The Big Shwop - December 2011

Hello All - I hope you're enjoying your first few days of 2012, I only have one more day off work and then its back to business (well until 19 January when I take a two and a half week trip to Asia).

This blog post is actually going back in time a little bit, back at the start of December some friends and I went to The Big Shwop which is a semi regular even that happens in Wellington.

What is The Big Shwop, well its pretty simple, you pay $20 of the organisers and turn up on the day of the swap. The event I attended was held at the St James Theatre - you bring along with you any good quality clothes and shoes you have to swap.

There are a number of volunteers at the swap and they check out what clothes you've bought along, to make sure they are good quality. You can bring along a maximum of 20 items of clothing, for each item The Big Shwop volunteers accept, they will give you a voucher which you can use for "purchasing" other clothes in the Shwop. The vouchers in this swap were puzzle pieces. There is a couple of hours break between the drop off time and the time the shwop begins, this is so the volunteers can arrange all the clothes into type and size. Here's a sneak peak of the clothing racks when I handed over my clothes for swapping, as you can see they are already pretty full and the drop off time wasn't even finished. The whole event was sponsored by Triology, which is a Wellington based skincare company. Whilst we were waiting for all the clothes to be sorted for the shwop we were able to pick up some free products from the Triology table, which was pretty rad. The products we received may have cost more than the ticket to the event!

Here are the goodies I got from the event, the black boots actually used to belong to my friend Ria! I had 13 vouchers but I only got 16 things, I think the main reason for this is that when the swap was officially open, people kind of went crazy and I'm just not that pushy when it comes to shopping. Most of the things I've picked up were passed onto me by my friends who found them and thought I'd like them.

Due to all the pushy people at the shwop, I'm not sure I would like to go along again. My friend Kat runs clothes swaps fairly regularly and I think I prefer these types of swap as they just aren't so crazy.

I have worn a few of the clothes I have received in the swap recently - here's how they looked!

Cheetah Print Top and Biker Boots

White Shoes