ROSE PARADE FLOAT CONTINUED

Went again to Downey to work on the Rose Parade Float. When I left the house around 11:30 it was only lightly misting but after I got there it shortly started to really rain. Fortunately the float and all the polar bears were in the shed and the flowers waiting to be put on were all under the tent. Aren't the roses above a beautiful shade of pink?

I thought it would be nice to get a picture of me with some of the roses to prove I was there. You can see the wet ground behind me.

After taking some pictures I came back to help these ladies. Long stem roses were being stripped of their leaves, about an inch or so cut off the bottom, then placed in a special solution for about three seconds to help them "keep", and then placed in a container of warm water.

These roses had been stripped of their leaves before I arrived.

These are some roses placed in vials. Some of the roses will be kept as long stems and placed as floral arrangements and others will be placed in vials and stuck into the foam on the float. The placement of most of the flowers on the float will not happen until early tomorrow morning. I will not be available to go back and help with that.

More pampas grass was obtained at the Getty Center with their permission. It all had to be stripped and sorted. This is what I did yesterday.

This is the large polar bear I showed you yesterday that had not been painted. Sometime after I left it had a cub added to its back, been painted and placed on the top front of the float. It will have to be covered with pampas grass by workers up on the float. The other two large bears are being worked on off the float and then they will be lifted into place.

Here is one of the baby bears on the float. One of the guys used pampas grass to give it a mohawk hairdo and a goatee. He did this because he has a mohawk and one of the other guys has a goatee. This will eventually be covered; you won't see this on TV.

Here is an unfinished cub on the back of the float, non camera side.

Later the body had been added and parts attached and he had been hammered into the float with spikes through his back. Then this young woman painted over the non white parts. Notice the purple stripes down the block the cub is on? This was something else I worked on with another woman. There were several blocks around the float like this and we put glue on the purple stripes and then covered them with a purple ground up flower. It is supposed to look like icy water coming down. This effect is also seen on the larger middle section of the float but we did not fill in those stripes.

This young man was working on something inside the float which created sparks. The camera really didn't capture the effect of the sparks, only the light. You can also see the finished purple effect of the stripes on this block.

And finally this is how the bear I showed you yesterday was looking when I left this afternoon. As you can see, this method of applying the pampas grass one little clump at a time and using pins is very time consuming. Some people were working on the other bear on the other side of the shed and still had a long ways to go and the bear on the top of the float had not even been started yet. Some discussion was being held has to what to do with the cubs. The censuses when I left was that they would also be covered with the grass. They are really going to look sodden in the rain that is predicted.

So, I had a good time. I wish I could actually put flowers on the float, but the timing isn't right. The float is to be towed with a motorcycle escort tomorrow around 5 PM to Pasadena. We are going to a party that starts at 5 so I will not be able to see that. Maybe next year.