sock porn for knitting voyeurs.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Etsy wrangling

I should be working on the second sock, but am wrestling so much with this I decided to do an etsy post today :) As I mentioned last week, the USPS postal rates for small packages has skyrocketed... many etsy sellers are facing more than 100% increases in shipping rates. I thought mine was going up 50% and I could eat that, but it looks like packages from my shop are going up more than 100% as well.

Bummed, and its been reflected in a raise in pricing for stitch markers in my shop. I've decided to echo the raise in my pricing (and not shipping), since I've been considering this for a while and the USPS ratehike was just the nail in the coffin. I didn't think my shop would be as successful as it has been, and its *not* that I'm ungrateful in the least!!... but its success it has meant for much less free time for me during my day, and its been a tough decision how to quantify the value I place on that. I think its a fair increase-- especially as I've decided to eliminate the secondary shipping costs for multiple purchases (it costs nothing extra now to ship more than one purchase made at the same time), and to use paypal as my shipper so delivery confirmation costs are also being reflected in the purchase price.

green
zero.etsy.com

Phew. Yall don't know how tough this was for me to decide!! I really feel for the other etsy vendors out there, wrestling with this new shape & weight based pricing reality. Thinking of that, support your "local" (USPS makes everyone a local ;)) etsy artists!

A few favorite purchases recently:

marbled
Marbled papers on notecard & Moleskine Cahier by LostMyMarbles.etsy.com

I had no idea what a moleskine was before stumbling onto LostMyMarbles (its a notebook, check out more on its history here). Doesn't really matter, its the marbled papers rocking my world-- so stunning. I've decided to keep the moleskine to archive the patterns I'm writing up as well as other things I'd like to keep near to hand (I've already transcribed my notes from the Fleece Day class, that sort of thing).

Sherry wanted to hear about my favorite shirt shops on Etsy...

chop
Chopsticks, easy as 1 2 3 from HeyBuddy.etsy.com
(Cherry spree pendant from LORiOLA.etsy.com-- still my reigning favorite)

Dan was really nice and helped me by measuring this shirt armpit to armpit after I purchased it (he lets you pick the size you want). I just love red, too... lots y lots.

supa
Analog & Yellow Birdie from supastarr.etsy.com

Last week when posting my kid's new shirts (yes, we now have matching shirts), I discovered supa was having a sale and I couldn't pass these up. These two were silkscreened on American Apparel ("sweatshop free" made in the USA shirts), and I don't even think you can buy AA shirts for as little as she's selling them screened. These make... 6 shirts I have from her now, AND her sale's still going on :)

I've also purchased an etsy-branded shirt from etsyLABS, a silkscreened shirt from Salmon Street Studio (gift, so no pics), and some closeout silkscreens from stevester (ill fitting, my fault for buying the wrong size). Everyone had great service and products :) So does threadless (non-etsy), where I've bought more shirts than all my etsy shirt purchases combined :)

sheep
Glycerin sheep shaped soap (five times fast!), honeysuckle scent from daisycakessoap.etsy.com
(pic from daisycakessoap, used w. permission)

I always try and take pictures of the products I receive. That said, my son loved his sheep soap (to death) in the bath too much... its no longer a discernable sheep :) No matter, both my son and the sheep smell awesome. So do my other purchases from DCS (chai tea, basmati rice, mocha coffee bean)-- but you know... sheep!

wild1

wild2

One of my favorite searches on etsy is for "batt," and one of my favorite sellers of batts is stringtheoryfiberart.etsy.com. Merino, cashmere & some glitz... not enough to scare tomboy me away. This one feels like secret, 3am payphone love :)

That's it for now :) Have a good weekend everyone!


eta. i was going to ignore the 1st tag, but now 2? i've already done 43 things, yo! i was going to smackdown turtlegirl's get out memes free card, but i'll compromise with one and a half and let it die with me :)

1. i watch digital clocks with a little too much intensity. i'm constantly dividing the minutes by the hour, and get a little icewater thrill when it comes up a whole number. if i can't stop looking, i'll start rolling around the lcd arms in my head, turning the numbers into different ones, "carrying" extra arms and letting them dance on the periphery of my vision while i wait for another minute to roll around... praying one number will morph into another evenly.

1a. i first remember doing this at my babysitter's house. she had a coffee table perpendicular to the tv we kids would gather around, a two tiered wood job where we'd fight ("placebacks!") over that spot where we could rest our head inside the table on the lower wood slat but still see the screen. above the tv was a small digiclock on the betamax (mom also sided with beta), and i'd stay in that spot as long as possible, knowing that my sister or one of the millions of other kids would sneak in if i moved. bored with monkees reruns, this was the seed of playing with myself.

10 comments:

Mouse said...

I recently got an order from DaisyCakes Soap myself.. and I loved it! I tried their chai, vanilla sandalwood, and Myrrh soaps & a chocolate mint lip balm. All were excellent!
I've just become an Etsy seller within the past week and I really am finding that I like posting my items there rather than my .com shop.

Alyson said...

For the record, I think the price for your stitch markers is beyond reasonable, even now. Before it was just insane.

I also still stalk your favorite items about once a week to see if there's anything new I haven't discovered yet. :-)

KT said...

The supastarr shirts are unreal. They are SO cool.

And, in the Small World catagory, one of the girls in my Arabic class here was wearing a really cool t-shirt the other day. I commented on it and she was like, "Yeah, it's from this online store! It's called threadless." And I actually knew what that was and felt so cool. So, thanks.

Anonymous said...

The stitch markers at my LYS (owned by a non-knitter... TRAGEDY!!!) cost $16-20 and they are nowhere near as cool as yours, so no worries!

lexa said...

I always love your Etsy Fridays!

The other day we had to mail three small skeins of tapestry wool in an envelope. (We're talking small and light here.) When the store owner went to mail it, they wanted over $8 (and that's with the business discount) because of its thickness. She ended up getting it open, flattened it down as much as she could so it would fit through the letter thing, and it cost $1.10! (The man was only paying $7something in the first place!)

HPNY KNITS said...

cool shirts- and I love the matching with the kid- cute!
I am very careful with etsy. I once searched "alpaca" and I am still paying for it...

Anonymous said...

I used to watch my grandfather's digital clock, too. It was an early digital, and it had this glowing rose. Clockwise the petals would glow, one at a time, and after the flower was full, it would empty of its glow. After filling up and emptying, a minute had passed. When they both died, almost everything in their house was sold at an estate sale. One of my life's greatest regrets was not going through their things (not to take, necessearily, but to understand who they were a little better). Selfishly, I would have liked, in retrospect, to own my grandmother's Franciscan ware, which she kept so meticulously pure (she would even let me wash those dishes, when we used them), and my grandfather's vintage bowling shirts, her hair brush/ comb set with a shell based pincussion- for hat pins, which she left out on the dresser, the anniversary clock . . . . Stuff like that. I have dreams about that house, constantly.

Bogie said...

I can't believe what USPS did with international post options. Getting rid of Global Priority? Are you kidding me? And then raising rates to the point where the postage costs more than the product... grrr. Sorry, I just had to vent. I'm trying to figure out how much it's going to cost to send a t-shirt to the UK and it's ridiculous.

Seems perfectly reasonable for you to raise your prices given what's happened.

Chris said...

I think your prices were a bit low before, so... :) I'm afraid I'll be destitute if I clck on all the etsy links you post!

Amelia of Ask The Bellwether said...

between your moleskin recommendation and zenhabits' (www.zenhabits.net) use of them for their zen-to-done take-off on GTD (whatever that is, LOL) I'm happy to say two of those lovely marbled moleskins from lostmymarbles are heading my way (along with another etsian's takeoff on the art ... or two, wow creativity abounds)

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