Starting the week out

Good Morning All,

The snow is all gone again! There are fog warnings. They are even saying we could have thunder tonight and I need my flippers to get to the mail box. Wow what a weird winter. I am just very glad it is not 20 below. After living in Tampa for 20 years it has been a bit of an adjustment to come back home. But home I am and home I am going to stay (at least for today).

I sold a couple of Tri Looms over the weekend, a 6 " and a 12". I put them up on eBay and they sold in just a few hours. The problem is I figured I had a week to get boxes to ship them in. You see I use Pizza boxes for small tri looms. So start the saga of the Pizza Box.

We had bunches of snow last week, so bad my big pine tree in my front yard had two branches stuck to the roof of my car from the weight of the snow. This is a very pretty sight as everything was white and you could see diamonds in the snow when the sun came out for its usual 3 minutes a day. Friday I posted 3 Tri Looms to my eBay account. Friday night they sold. Now by Saturday things were starting to warm up and melt so my very long drive was getting slick from the packed snow. I must admit I do not do much driving as I work from home. A trip to the grocery store, hardware store, post office, and out to lunch for my favorite Smoked Salmon Fresh Fruit Salad is a big day out. Starting a new endeavor I have channeled my meager resources into the business and not into frivolous things like snow tires. I decided to order a medium pizza and ask for a large empty box be delivered also. The guy on the phone said no problem 40 minutes. I said thanks. Well, 40 minutes, time for a quick shower. Jumped into the shower, had my long hair in a big lather and the door bell rings!!!!!! AGGGGG. Grab my big terry towel robe and head for the door. Pizza guy was there in 25 minutes and they forgot the extra box. I gave him a$3.50 tip because he said he was down this way often and would drop the box by. That was the last I saw of the pizza guy. Must have been the Terry Robe. LOL

Today I am off to the pizza place to get my own box. I wrote to my customer and shared about the box and she said no problem.

Like I said Friday this eBay selling stuff is fun. but it is weird when you look at it from the sellers side. You can check the statis of any of your sales at anytime. You can see how many visits your item has had and you can track how many watchers the item has. Now as a buyer I always waited until the last few minutes to bid on an item. It is the fun of the race at the end to see who has the fastest computer and typing skills. I still have some competitive nature in my soul and bidding on eBay helps fill that "got to get it, got to beat the other person out" syndrome. As a seller I hate that everyone is waiting until the last minute to see who wins my stuff. I do like the Buy It Now button though and can tell when I have priced something just right as it sells as soon as I post it. I know it is a numbers game.

Boy is Ebay a numbers game. My first post to eBay was 150202474798, in an hour I posted my fifth item and it was 150202483695 That is 8897 posts at even $1.00 per post not counting the 5.25% sale price. Sure wish I was on the original design board for eBay. That was only one hour. When I posted items Sunday just four days from my starting number eBay was up to 150203020347 a total of 545549 listings in just four days. I guess we are shopping on line more.

This had gotten long enough today. I have some work to do in my wood shop. I also want to weave a few rugs today. I had better get off the computer and get to work.

Before I go, let me ask you what would you like to see here? Patterns for weaving? eBay hints on selling? Some of my favorite stories, mostly about animals, like the time Clarissa Sue landed in my salad at the Steak house. Yes, Clarissa Sue was a very small monkey. She came home in my shirt pocket.

Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Have a very Happy Fiber day, Kathy

eBay

It is january 4, 2008 and I have been very busy. I have picked up salvages from Goodwill and placed them on eBay for sale. Whitin 2 hours of posting I got sales. I wish I had known how easy it was to sell stuff on eBay, I would have been there long before this week. One of the Ladie's who purchased a couple of Tri Looms from me wrote and said she found this Blog. Now I feel guilty I have not written more. So here I am. I moved everything in my living room to set up a staging area for sales. I set up a system to track what I am selling and what is sold. I am not by nature an organized person so this has been fun learning new skills. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Here I am at almost 52 years old learning new things. I love it.

I got to go to the Christmas dinner at Goodwill this year and it was great seeing the Director serving everyone their sodas. I got to see all of the team working on the salvage and took hand woven rugs, candy and other stuff to give out. A great time was had by all. It is always nice to go into the back room and hear my name ring out. I feel like Norm in Cheers. LOL

I got a call today and Goodwill has another 50 pounds of salvage ready for me to pick up. So I will have more posted on eBay soon. If you want to see some of my stuff just go to eBay and either search for my account "ShawlsbyKathy" or type "rug weaving salvage" into the search engine. Either one will get you to me.

It is almost 11PM and I have had a long day. Better get to bed. I will try to be better about writing here.