NIN and eBay

Nine Inch Nails and eBay have nothing in common other than the fact that those two terms happen to be presently residing in the top three slots of my limited RAM cerebral cortex. Yes, my CPU is grossly under-powered as well when compared to current industry standards. Slot number three is occupied by knitting. Specifically, the sweater which I had not gotten around to making last year for this winter that is currently under construction on over-sized 20mm/US 50 knitting needles.

While having more needles than the law should allow in the implements of construction knitting arsenal, I have but one pair of 20mm needles. They are those which have been around forever. Boye #50 plastic needles. I tend to avoid plastic needles at all costs as they tend to be too "sticky" for me. A mere 7" into this sweater back piece, I can take it no more! I popped over to eBay and purchased a pair of wooden needles made by the same manufacturer from whom I purchased the bamboo and soy yarns. They offer a fair return policy and a lifetime guarantee on their needles, and anything has to be better than my current knitting milieu.

I shop quite a bit on eBay. While my feedback rating is only 204, I have 559 feedbacks posted. That means that I am a repeat customer for several sellers. Yes, I do tend to loyalty, even on eBay. I have purchased everything from earrings to CDs to yarn to beads to vintage patterns to art supplies to quilting notions to books to knitting machines on eBay. Oh yeah, there have been a few transactions that were for several hundred dollars. LOL The most recent having been the 60 pounds of wool yarns that I bought from Bob before he stopped selling on eBay last fall.

There are items that I no longer purchase on eBay regularly. Vintage patterns would be at the top of that list. A few years ago when everyone set out to become a millionaire by selling on eBay, the price for vintage knitting patterns and magazines skyrocketed out of sight. I refuse to pay $15 plus $8 shipping for a back issue of Vogue Knitting. The idea of it is ludicrous and sheer idiocy to me.

A few of the sellers from whom I used to purchase regularly no longer sell on eBay. When the boom hit and eBay began to raise their fees and percentages on sales, it became prohibitive to make a profit to many of the noncommercial vendors. Unless of course they wanted to charge outrageous prices for items and practice extortion for shipping. The evil eBay-acquired spawn, PayPal, even charges the sellers a percentage of the shipping charges. Nothing like double-dipping. (I'm trying very hard to be polite and reasonably politically correct with that last sentence. What came to mind was more a phrase that would have been coupled with "and without lube.")

I still support the venue of eBay, however. There are some wonderful people on there, still. I can shop for goods from all over the planet from the convenience of my chair. And, there are many, many good and honest and fair merchants on there who are seeking to bring diverse and quality products to market.

I am thrilled to see sites such as Etsy www.etsy.com and Wagglepop www.wagglepop.com capturing segments of the niche and general markets.
When I finally get around to the coup that will allow me to re-occupy my studio so that I can make some product for sale, my store site will be on Etsy. I already have it set up and waiting for me to get my ass in gear.

Organizing the studio could be a good project for the wee hours of this morning before I head back to bed around 4am. The boys were behaving too badly to send to the sitter's today. After working 12 hours last night, the last thing that I wanted to do was to spend my day awake babysitting them, but I did it. The sitter has other children there as well, and it simply isn't fair to send them, when they are behaving badly, if I don't have to. As much as I really didn't want to stay up with them all day, I resigned myself to suck it up and tough it out. Michael came in a bit earlier than usual from work, so I was able to hit the bed around 4pm and slept until 9:30.

I'm just finishing up the half-a-pot of Starbucks Serena Organic Blend coffee - ah yes, serum caffeine levels are approaching therapeutic - and feel pretty good at this point. Time to consider other options and venues, take my medications and get up and moving about.

For the NIN portion of the RAM usage... Trent Reznor is tremendously talented and known to be blatantly outspoken. He has no bullshit threshold, and I love it. I subscribe to the NIN site feed on one of my Google homepages. There are days when multiple posts are made to the blog. If you are not checking, you miss out as settings show only the most recent post. Then, there are days that stretch into weeks when nothing is posted. Just when you grow really weary of checking, a post or two (or three) pops up... Damn those temperamental, right-brained, artistic types anyway! LOL

My spinning fibers and beads did not arrive today. I am a bit bummed out by that. Three new knitting patterns did arrive today, though. I have been coveting, for a couple of years now, a pattern by Karabella Yarn for a sweater that is called Traveling Cables. It is an absolutely stunningly beautiful pattern to me. The left-brained accountant offspring thinks it is hideously ugly. It is truly one of those love-it or hate-it patterns.

I have never been of a mindset to drop several dollars for one designer pattern. Though I have seen several that I really wanted to make, the idea of paying that much money for a single pattern simply did not set well in my psyche. Given that I have become quite addicted to the idea of making sweaters and things for ME (for a change), I decided last week to go ahead and take the plunge. Not only did I buy the Karabella pattern, I also purchased several patterns by Oat Couture and Just One More Row for sweaters and vests and hats and a jacket and a coat that I have really wanted to make for quite some time. I am going to make the Traveling Cables sweater pattern in alpaca. I told one of my coworkers about it and added that, for that reason, it will never be seen at work. LOL

I think my next act of submission to the purchasing of the designer patterns will be for Mission Falls. Again, another of those love it or hate it series of patterns. I love it! Creative! Different! Unique!

With that thought and bit of inspiration to motivation, I am off to the studio.