Wellness Wednesday: Green Gifts

For myself and many of my friends, this is the year of turning the big 4-0. It seems like every week a school or uni classmate is hitting this milestone. But at our age, we just about have everything we need except for money and time, and unfortunately I’m not equipped to wrap up either of those in a pretty parcel. I often tend to give people jewellery or other little bits and pieces I’ve made, but some friends are not big on accessories (or their children are overly partial to dangly earrings, which makes them an entirely impractical gift) and I have to stretch my creative muscle a little further.

Recently, I was wracking my brains about what to give a friend who is very into self sufficiency – she probably wouldn’t exactly say no to diamonds and decorative baubles, but I thought she might prefer gifts that grow as she enjoys harvesting her own vegies to make all kinds of healthy meals. So I got her a selection of vegetable seedlings and made them look a bit fancier by placing them in a box and wrapping them in a big silk scarf.

I really don’t enjoy wrapping presents usually as I have no patience for using paper that will just be ripped off and discarded (or recycled, hopefully!) and no skill for making gifts look pretty, but a wrapping scarf (furoshiki in Japanese) is super easy to use – maybe it’s because I’m used to working with textiles?

A furoshiki (or any kind of wrapping cloth) is also very eco friendly as it doesn’t require any ribbon or tape to secure it, but more importantly, it can be used multiple times. Theoretically my friend can use the scarf to wrap a present for someone else, but hopefully she will keep it to dress up her own outfits! Maybe she’ll wear it on a fancy occasion when she serves up the vegies from her garden?

If you have a friend who (thinks she) never wears scarves but you still like the idea of wrapping a present for her in a silk furoshiki, you could point out its anti-ageing properties… and the fact that it could be worn as a skirt… like vegies that keep on growing, scarves really are gifts that keep on giving! (At least I hope my friend thinks so!)