I was lucky enough to attend a gleeful girlie swap this weekend. It was definitely worth leaving the house and violating my self-imposed hibernation policy. These days, with dreams of a beach vacation and debt that doesn’t seem to be disappearing on its own, shopping in other friends’ closets makes frugal sense.

Over wine, cheese and strawberries with some delicious creamy dipping sauce I forgot to ask about, we grabbed clothes and magazines and gabbed about blind date set ups, work woes, and the status of Mickey Rourke’s busted up face.

It is always exciting to see old clothes get a new life. With a dash of vision and ambition, boring, wrinkled discards can be resurrected. A skirt from a previous swap reappeared as a Doctor-Zhivago-goes-to-chef-school hat, a millinery project by one of our more ambitious swappers.  Old lumpy sweaters reappear as pillows or get felted into tea cozies. Too tight blouses always look sexy on the skinny bitch we keep meaning to ban from future swaps.

We were snarky, supportive and noisy, and came away with new stashes of goodies and baggies of leftover cookies. With the warm glow of  female bonding and wine guzzling, I felt a little less assaulted by the cold trudge to the subway.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Bargain Hunting, Cheap Dates . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.