(1) A type of hawser dating from the croaking, misty ancient days of wizards and dragons. Made of long-stemmed but sturdy flowers, they were used to secure slip-thin elfin boats to supple wharves at night. After long centuries this practice finally declined. A shortage of blooms and rising wage demands among the blossom weavers was most responsible, plus a scarcity of elves. A lot of weavers also left for less taxing, glitzier work in the hospitality and entertainment industries as Las Vegas mushroomed after the second world war.
A typical daisy chain required 260,000 flowers, took 300 weavers six weeks to create, and wilted to uselessness in 12 short hours on exposure to dragon breath. As with so many traditional crafts, the death of daisy chaining was inevitable as synthetics eventually overtook the market and nylon cable became the norm, outperforming the original vegetable solutions (and attracting fewer bees and biting lizards). Elves thinned out to the point of non-existence, not to mention wizards. And when was the last time you saw a dragon? Hey, really, when? (Though the lingering smell of their breath remains in a few distant and dark valleys.)
(2) If using rope, and you put lots of loops into it you have what is called chain sinnet. It's a method of shortening a piece of rope while leaving it usable as a rope, and can be released in an instant. Other names for this effect are chain shortening and monkey braid. (If sewing or embroidering, your result is instead known as a chain stitch, but it's purely decorative.)
(3) In backpacking, a daisy chain is a length of webbing that is sewn onto a flat surface (like the front of a shoulder strap) and left with lots of slack to form loops, which vaguely resemble chain sinnet. So anyway, for backpacking, you can hang various doodads from these loops or lash things to them. If you don't have any doodads you can use any doohickies, doojiggers, gimmicks, gizmos, gubbins, thingamabobs, thingamajigs, thingummies, whatchamacallits, whatsises, or widgets you might have at hand, or just leave the loops empty and let them snag on twigs and branches as you walk by, like most of us do.
(4) An arcane and highly intricate sexual practice rumored to be engaged in by wood nymphs, but seldom if ever witnessed and far too stimulating and inappropriate to talk about here.
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so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
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