Heliotropic List #6
An up-cycled Christmas
It’s the month of advent calendar countdowns and Spotify Wrapped. I share mine, plus some up-cycled Christmas decorations and a garden update.
Updates from week one as a novice gardener - I know sweet f-all about gardening, but fuelled with enthusiasm thanks to the Spicy Moustache’s contagious love for his garden (who I mentioned last week), I managed to find some up-cycled metal containers and even a step stool from a private owned local second hand shop and begin my foray into the plant mum world. It’s a steep learning curve, which is why I think starting in small spots, particularly being a renter is the way to go. A few initial learnings to share. 1) The philosophy of Korean farming is that you should repurpose what you can find around you in your garden and I love that. 2) If looking to up-cycle, marketplace is not the place (everyone is trying to make a dollar). Look around at your local resource recovery centres or second hand stores instead. 3) There’s so much more to gardening than I thought and this is going to be one very steep learning curve. This is how it’s going (in pictures):
The prettiest upcycled Christmas decorations - made from tomato paste tubes. YouTube tutorial here. I only saw this recently, so I won’t pretend I have enough tomato paste tubes to make this many, but I will definitely try one or two and hoard them for future Christmas’s:
A short film - the Japanese Rock and Rollers filmed for the Tokyo Weekender. I love how many worlds there are in this one world.
Photo project by Naples stylist Riccardo Maria Chiacchio - called “Chille ch’e’ ncuolle a ‘tte n’e’ rroba toja” lyrics from a Neopolitan song from the late 1200s that women would chant while doing the laundry. It translates to “what you’re wearing isn’t yours.” He describes it as “a love letter to myself and my city,” and shares “I also want to show how proud I am and how proud everyone should be of their Mediterranean features such as curly dark hair or big noses. Enough with this Europization of beauty. Nobody should be ashamed of how they were born and of the features that have been given to them generation by generation.”
A thought - I recently discovered that the saying jack of all trades master of none was taken out of context. The end of that sentence is “is often better than a master of none.”
A thought from Rilke
Worth a watch - Fried Rice, a short film by Hawaiian champion spear fisher and free diver Kimmy Wearner.
