Fabergé Crochet

Our family just recently inherited some lovely books & magazines from a dear elderly friend of ours who is moving into assisted living. One of my favourites is a jigsaw puzzle book that she gave to the girls, called Fabergé Treasures

How sheltered a life I live - I'd heard of Fabergé before, but had never seen any examples of his work. Just stunning! So of course I had to find out if there were any needlework & tea related items:

Fabergé Crochet Hook

Feodor Ruckert Tea Set

So now that I'm inspired to make my own Fabergé styled masterpieces, I'll leave you these needlework interpretations of the jewel master's art:

Ladyfiddler's Ornaments

Carina's Embroidered Eggs

Ebb and Flow Earrings

Ebay vs Etsy and Shipping Rant

I would be really interested to know how people are finding sales of crafting items are doing for them on both of these two sites. I'm currently listing some spare patterns on both sites myself. What I'm currently finding is that sales are slow on both sites, but that might be due to me not having enough selection up yet. And while I can't make a comparison for Etsy sales last year (being the new kid on the block there), I know that Ebay sales have been extremely sluggish compared to how I was doing last year.

Perhaps it is because everybody is feeling the pinch these days, and not to do with my own offerings. I know that it's going to be near impossible for me to sell books on Ebay anymore, once the Canadian site puts the shipping cap on it that is currently happening on the US site. for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Ebay.com has rolled out a new policy that all books can only charge a maximum of $4 for shipping - which is really stupid when you think about it.

Not all books are created equal - some are extremely heavy, and even with US Media Mail, would be far more expensive than that to ship. Then there are the rare needlework books that I love - I don't want a seller to skimp on packaging materials just so that they can ship it cheaply to me. I know that the sellers will now have to jack up the initial cost of their books to make up the loss on shipping, but then they lose a percentage of that to Ebay in the way of fees. In my not so humble opinion, it's just a greedy way for Ebay to further rip off the sellers.

The bigger problem with this happening to Ebay Canada down the road is that we don't have a Media Mail shipping option here. A book at 3lbs weight can be stuck in a Priority Mail envelope to travel within the US for $4. That same book would cost $12 to travel within Canada and $15 to go to the US. That's why the majority of book sellers on Amazon.ca are from the US - Canadians can't compete with the cheap shipping that our American neighbours can offer, even in our own country.

Back to Ebay vs Etsy - Ebay is getting to look more and more like a giant box store, full of the same souless goods that can be found in Walmart. Not that there isn't a place for some of those goods, but if I'm going to buy those types of things, I think I would just rather buy it at the box store in my own town than one in another country. Esty is like some wonderful international craft fair. If you want to buy something truly unique, I think it is the best place to go on the internet. However, if you are a seller, I think it takes a longer time to find your target market, because there are just so many incredibly talented artisans that you are up against.

It seems to me that the best option is to put a few items on both sites, plus some other sites like it (iOffer, eBid, Craigslist & Kijiji), all with links and promotional materials to take your customers back to your own website for future sales. Again, I'd love to know from other's experiences what has worked best form them in respect to selling craft related items on the internet.

Vintage Patterns & Gadgets

I love vintage patterns - I don't know exactly where this love stems from - maybe it's in my blood, as my maternal grandma is into collecting all kinds of depression glass, vintage plates, salt & pepper shakers, egg cups and anything to do with the Royal Family. I'm sure that if I had all the time, money, space and unction to live as selfishly as possible (not saying collectors in are selfish, I just think my money should go into more practical things, like food for my 6 children & their home-school supplies, in this stage of my life) I'd amass a collection of ivory carved crochet hooks & knitting needles, gold & mother of pearl inlaid tatting shuttles, ornately carved work-tables, and shelves - row upon rows of shelves - filled to capacity with every kind of yarn and thread imaginable and lined with tomes of antique & vintage needlework books.

Then there would be the gadgets. Those wonderful, and sometimes ridiculously time consuming gadgets which were supposed to make the needle-worker's job easier. Obviously, some were a god-send, such as the knitting rakes & looms, which some previous non-knitters are happily discovering today. Then there were the items that take up more time, use way more fibre and still produced (IMHO) a shoddy product - lap weaving & the K-Tel Knitter come to mind.

One of my favourite gadgets of late is Walter Palange's Knitting Pal. I bought a grey market version of it from a thrift store 7 years ago, but it didn't have the instructions, so it sat in my closet & moved with our family twice before I got the opportunity to use it. I finally sourced a copy of the instructions last year and made a really nice scarf from some novelty yarn in less than 2 hours. I know that would have taken me 2 days to hand knit, so I was really pleased with the results, especially when I considered that I didn't use the knitter to it's full advantage - I only used one yarn colour and therefore only one row at a time. For my next project, I think I will try to make a striped poncho, made up of two rectangular panels, and see how fast the work goes.

The real disadvantage to the Knitting Pal (and any knitting machine, for that matter) is that once you start a project, you pretty much have to take it to the end. If you don't have a separate space to set up the Knitting Pal, you have to worry about pets, children, significant others or guests getting into it and messing it up. And once you have yarn on it, you DON'T want to try to dismantle it from your table and put it aside in a bag, where the yarn will come off the pegs and tangle up. Planning is key to make it enjoyable - I would never make an afghan out of it unless I was going to make smaller panels to join together later. If you have a craft room that is off limits on threat of death though, you could make as large a project as you could stand to make - buy several of these gadgets and line them all up into one massive knitting machine & you're good to go!

More on my adventures with the Knitting Pal to come...

New Blog + Better Access = More Postings?

I already have a blog, actually, three blogs, but I never bother to write anything on them. One blog, attached to my Ebay account, is useless for what I want it to do. Ebay doesn't allow any links on it, which to me is the whole point of having a blog that is actually useful to anybody reading it, and they also have a policy of unfair policing of what is written, so it just wasn't worth it for me to keep writing there. This blog is now going to serve as my replacement for the Ebay blog.

My other blog, also on Blogger here, I just got waylaid to post to, and then I actually forgot what the name of it was, what email address & Id I used for it, so it's lost in the vast reaches of my short-term memory! I guess it wasn't all that important to me... then my most recent blog before this, which I really love, I haven't been able to get access to since March this year. I was hosting it myself from my husband's Macbook, but then he needed the laptop for work. Since I hosted it with iWeb, I can only use that software to update my blog, and I need the original files from the laptop transfered to our new computer before I can make new postings. Really inconvenient, but I love the iWeb format better than all these free blogs on the net. Oh well!

So, here I am starting up another blog, with an easier name to remember (I hope), and I know I can at least access it from any computer with an internet connection. Will it mean more regular postings by me then? Only time will tell :)