My love of eBay

After the craziness of daily posting last week, this week is going to be fairly post-lite. A combination of work/life getting in the way of quiet evenings at home (Monday and Tuesday evening were given over to my ACCA course, Wednesday evening is role-play night and Thursday evening I’m off to a fancy hotel for a work do) means no time to craft, and no time to blog about crafting.

So instead, here is a brief ramble on the joys of eBay.

I’ve been a fan of eBay for a long time. When I was at university I saw it as a great place to get funky clothes for not very much money; I must have bought at least ten different t-shirts with Disney Tinker Bell motifs! It is also a wonderful place to buy costume for LARP, both purpose-designed items and random stuff that can be turned into kit with a bit of effort.

I think, though, my favourite eBay purchase to date was this Betsy & Adam dress, which would have cost me something like £120 if I’d bought and imported it from the US, but actually only cost me £22. And because it’s American, it has an 8 on the label, which made me smile!

 

When I started crocheting, I started to look on eBay for craft supplies. There is so much on there! In particular, I used it to check if I could get yarn cheaper than in my LYS, although for the most part, there are cheaper places to go than eBay (particularly when you include postage). I have also found that, like many places, the focus is on the knitting side of things, and crocheting is vastly under-represented, so it isn’t a great alternative to the local and online craft stores for things like crochet hooks. It was invaluable, however, for finding the correct bright orange acrylic for making the Tiger Stripe Starghan.

More recently though, I’ve been desiring “proper” crochet stitch markers, as I’ve had issues with some of my projects where the Kirby grips I have been using have slid out of the stitches and it has caught me unawares. This has been most irritating in my ongoing crochet sock project.

The pattern requires separately identifiable stitch markers for the various bits of the sock, to mark the increases in the sides, middle and to work out turning the heel. I managed the foot part well enough with just the Kirby grips, but now I need more stitch markers for the heel and I’m running out of grips and scrap yarn pieces to tie to them to make them look different!

I had been looking on Etsy for homemade stitch markers, and seen a very limited selection of crochet-specific ones on there in the UK. But the prices were still making me cringe a little. I even considered making my own but reasoned as I have no existing equipment for jewellery making, it would be just as prohibitively expensive.

Then I found yarnandcraft, an eBay seller who sells handmade stitch markers at an incredibly low price. The majority of her listings are for knitting stitch markers, but when I found her she had two lots that were specifically crochet markers, with lobster catches instead of rings.

Can you believe it – I won both auctions for just 99p! She even combined the postage for me, as I bought two sets at once. They are so beautiful and packaged so prettily. They come attached to a ribbon bow as you see in the picture, but that is attached to a piece of card which sits inside a gorgeous organza bag.

Here they are hard at work marking my increases in the round baby blanket:

I love them so much, I’ve been checking back on her eBay page daily to see if more appear. As a result, I am now currently bidding on (and winning) these beauties as well:

I think I may have just discovered a new obsession!