Only two months late. Lots going on, that’s all. Main memory of January – grey, grey and more grey. And some difficult moments, of course – four years now since everything changed.
Moving swiftly on. Some intimations of spring, for sure – violets, daffodils and even tulips getting going in the gardens opposite. And – at last – a bit of time for spinning again. I have a lot of plans for this. But first, finishing off some fractal spun art yarns that have been cluttering up my wheels for some weeks now. Feels good to have caught up – and I know of at least one person who will be glad to get some of it into a weaving project! The rest are heading for my Etsy shop.
A day that started early, ended late (only a few minutes left till midnight, once again) but didn’t seem to go anywhere much in between. Some useful Etsy listing though – hand warmers this time. I am definitely making a dent in the pile, which is satisfying (and also means I can think about making more stuff…)
I really should be using all my very best, beautiful stashed yarns now. I probably already don’t have enough life left to get through them all – though there is definitely pleasure in spreading them out to admire. I think I am waiting for them to shout out to me exactly what they want to become – it does sometimes happen! Until I am absolutely sure, I will probably just keep on stroking and purring….
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!
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.
SpinningStreak 