Newest Brigid's Cross

Ok, here's the one made out of wheat stalks. It is a bit more difficult than using pipe cleaners! I made 2 of them. Here's some tips to make it a bit easier:

1. Soak your wheat stalks ALL day...no kidding. I put mine in a turkey roasting pan with water in the morning & left them there until 5:00. The longer the better or you'll end up breaking them.

2. Put three butter knives in the bottom (two on the ends & one to support the middle) of the pan & lay the wheat stalks on top. Weight down the wheat stalks with 2-3 more butter knives. So you're kinda making a butter knife & wheat stalk sandwhich ;)

3. You'll need a total of 14 stalks....two are straight...the rest will need to be folded in half. DO NOT FOLD STALKS AS YOU GO LIKE IN THE VIDEO ABOVE. This is VERY important! Fold them in half all at once & put them back in the water. Otherwise you'll be super frustrated as it will be almost impossible to hang on to the cross & folk wheat stalks at the same time. It may work if you had someone help you or if you're one of the Hindu gods with lots of arms.

4. You can just bend it in half in one spot...but I folded it several times over & over...each time right next to the last so that it softens it up. This makes it so the bend is not so sharp. It ends up being kinda squared. Did I say that right? I think I'd really have to show ya what I mean, especially if you're a visual person like me.

5. So once you've got it all together you'll need to fasten it. At this point make sure everything is nice & tight. You can let go of trying to hold it all together & just hold onto one arm of the cross. Now take a rubber band to fasten it...make sure it's real tight. Now do that to all the sides. It will look 'ugly', but that's ok because you'll end up cutting the rubber band part off...if you want.

6. Now decide how long you want your arms to be. Mine ended up being 8 1/2 inches long. I cut the arm where I wanted it, then I tied it with fake sinew. It's kind waxy & really strong so you can really tie it tight. It should make the ends fan out a little bit. Now if you didn't want to use sinew, you could use rubber bands & then tie pretty ribbon around the rubber bands to hide them. You'll still need to rubber band all of them first & then cut them to size & then rubber band them again. It will work better this way. It will just keep everything together while you're working.

7. Fresh reeds would be really nice to use. Maybe I'll have to make some of these in the Summer.

OH, I almost forgot...you take the heads off of the wheat stalks before you put them into the water. I'm saving mine to do something crafty with....like maybe a charm to hang up in the kitchen. Also, I got 2 crosses out of the wheat bunch I bought at Micheal's...with enough left over for half of another one. The bunch cost $5.99.