Recently, the award elements of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games were officially released.
The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games used hand-knitted bouquets of velvet thread as bouquets, which were awarded to the winning athletes along with the medals at the medal ceremony. Li Meimei, a non-hereditary inheritor from Shanghai, was one of the leaders of this bouquet weaving project.
This is the Olympic flower that never fades!
The Winter Olympics bouquet includes roses, moon seasons, bell orchids, hydrangeas, laurel and olives, which symbolize friendship, tenacity, happiness, unity, victory and peace.
In the Winter Paralympic Awards Bouquet, a blue cosmos is added to the Winter Olympic Awards Bouquet to symbolize strength.
The Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee said that on the one hand, the velvet bouquet is not like the bouquet of flowers that needs to be transferred 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 not only carbon reduction and carbon reduction, frugality in the Olympic Games, but also full of humane arrangements.
She trains knitting methods online
Each flower is repeatedly verified
The Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games awards will use 1251 bouquets of flowers, with a total of 16731 flowers, hand-woven by hundreds of Chinese folk craftsmen with velvet thread.
The 70-year-old Shanghai grandmother Li Meimei is one of the leaders of the bouquet knitting project of the Winter Olympics. As the Shanghai municipal inheritor of the "Haipai Velvet Thread Weaving Technique", she is mainly responsible for the design, training, quality control and final assembly of the award bouquet.
At the material level of the award bouquet, in order to make the bouquet more delicate and the effect presented more realistic, Li Mei chose a thin line that is more time-consuming and laborious for crocheting. She introduced: "Most of the lines on the market now are thick lines, although the hook is fast, but the final effect is very rough, and the thin lines can work slowly. ”
Due to the special method of velvet knotting stitches, Li Meimei needs to teach knotted teachers from all over the country. Affected by the epidemic, it is impossible to go to the field for training, so Li Meimei told everyone about the preparation and requirements of each flower material through recording videos and online lectures.
However, the video communication could not take care of all the details, and many of the bouquets that were summarized at the beginning were not up to standard, so Li Mei took apart these flowers and re-crocheted them. "I want to make sure that every bouquet of flowers that is sent to the podium cannot have a single flaw." After a period of running-in and practice, everyone can basically make very mature works.
More than 10,000 flowers, each of which must be repeatedly inspected and verified by LiMei, and then the final assembly is carried out. In order to improve the ornamentality of the bouquet, Li Mei also has to make a minor trimming of them. "The cut flowers and branches are not wasted, the original whole bouquet is thin to hold, I will refill the pruned flower branches, so that the athletes can hold it better and save materials."
Velvet flowers appear on the Olympic stage
It's her "dream come true moment"
Before retiring, Li Mei worked as a magazine editor, and because of her interest, she began to devote herself to velvet knitting after retirement. "When I first started making velvet flowers, I started almost from scratch. At that time, I thought, either don't do it, or do it to the best. ”
Bringing the velvet flowers to the Olympic arena this time is her "dream come true moment" for Li Mei.
Once she said in an interview that she hoped that the velvet flower could go international. "At that time, I never dreamed that this wish could be fulfilled on such a major occasion, and I was very excited and proud to be able to give a very distinctive gift to athletes from all over the world."
Source CCTV News WeChat public account
Intern Editor Zhao Siyao
Process Editor Wu Yue