Category: Etsy

Lost in translation

I was (briefly) gutted today to receive a four star review for the handspun yarn above. In the 15 years I have been selling on Etsy (1,657 sales to date) I have never before had fewer than the full five stars. (Well, there was one occasion when a buyer awarded me three because she couldn’t fasten her item. She withdrew the low review when I showed her where the buttons were neatly concealed!)

The buyer of the yarn above was very sweet. She praised the wool as ‘very pretty’ and mentioned fast delivery etc But she was disappointed that the colours looked different. I don’t usually have a problem getting accurate photos of those particular colours (some purple/blues are quite a different matter…) and I had clearly taken several pictures on different days, from batt to skein, before and after setting the twist…so there is not a lot more I can do about how they look on different monitors.

The reason I mention this here, though, is because of the online translation. My buyer is French (with a lovely Etsy name involving sheep). The relevant part of her review states that ‘les couleurs sont assez différentes de la photo’. It just so happens that I speak French – and in any case that sentence is hardly complicated. It has been translated by Etsy (Google?) as ‘the colours are quite different from the photo’. NOT correct. ‘Assez’ often does carry the meaning of ‘quite’ – but here it should have been rendered as ‘rather’ or ‘somewhat’ different, NOT ‘quite different’ = ‘totally different’, which is QUITE DIFFERENT and not QUITE FAIR!

I wonder how often I encounter this online in languages I don’t know and so have no chance of spotting it.

PS. I am well over fretting about the lost star! In the scale of things it doesn’t make a scrap of difference and it wasn’t really anything in my control. I shall treat the incident as character building, and a warning not to get complacent!

Day 13: Unfinished business

Listing on Etsy, that is. And today other work (which I love doing) got in the way as well. But I’m on it now – much of the yarn from yesterday’s pictures has already made it up there and I am beginning on the hot water bottles. I am under some pressure to clear space in the house (photo on Blogvember day 5 gives just a partial view….) People helpfully point out that until I do list the stuff, no-one can actually buy it. Well, of course I do know that, but describing finished items is so boring, compared to making them…. Very important to do it carefully though, so I’m now back at it.

Cup of tea in 20 minutes? Chocolate in an hour? Sneaky bit of spinning at midnight? That’s the kind of desperate bribery I seem to be into.

Out of time

Struggling as usual with WP – and now, at nearly midnight, I have a choice of sneaking out of Blogvember after one week, or just marking a place with the photos I posted on Etsy earlier.

Hand warmers remain a mystery to me. Of course, I understand about seasonal fluctuations (though actually on a global platform like Etsy it is always winter somewhere ….) but I have noticed that sales of hand/wrist warmers follow a curious pattern. Once they start to sell, they simply fly away – followed by what can be a lengthy lull. Must be something about fashion – which is something I am more than happy to ignore.

No particular reason – but SpinningStreak is back.

Unlike the dodos.

Back from holidays, from spending more time in France (of course) – and back to spinning (today) and work (tomorrow!)

Almost a year – wow. I’m sure I’m also back to discovering WordPress has ‘improved’ everything I used to be able to manage. We’ll see.

The blossom in the pictures (plum and quince) is somewhat misleading – absolutely no fruit this year, probably a late frost in May.

Back also to sorting stock – took this photo in front of me right now, but daren’t even turn round to show the rest – or the other rooms….!!

Drawing a veil….

Some difficult months – not helped by the random popup ‘memory’ feature on the iphone – thanks, Apple….

But after some debate SpinningStreak has decided to resurface, and maybe I’ll hide behind her for a while!

September in the Auvergne

I spent the last few weeks keeping an indigo bath on the go – temperatures in the 30s definitely helped to prolong it. These pictures are a mixture of indigo and logwood on merino, alpaca, silk and one skein of linen.

The hedges looked pretty strange at times.

Made a good start on the cosy stuff as well – though it is always a bit weird to be working on winter items in 34 degrees.

Crescent scarves next on the list – need a stock of those because they seem to go down well as gifts.

Apparently I have entirely forgotten how to edit these posts – can’t even shift the images around any more. So, apologies – but if I mess around wasting any more time I know I will just delete the lot!