The gentle afternoon sun shines from the window ledge onto the table, and in the sunlight, a cluster of hairy roses is bright and flexible, showing a gentle color in the sunlight. The special material also makes the common delicate flowers feel a little warmer and tougher, just like the increasingly warm Atmosphere at present.
Recently, at the Yangpu Women's and Children's Activity Center, a group of Shanghai aunts with an average age of more than 60 years old were "weaving flowers and making leaves" for the Beijing Winter Olympics thousands of miles away. The Olympic bouquet is woven in Shanghai, and there are many heart-warming stories behind this delicate rose.
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"Nine-nine" blessings
Different from the bouquet of flowers in previous Olympic Games, the Beijing Winter Olympics will for the first time use handmade velvet flowers to make bouquets, and the "Awards Bouquet" project team formed by the Beijing Winter Olympics sponsor Hengyuanxiang United Women's Federation and the Disabled Persons' Federation will replace the bouquets of flowers used in previous Olympic Games to the winning athletes through the intangible cultural heritage technique - Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Hand-crocheted bouquets instead of the flowers used in previous Olympic Games.
Velvet flower, in fact, also known as woolen hook flower, it is different from the traditional sense of the plane hook flower, but the use of various colors of wool exquisite crochet, the flower layers are clear, the texture is fluffy, the three-dimensional sense is strong, it looks like flowers, can achieve the effect of fake and real. The Olympic flower stitch method made of velvet thread is delicate, the craftsmanship is exquisite, the color is soft, it is easy to clean, it does not change color, and it will never wither.
Huang Hongying, head of the Shanghai production team of the Winter Olympics Velvet Thread Flower, introduced that the participants in the production of the Winter Olympic Velvet Thread Flower are all members of the Yangpu District Skilled Mother Workshop. The Yangpu District Craftsmanship Workshop was established in June 2010 to support women from unemployed, foreign daughters-in-law, migrant workers and other difficult families, with the goal of learning and mastering hand-knitting skills, while achieving independent employment, and devoting themselves to charity and public welfare services. Skillful Mother Craft Workshop has always cooperated with Hengyuanxiang, and every year with hand-knitted love sweaters, gloves, scarves and other items, it participates in the public welfare bazaar activities organized by the municipal and district civil affairs bureaus and the municipal and district women's federations, and dedicates love to the district nursing home and the sunshine home, which is like a "net red" in the urban organization.
Under the development of more than ten years, the Craftsman Mother Workshop has formed a three-level network, and therefore, after receiving the production requirements of the Olympic velvet flowers, they first published information on the Internet, opened the registration, and then after the audition, according to the characteristics and skills, they were divided into home production groups and on-site assembly groups, and carried out flow operations, with the total number of participants reaching 150 people.
Some figures illustrate the difficulty of the job. The bouquet weaving was conducted face-to-face training by Hengyuanxiang's velvet weaver Li Mei in advance. The cable will begin on October 15 and assembly will begin on October 19. The skilled mothers involved in this time are basically over 60 years old. In more than 2 months, the skillful mothers need to make 2400 woolen roses, that is, more than 20,000 wool petals and 7200 wool leaves. All of this requires skilled mothers to crochet out a little bit and then put it together.
Love weaving
Put on reading glasses and do it carefully. At the assembly site, the reporter saw that the aunts and mothers almost did not chat much, and everyone was buried in serious production. Purely by hand, according to the introduction, a flower from the beginning of the needle, if all by one person to make, the total process takes 8 hours.
Mobilizing a large number of members, they first let a large number of members wrap the lead wire with velvet threads at home, outline the single leaves and petals, and then gather them together and assemble them in small groups. Not all handmade petals in the home can be "selected" smoothly – according to empirical standards, the outer large petal length of the petals cannot exceed 5.5 cm, and the small petals of the flower heart cannot exceed 4.5 cm.
Each group of 8 people, 8 processes, in the continuous experimentation and exploration, this group of aunts and mothers found the rules: first of all, the petals were bundled into small bundles according to 2 petals, 3 petals, and 4 petals. Then someone makes a flower heart, someone shapes a flower holder, and then wraps 3 or 4 petals, and then wraps 3 leaves, and finally forms a velvet rose with 9 petals and 3 leaves.
From only 2 flowers a day to "produce" 100 flowers a day, the production process is not achieved overnight, and it is also formed through exploration. At the beginning of the assembly, according to past experience, they tied the petals one by one, the shape was not uniform and average, the speed was still slow, the calyx was also wrapped more loosely, and the result was that the finished flower head was larger, and because the weight was shaken left and right, "not at all structured". After several experiments, the aunts and mothers found that when bandaging each step, they had to tighten it hard and wrap the "flower bone" very tightly, so that the flowers produced were slender and hard, and then they were more energetic after sorting out the shape by hand.
Participating in the production of this project, many of the hands of aunts and mothers have become scarred because of long hours of hard knitting and thimbles, and many people have Band-Aids on their hands. But their faces are always full of smiles, and the chubby Lu Yangqun said that the whole family especially supports themselves to participate in this activity, "all of which say that we have never come before and since, and we can participate in such a grand event with the knitting skills we have liked for a lifetime, which can also reflect the value of this hobby." ”
The power of love is always passed between this woolen thread. Using her skillful skills to add luster to the Winter Olympics, Huang Hongying told reporters that many members of the team told her that because of participating in this activity, the whole family paid special attention to the various information of the Beijing Winter Olympics, "began to read all kinds of Winter Olympic knowledge, and even wanted to go skating and skiing." ”
Related: What is the Winter Olympics Bouquet?
The award bouquets at the Beijing Winter Olympics will change the traditional cut flowers and adopt a bunch of velvet flowers crocheted with the intangible cultural heritage - Haipai velvet weaving technique. The bouquet is provided by Hengyuanxiang Group, the official sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and also the inheritor of the "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique". Because of its characteristics of never withering, low-carbon environmental protection, etc., the velvet flower bouquet has become a vivid portrayal of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games adhering to the concept of "green, sharing, openness and integrity".
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Knotting is one of the oldest handicrafts of mankind, and there are various knotting techniques in all aspects of people's lives in ancient and modern China and abroad, all over the world. More than 100 years ago, the woolen thread knitting technology mainly from Europe into China's coastal cities, Chinese craftsmen combined the oriental traditional knot rope technique with the velvet knotting technique, greatly enriched the velvet knotting stitching, pattern, carrier and application occasions, the formation of haipai velvet knotting technology, velvet floriculture is one of them.
On the one hand, the velvet bouquet is not like the fresh-cut bouquet that needs to be transported from the southern planting base, which greatly reduces the cost of transportation and management, on the other hand, it is also convenient for athletes to carry back to china and keep it for a long time, which is both carbon reduction and carbon reduction, frugal and full of humane arrangements.
There are seven types of flowers in the bouquet of flowers awarded at the Beijing Winter Olympics, including: roses symbolizing friendship, symbolizing the tenacious moon season, bell orchids symbolizing happiness, hydrangeas symbolizing unity, laurel symbolizing victory, osmanthus flowers symbolizing harvest, and olives symbolizing peace. The Beijing Winter Paralympic Games awards bouquet has one more kind on this basis - cosmos, symbolizing freedom and eternal happiness. The selection of these flowers is very exquisite, such as the moon season, it is the protagonist of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games award bouquet, the moon season originated in China, prevailing in the world, is one of the top ten famous flowers in China, is also the city flower of Beijing, the choice of the moon season is echoed with the Beijing Olympic Bouquet, showing the cultural heritage of the "City of The Two Olympics", and the choice of olives means to pay tribute to the Olympic tradition.
The flower material is shaped and bundled into a bouquet of flowers with a height of 34 cm and a chest diameter of 24 cm, which is just right in volume, striving to be exquisite and expressive. The bow ribbon of the bouquet handle is printed with the words "BEIJING2022", and the bouquet is fresh and natural as a whole, which is in line with the main color of the Beijing Winter Olympics, highlighting the distinctive characteristics of ice and snow sports.
The Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games awards will share 1251 bouquets, with a total of 16731 flowers. Each flower has leaves and flowers, and is made by hand. Behind the uniqueness is a lot of manpower and time. The flowers in this bouquet are of different materials, resulting in different techniques, so it will take up to 35 hours to complete this exquisite bouquet, and it will take nearly 50,000 hours to make all the bouquets.
In order to complete this glorious and arduous task, and in order to create conditions for more people to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Hengyuanxiang Group, with the support of the All-China Women's Federation and other organizations, mobilized the participation of seven organized societies in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities.
"Chinese often say 'love leads the way', we hope that this velvet thread that carries truth, goodness and beauty can make people on five continents who have become alienated by the impact of the new crown epidemic more united, and weave a constant future for the world with infinite threads." Chen Zhongwei, chairman and general manager of Hengyuanxiang Group, explained the original intention of making velvet flower bouquets.
After 3 months of design, discussion, revision of the design draft, to 5 months of training, weaving and packaging, the bouquet of velvet flowers through the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter is about to bloom in the ice and snow, and the beautiful emotions will be frozen into eternal memories.
Author: Xinmin Evening News reporter Li Ranran Editor: Lu Weixin Photo: Xinmin Evening News reporter Zhang Long Photo, Official Picture Video Production: Li Ranran, Zhang Long, Huang Yuyue