priya.cardamomin Seasons & Celebrations · Toronto ·
ChallengeAdvent smell swap: pick a week, pair up
Thread of the week: an advent swap for noses. December is still a way off, but anything involving a coffee date across town takes planning.
1) Pick one of four weeks: kitchen, outdoors, shops and churches, or summer, for everyone south of the equator. 2) Post one smell for that week, from real life. No bottles, no brands. 3) If another member lives in your city, pair up and swap the real thing over a coffee: a few cloves in a twist of paper, a pine cone, a strip of dried peel. Nobody posts an address, ever.
To warm up, try the blind jar exercise in the Class on the scents of Christmas. Over to you.
12 comments
kemi.cocoa
Kitchen week, please: cocoa powder and cinnamon in a pan of milk. Saturday mornings in my mum's kitchen.
rafa_azahar
Kitchen for me too, bitter orange peel, dried on the radiator. In my house the Christmas starts with that smell.
brynn.pine
Outdoors week: crushed balsam fir needles. Happy to swap a bag with anyone in Minneapolis.
dex_in_brooklyn
star anise. smells like licorice and nobody at the pass believes you're supposed to put it in wine
mo_from_leicester
Saffron warmed in milk for me. And for anyone who ends up wanting bottles after all, Mademoiselle Bulle's gift guide for women mentions discovery sets of miniatures.
amara.oud
Shops and churches for me: frankincense, cold. Not lit, just a tear in a little dish.
ingrid_berlin
Pepparkakor dough, raw, before the oven. Ginger and clove, all treble. Kasia, Thiago, a Berlin swap over coffee?
kasia.berlin
Yes please, Ingrid. I bring smoked dried plums, for the kompot my mother makes on Christmas Eve.
thiago.berlin
I'm in too. Mine is guava paste. It is not Christmas, but it is home.
hamish_heather
Aye, put me in the shops week with an empty sherry cask stave. Dried fruit and old oak, and folk who come in always ask to sniff it.
nell.wattle
Summer week is mine: eucalyptus leaves after an arvo storm. Does the storm itself count as a smell?
priya.cardamom
The wet leaves do, Nell, so yes. Where we stand: kitchen week is nearly full with cocoa, orange peel, star anise, saffron milk, pepparkakor, smoked plums and guava paste; outdoors has balsam; summer has your eucalyptus; shops and churches have frankincense and a cask stave. Only Berlin has paired up so far.