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I was flipping through the TV channels and Rachael Ray was on. There was a woman showing gift wrapping using a type of “Mottainai Furoshiki,” which is a symbol of the Japanese culture to reduce waste. Furoshiki is “a Japanese traditional wrapping cloth which is used repeatedly in a stylish way.” “Mottainai” means “it’s a shame for something to go to waste without having made use of its potential in full.” Together, they are folding and wrapping ideas to use with a scarf for wrapping presents (instead of using paper or plastic). Some of them are really nifty, like warpping two books into what looks like a purse of sorts to hold the books. The technique is further explained as putting “an accent on taking care of things and avoiding wastes.”

To get directions, you follow a bunch of links on her site to eventually get to the Ministry of the Environment site. To save you time, here is the site with the directions.

At times I wrap gifts for friends in fabric that I painted, and this will be such a cool way to do it.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Gadgets/Good Finds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.