way on each turn for each stem. So the stem you went over on in the last round you will go underneath in the next pass. Working in this manner you work down the bunch of lavender, weaving a basket that encloses the flowers.
Once you get just past all the flowers you will do a pass or two bringing the stems in tight together underneath the bunch of blooms.
Wrap the ribbon around your last row of weaving and tuck the end back through the loop to pull tight.
You can either leave the wand as is, add more ribbons to loose stems, or wrap the stems with ribbon and add a bow.
Here is how it looks if you leave the stems unwrapped and tie an assortment of ribbon colors in a knot.
The wand dries and retains the lovely scent of lavender. These make special gifts, useful sachets, or favors for a wedding or a party. It’s especially nice to give a lavender wand to someone who is going through tough times, since lavender is a fragrance that most people find relaxing and soothing.
