Bugs
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Getting the flower buds off lavender stalksIf you let the lavender dry on its stalks, you can gather fist size bunches and rub the ends together against each other like two brooms and virtually all the flower heads fall off with hardly any work at all. If you're really clever like me you'll do this over some large sheets of newspaper 
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sally_in_wales
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And if you save the bunches of stalks, they are lovely laid onto the last embers of an open fire during the winter, makes the room smell like summer for a few moments
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Cathryn
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Prosaic and poetic pair - and my latest lavender plant appears to be doing ok - so give me a few more years and I can try this as it is my favourite plant of all. (And year after year I try growing it and year after year it fails but this new house is the muddiest yet and I have gone overboard on the gravel for this one plant - so I think thas whats done it.)
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Lozzie
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I cut some flowers the other evening and stuffed them into a spare child-sized sock, then tied up the end and threw it into the bath under the hot running water.
Calmed my manic children down nicely just before bed.
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dpack
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bit late for this year but dry and rub is so nice a method ahhh the smell , the smell .
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giraffe
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Some great ideas here!
This is how I do it: I leave them on the bush until most of the flowers have dried naturally on it (round about now) then go off into the garden with a large container (old 3 pint plastic kitchen jug usually) then grab the end of the stalk nearest the plant and run it through my fingers until I end up with a handful of flowers which I put in the jug and the bare stalk remains on the bush. Keep going until the jug is full or the bush fairly bald then get out the hedge trimmers and give the bush a haircut ready for next year, taking care not to cut too far back into the older woody stuff in the middle.
I have no idea if this is the "correct" way of dealing with lavender bushes, but I have been doing it for a number of years and my lavender bush is now very healthy and enormous (about five feet diameter and about as tall as I am!) so I'm figuring that it can't be doing too much harm.
I make lavender bags for my wardrobe and sachets for putting inside pillow cases, use whole dried stems for putting in vases in the loo and use some of the dried flowers in home made soap.
THe smell is gorgeous!
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Nanny
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i tried putting a lavendar sachet under the pillow
all i got was
"What's that horrible smell?" from mr nanny so had to dispense with it 
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