Hi Simon, nice to see my hat again. I'll be using it again this weekend at the Border Union Show making, you guessed it - gipsy flowers.
We never did get the flowers workshop together although it was proposed that several of us did a demo.
You're right though.
The wood needs to be dried before it will curl properly.
If it's green you get 'gipsy squid' a bit like the one in Gavin's hat in his avatar. That was only cut a week or so before.
They'll still curl if the wood isn't completely green but not so well.
The ones on the home page were made by Twiggy at the previous Bodgers Ball.
Here's a shot of them in the 1/2 hour challenge on the judging table and I still can't do them that well. Mine are more like dahlias than her chrysanthemums.
There are a few gipsy squid too.
The wood will curl in several directions depending how you cut.
If you pull the draw knife directly towards you with the blade at right angles to the stick the curls are like a millipede curled up.
However, if you start at one end of the blade and slice as you go then the curl comes off in a spiral. Slice the opposite way and the spiral goes the other way.
One thing you can do at a demo is actually charge people to make their own, and they're pleased to do it. Mine go to The Mercy Corps usually.
Make sure they are wearing a hat though, it's a tradition, well maybe a modern one but you know the hat. very photogenic.
I quite often let them skin the stick and then I do the first round of cuts so they can use them to stop their own as that seems to be the tricky bit for newbies.
Also you usually need to remind them to try and keep cutting right back to this line as there is a tendency to 'creep' up the stick and not thin it to a point. You end up with a very pretty stick that way.
Survivalists use these as firestarters.
I usually use hazel because I can get it. A friend likes elder as it has a pithy centre and you don't need to driill a hole to put them on a stick.
Hope this helps. I feel a video coming on.
Cheers
Bob