title: Create jquery item from string without actually inserting into DOM?
body: <p>Is it possible to create a jquery object that I can perform jquery functions on from just a string representation?</p>
  
  <p>I.e.</p>
  
  <pre><code>var item = '&lt;div&gt;hello&lt;/div&gt;';
  ???
  alert(item.html());
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I think I could do it by adding it to the DOM using <code>append()</code>, then reselecting it, but i dont really want to do that as it seems horribly ineffcient.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Thanks for all the replies</p>