CG's Newsletter

2008, #3

I bought these Salvatore Ferragamo boots at a consignment store. The original retail price was $1000.00. My price was $25.00.

It’s not at all unusual for those of us who love fabric and clothing to also love secondhand clothing stores. Since we already know what wonderful clothes look like, it’s easy for us to pick them out even when they’re crammed on racks with other, far less wonderful items. For me, the fun of shopping secondhand has a lot to do with the teeny, tiny prices. The icing on the cake is that clothing reuse is a good thing for the environment. Every time a new garment is made, resources are used and pollutants are emitted. When you buy used clothing, you’re not adding to this problem.

Even though I’ve been shopping the thrifts for 30 years, until pretty recently only my closest friends knew. Then one day I gave a speech on the topic to my speakers group, Toastmasters, thinking that it might amuse people in a quirky kind of way. A fellow group member, Glenn Harrison, told me that other people could benefit from knowing what I know, and he kept hounding me to start writing about it until I gave in.

A few months ago I started a blog about secondhand clothing and am building a website around the blog that will have information about the financial, ecological and style benefits of buying used. I also have written a guidebook that tells how to create a wardrobe from thrift store finds, which I will sell as an e-book.

My blog is located at www.secondhandwardrobe.com. Have a look and leave me a comment. See you there!

2008, #2

"Too Much Alone Time", Silk Painting, Copyright Cheryl Gorn, 2008, 21" x 22"

I’ll be hanging around with my daughter when she’ll suddenly pop out with, “Oooh, I love the shape of her nostrils.” She constantly draws faces so she notices these things.

Before becoming her mother, I didn’t particularly notice facial features. But to make the piece pictured in the photo, I had to spend a huge amount of time looking at myself in the mirror so I’d get it right.

For other pieces of art, I’ve spent hours looking at floorboards and the parts of a salad, but when I made a soft sculpture piece that included an ice cream cone, I had to take a picture of it because it would have melted before I’d gotten enough information. Of course I ate it once I’d captured the image.

I think that art is one way to practice getting better at focusing on details. I notice facial features more than I used to but I've got to admit that nostril shapes still don’t fascinate me.

The Certainty of Right and Wrong

2008, #1

This morning, a driver in a huge pick-up truck ignored the stop sign that’s at the intersection in front of my home. This happens all the time, which is why I pull out of my driveway at about 3 miles per hour, with my foot hovering over the brake. This morning my first reaction to their bad driving was to silently curse them and their immediate relatives. My second reaction was to try to be more understanding, wondering if perhaps they were distracted by something in their lives, were just plain tired, or maybe didn’t take the time to eat and had low blood sugar. I go through this all day long, trying to remember that mine isn’t the only perspective, to remember that life isn’t all black and white, it’s more shades of gray.

It can get really tiring trying to put myself in other peoples shoes this way, and that’s why I loved creating my website. Let me explain. To format the site, I used HTML code, a kind of computer language. For example, I wanted the name of my business in pretty letters at the top of the web pages, so I typed in the letters, numbers and symbols that tell the computer, “Now, listen up computer, I want you to put the name of my business in pretty letters at the top of each page." At first the computer left the space at the top of the pages blank. Oops! That meant I'd made a mistake when I entered the code. So I corrected my error and then it worked. Simple and fantastic! No energy spent wondering whether the computer had low blood sugar, just a matter of making sure that I fixed my mistakes.

I’m not implying that building the site wasn’t frustrating—since I’d never written code before, I made tons of mistakes, it took much longer than I thought it would, and I often wanted to hurl the computer out the window (not very effective since our home is one level). But there is something wonderful about the certainty of right and wrong.

In general, I prefer shades of gray because that’s where the fun is. But it’s reassuring to know that when I get tired of trying to fathom why other drivers don’t bother to stop at stop signs, I can always go write some code.