New Skill Obtained!

You can now count me among the people who can crochet and knit! Yep, last week, I decided to pick up the needles instead of the hook and I taught myself how to knit! Well, I had some help from the New Stitch a Day website. They've helped me with tough crochet stitches in the past, and well, I've learned quite a lot about knitting from them too! One thing I didn't realize is that there are SO many ways to do one thing! Like casting on, there's dozens of varieties! Also, knitting in the round is ridiculously difficult compared to crocheting. Maybe this in why there aren't many cute toys knitted compared to crocheted. I can say that my hands are unbelievably sore. Since I learned how to crochet first, I have a specific way I hold my yarn and how I work. My left hand now has to do things that only my right hand took care of in the past. Good grief!

For the first week, I was just trying new stitches on leftover yarn, but I moved on to patterns recently. Just dish cloths for now, nothing too serious. You can never have enough of those things xD I found this geeky little pattern and I attempted it last week and failed miserably. I blame all these 'bobbles' which I can't find any video tutorials for -.- Soooo, the other night, I said to myself 'screw it, I'm going to alter it'. Instead of doing bobbles, I just made the stitches stand out in contrast to the stockinette stitch. The results were, well, you tell me.

 

I think, all things considered as my first pattern, I think I did ok. If you can't tell what it is, the image inside the cloth is a Dalek from the Doctor Who series. Just this evening, I did another one too, I really like the way this one turned out! 

(Ugh, blogger's uploader is a total failure tonight. I had to put both photos on another site and copy-paste them to here. Its like, it doesn't want to take my photos! Laaame!)

Anywho, we're pushing 4 am here, time for me to 'attempt' to sleep. Night night!

eBay's Seller Feedback System: Siding With Buyers

Normally, I don't think ranting is appropriate on my blog, but I've become really irritated with a few things lately surrounding eBay. The first thing is people agreeing to pay, then running away. The second thing is eBay only allows sellers to give positive, or no feedback at all.

eBay is a great place. A marketplace where people can compare prices, locations and shipping options for just about anything in the world. I get some of my crafting supplies from wonderful sellers there. There's lots of great buyers out there too, the ones I had during the Christmas season were especially wonderful since that was my first run. Just as there are wonderful people out there, there's some very rude, inconsiderate, irresponsible 'buyers' out there too... I've had the unfortunate luck to run across two of them. Back in March, someone won a pair of earrings from me for a measly $3 and change. I figured the winner hadn't checked their mail yet and would pay for the item within a few days. Well, a few days turned into weeks. I got irritated and opened a dispute. They still ignored my requests. I checked the buyers feedback which seemed to be getting lots of positive feedback. I looked closer to see that many of those 'positive' feedbacks were in actuality were sellers posting negative feedback about how the buyer never responded to them either. I got my listing fees back and continued on.
No less than a month later, another buyer did the same thing for a $5 transaction. I waited, and nothing. I contacted them and nothing. Their feedback was ok, with a rating that appeared to be after their purchase from me... so I wondered if they decided to ignore me. Either way, I decided to do to them what other sellers had done in the past, left 'positive' feedback, telling sellers to beware. It just sucks that some people can't read the rules. The confirmation screen before you buy says that you are contractually obligated to make the purchase. Ignorance must be bliss. Thankfully for me, both accounts now have an unpaid item on their record. I wish they could get more than a slap on the wrist for their stupidity.

My second point is that us sellers are told we can't leave negative feedback, that's a luxury for buyers only. eBay's explanation for this is :

"Sellers can leave only positive ratings for buyers. That means buyers should feel free to leave honest Feedback without fear of retaliation. We also have safeguards in place to protect sellers against unfair negative or neutral Feedback. "

These "safeguards" are nothing more than slaps on the wrist for buyers who don't pay for items. They're behind the scenes too. While buyers should be able to leave negative feedback for bad sellers, sellers should be able to leave negative feedback for bad buyers! Its not retaliation if the buyer really didn't hold up their end of the bargain.

The idea I came up with is fairly simple. Should a buyer not pay, or something else comes up, the buyer starts a dispute. Things run their natural course with the system and once sellers are allowed to close the case and it ends in favor of the seller, ONLY THEN are they allowed to enter negative feedback. For example:

Betsy Buysalot goes on a shopping spree on ebay, buying a few different things from different buyers. She buys from Susie Sellsalot and then decides that she doesn't want to pay for the necklace she just agreed to purchase. Betsy decides to not answer her email and not log into eBay for a few weeks to hide. Susie has been waiting for payment, a payment that will help her pay her utility bills in her home. The payment never comes through, causing other problems for her. 

Susie is upset that Betsy has decided to back out of the purchase she agreed to, so she opens a case with eBay saying that Betsy hasn't paid. eBay contacts Betsy through the email address that she has decided to ignore for a few weeks now and makes Susie wait even longer. Finally, Susie is allowed by eBay to close the case against Betsy, saying that she was never paid. Then, Susie is emailed a link where she is allowed to leave brief, informative, negative feedback that will be shown on Betsy's feedback page. Here, it will say that Betsy did not pay for her item and that sellers should beware. Betsy's account now also has a strike on her record, where if she gets three within 90 days and a total of 10 over the lifetime of the account, her account is removed from eBay and any further attempt to register an account with similar information will also be blocked.

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The way I've seen things work so far in eBay, they just seem to slap the wrists of the buyers, tell them not to do it again and move on to the next complaint. I wish they would take a little more time and support some of the good sellers. Those of us who are trying to make some money to take care of themselves and start their businesses. Not all sellers are evil corporations out to sham people out of their money and give them shoddy products.

Ok, I think that's the end of my rant. At this point, I blame the rant partly on eBay, and partly on the wasp sting I got tonight. Anywho, I'll be posting more photos of work soon.