Clothes Swap!

And speaking of fabulous re-use occasions, I was lucky enough to get to go to the fabulous annual Back-to-School Clothes Swap that Kathie and Bernadette of Future Craft Collective launched last year. What a beautiful, beautiful, very beautiful thing... not only is it so very useful and common-sensical and FUN to swap clothes rather than buy a whole new wardrobe, but they've even instituted a whole new element that makes it ten times cooler by having on-site silk screeners and seamstresses there to tailor and customize the clothes of the past into YOUR clothes of the FUTURE!! Isn't that so AWESOME?!? And all totally and completely for FREE?!? I tell you , in our brave new world, this will be happening everywhere, all across the world, to the great joy and inestimable financial savings of all.

And speaking of Future Craft Collective, have I told you lately that I love them? They are so incredibly brilliant. All summer long they had a weekly tutorial over at Craftzine.com, and the ideas were so so good. I hate to diss, but for a year or so now I have been waiting with baited breath for Amanda Blake Soule's book Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures. Absolutely LOVED her first book, The Creative Family. This second one, I was surprised to find a little 'meh'. Especially after all these brilliant, innovative, fun and outside-the-box projects each week from FCC. They will have a book someday I'm sure and it's going to knock everyone's socks off. My breath is now baited!