Making a Witch Broom

In the spirit of Halloween I thought I'd repost this!

In the woods behind our home we have a clump of twining vines that grow and twist and slither round the trees. The vines are Asian Bittersweet which is a pest plant, not native to our area. It's very invasive and smothers the host plant it grows on.

The vines mangle and mutate the branches and trunks as they grow and while it might not be good for the woods, it's a great place to find strange and creepy sticks.

This is what inspired us to make the Witch's Broom.

We started by finding a good gnarly branch that had spiraled as it grew.

Then we collected lots and lots of little vines.
We hauled it all back to the house to make our broom.

We took the twisted stick and cut it at a good handle's length. Then we started wiring the small vines onto the handle a bunch at a time.

When all the vines were on, and we had a considerable sweeper, Zach covered the wire with twine to make it look more natural. Then we cut the vines to shape the ends.

"It's a Nimbus 2010"