Yesterday, thousands of Etsy shops protested the inclusion of resellers on Etsy by putting their shop on “vacation” or “holiday” mode for a day. The record of silent protesters can be found here: http://protesty.com/

Thanks for the heads up about this from fellow blogger and maker, Nicola Baker. She has written an insightful post about the value of handmade and what it means to be a maker in a world where art and skill has been devalued by cheap labor and the global monoculture. She says, “Handmade art should have value and should be valued, especially at a time when our high streets are, in the main, full of generic shops. Wouldn’t our lives be dull if we all had the same jobs and if our homes were full of the same decorative pieces?”  I completely agree.

My experience at Whitby proved to me that I am competing in many markets, in the literal and meta sense, where a race to the bottom determines what sells.  Walmart, Primark and Asda and the like have distorted what we mean by value. The handmade movement presents a powerful antidote to slave labour and monoculture by providing consumers with a connection to the objects in their lives, their makers and the process of production.  People who embrace handmade are buying fewer things but are opting for objects they will live with and love, eschewing the throwaway bargain culture that dominates the high street.

While the presence of resellers has become a growing problem on Etsy, it was the Etsy Front Page feature of a reseller that instigated this mass protest.  I don’t wish to link to her shop, as I feel the amount of publicity this has given to her shop galls me even further. Etsy has shut down myriad shops for transgressions that were minor compared to this seller, who is claiming she runs a “collective” even though she outsources her work and doesn’t make the pieces herself.  My guess is the reason Etsy hasn’t shut her down and has left up the feature is that she is a business woman formost, as she claims in the interview, and she probably has a pretty good lawyer. (Edit– apparently she does have a lawyer who has sent a C&D order  to someone who has posted on the Etsy site asking for an explanation of the situation. It just gets worse! To read more on this hilarious yet disturbing development, go to regretsy.)

I would have joined the protest, but I learned of it too late to make it meaningful.  It would be great if the Protesty site would actually have an online petition or mailing list about how more sellers could get involved on an ongoing basis, so that the protest lives beyond May 10th. (Edit: There is a petition around this issue, though I am not sure it’s related to Protesty)  Also, it would be great if the site could have a list of demands that were put to Etsy about defining its new shop criteria which is causing so much trouble, and explaining the inconsistent enforcement of their rules. The response from the Etsy CEO has been utterly useless to the concerned sellers whose livelihood is at stake.  He equates their outcry with a “mob mentality”.

I don’t think Etsy will ever understand how impossible it is for a small maker to compete with a reseller on Etsy. I don’t think they care as long as the reseller is paying for their listings and renewals.  What might have been a supportive website spearheading a handmade movement has cashed in our cred, jumped the shark.  The handmade credentials of Etsy, created by all the hard working artisans out there with callouses to prove it, can now be used by anyone who can document a few workers and claim their factory is a “collective”.

I love Etsy’s generic support for sellers– their tutorials and emails are very helpful.  But when I’ve needed something as an individual, having problems with the site or with non-delivery of an item, Etsy has shut down the conversation at the moment of difficulty. In a way, this parallels Etsy’s response to the reseller front page controversy.  Etsy has shut down the comments on the Featured Seller page, moving the discussion to a more private place on the site, so confused and concerned Etsy sellers are talking to each other behind closed doors. Given the recent development and increasing number of stories of Etsy shutting down legit shops overnight without explanation, I am setting up my own online shop to run in tandem with the Etsy one.

It is clear Etsy will not be the one to look out for independent makers.  We must do that ourselves but presenting our work the best we can, with all the emotional connections we have to it and trust that our customers will recognize what separates the authentic craftsperson from the opportunist.  Shoppers on Etsy must be even more vigilant, and makers must strive to forge connections with our customers so they know who we are and what we stand for.

This past weekend I had a stall at the Whitby Gothic Weekend.  Whitby is one of my favourite places on earth, and for the past seven years I have attended the Gothic Festival there.  So it was with a great deal of excitement I prepared to sell at the event. I am grateful to all the friends and shop supporters who came by and said hello– you kept me sane!

Sadly, selling at Whitby was a disappointment. I found myself displaying all my lovingly hand made, beautiful things in a fluorescent-lit gymnasium which stank of stale sweat and childhood trauma, trading next to people who were flogging 5 pound lingerie and Vivienne Westwood knock-offs.  Whatever I was doing was drowned out by cheap tat displayed as if we were at a car boot or swap meet.

One thing I learned this weekend– the context of a market defines you.  I had a difficult time explaining that I was a local Yorkshire artist, and that everything was handmade and carefully sourced.  My prices didn’t make sense to people, who were seeing bins of things for a pound, all imported sweat-shop type goods.

There was no security and though traders were encouraged to leave their stalls up overnight, the doors were not locked at 5 and people came and went, rummaging through the stalls of traders who were no longer there.  I ended up taking all my stock home every night because of this.

As the weekend wore on and sales in general seemed low, other traders became territorial.  The woman selling cheap imported jewelry behind me blocked the aisle leading to my stall from the entrance insuring everyone would have to walk the entire perimeter of stalls just to reach mine.  Yet, there was no one to deal with this besides a single volunteer who was a stall holder herself.  One evening she broke down in tears because she had so much work to do and so many demands put on her.

Yet, traders pay a premium to sell at this event–where is the money going?  I split the cost with my stall neighbor, the wonderful Paula from Deadly Desires. We are both new businesswomen and booking Whitby was a big experiment and risk for both of us.

What surprised me was the complete lack of any feeling of community amongst the traders or shoppers, many of whom were not goths at all but people who had come to photograph “freaks” or people in fancy dress– WGW has a lot of people who have no relation to the gothic sub-culture but like to dress up in Victorian costumes and promenade.

I learned that as a trader I need to find markets where the other sellers are also artists and makers, and where we are supported as such. Unless there are major changes to the way things are run at Whitby Gothic Weekend, I will not be selling there again.

The Ghost of Eastry Church, Kent.

Last night was Saint Mark’s Eve.  There is an old tradition in the North of England which required parishioners of certain churches to hold a vigil through the night, watching for apparitions of themselves. Those who saw themselves enter– as rotting corpses or marching coffins– were sure to die in the coming year. Fair warning; time to prepare.

Though I now live in a city that makes a good deal of its living off the undead, and the myriad ghosts of this little walled town outnumber us, I am not jaded.  It is easy to see how death walks with us, here, despite the garish morbidity of all the ghost tours on offer, with their own inoculation to this mystery.  With that said, I have never seen on heard a ghost in York.  (What will usually send a shiver are recordings I find, actively look for trolling about on the internet– either supposedly photographic or EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Perhaps what is more disturbing is the medium, and the necessity of contact rather than the contact itself.  But that is a topic for another post.)

Perhaps the vigil of Saint Mark’s Eve is a version of an older custom on Walpurgisnacht, or the Eve of the Feast of the English Saint Walpurgis, who is a Christian manifestation of an older harvest Goddess. Walpurgisnacht was held on the night of the witch’s sabbath, May 30th, when the doors between worlds were open for spirits to pass between.  Probably the best time to hold such a vigil!

Older still at this time, were rituals involving cakes and dreams of love in the night. Bake a bannock in silence. Put it under your pillow. In the night you will see his face.  Come morning, eat the bannock; sweep the crumbs from the bed.

That’s my kitty Cherry, in whole-hog freak out mode!

Happy Friday th 13th, dear reader.  We have I think 3 Friday the 13ths this year– lucky indeed!

To celebrate I’m having a sale in the shop today.  13% off everything.  Use coupon code FRIDAY13 at checkout!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/feralstrumpet

My first live selling gig has been a huge success, thanks to the highly organized volunteers of the British Science Fiction Association convention, Olympus 2012.  I saw many old friends and made countless new ones.  What struck me about the event was how friendly the whole vibe was.  Everyone could fly their freak flag proudly!  I think I’ve never been around so many people who actually got my jokes.  I laughed for three days, and did a did a bang up business, besides!  My stock is seriously depleted.  I need to get busy making things– especially because selling at Whitby Gothic Weekend is right around the corner. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini, 1850.

The lily is a paradox– death and life. It was the harbinger in paintings of the Annunciation.  The Pre-raphaelites loved this subject matter, but my favourite is Rossetti’s take on this news-flash moment.  There is a reference to Fra Angelico’s beautiful treatment of the subject matter and Rossetti even seems to be riffing off the stark white cells of the Monastery of San Marco in Florence where much of Fra Angelico’s frescos can be seen.

Rosetti’s Mary is very much human, full of wonder and terror.  The angel’s face is merely suggested in a haze of fleshy shadow as if to save those looking from the divine information that might just do us in.

But Mary survives this message– backed into a corner of her tiny cell, the traditional blue of her dress is only represented by a makeshift screen– something you’d see in a hospital.  And the lily takes center stage with its innocence and knowing, its face of life and death.

Happy Easter, friends. I will be trading at Eastercon, the British Science Fiction Association Convention in London over the weekend.  Look for me in the dealer’s room if you will be there.  I will be putting my Etsy shop in vacation mode for a short time while I am away.

Medieval Lily Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Mermaid Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet

Today I read a sensible take on the “death of the book” by science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin.  The most profound the idea mentioned in the essay is information atrophy– that ebooks and other electronic documents will fall apart, or turn to gibberish if not attended to. It is something I hadn’t really considered, but imagining it creates scenarios loaded with dramatic potential– more stories to be written!

I don’t have much to say about the “death of the book.” Or, maybe I have too much to say about it for this post.  I welcome new technologies in publishing and reading. It’s an exciting time to be a reader.  LeGuin argues that we do more reading than we ever have, and that online life is made of words and the act of reading and writing.  New technologies mean it’s also an exciting time to be a writer. I have always loved the DIY aspect of the internet, and it has enabled me to not only open my own shop selling my designs but to also publish a novel.  (The Desperate Ones available as a print-on-demand paperback, pdf and ebook.)

I confess I don’t like reading on a screen.  I am one of those people that will smell a book when I open it, and will feel the pages, press them down with my palm, trace the crease in the spine with my finger.  I have a friend who repairs books and has often written about the delicate process of restoration.  I picture her as a kind of biblio-nurse, keeping books alive. After all, books have always been made from living things– trees, skin. It seems e-books of the future will need nurses, too.

My iPad, only two years old, has already stopped working. Oh the hubris! I imagined I would build a library that would fit in my sachel, only to find as the little contraption died, so did the few books I’d managed to download on it. A short lived fantasy, this idea that a device could replace or even supplement my personal library.  In the last seven years l’ve lived in 8 different places. Each wasn’t home until I could put up some sort of bookshelf. And yet these books came with me and have become a permanent part of my life.  Until technology can promise some kind of continuity parallel to this, I will view it with suspicion.

When I photograph my designs I use book covers, pages and piles of books as my backgrounds.  It still gives me a thrill, lining up my books.  Perhaps it comes form the weekly trip to the library as a child where I could pick out anything I liked and live with it for a week or two. I still feel like that when I go into a library, that one is entering some dragon’s hoard of delights. (Please visit your local library!  Love it and save it from the beastly policy makers who would strangle it!) I wanted to capture that feeling of wonder with my jewelry, much of which is inspired by fairy tales, folklore and even characters in novels.

The grimoire bookmark designs were born of my love of reading and of books.  I wanted to make something for other book lovers and people who loved jewelry but rarely wore it themselves.  I wanted bling for books, something to mark a book on a shelf and that would be satisfying to hold while reading and feel weighty enough to hold ones place– an important job– in any tome.

So, dearest reader, what are you reading and how do you mark your place?

Egyptian Heiroglyph for hare also means "to be".

I have been to Whitby many times for the Gothic Weekend twice a year– this year will be the first year I will be attending as a dealer!  Look for me in the Leisure Centre if you will be there.

Near the Shambles in Whitby, there used to be a shop with green shutters painted with three hares. That little Pagan shop has moved and the three hares are now painted over, but it was the first place I saw this sacred image. The hares form a triquetra, or three cornered shape, representing the three aspects of the Goddess– later adopted by the Christian faith to represent the Holy Trinity.

They are a riddle, these “rotating rabbits”– three hairs, each with two ears, yet they only share three. This image originated in the cave temples of China, and traveled along the Silk Road to England. Sometimes called “Tinner’s Rabbits”, the symbol was adopted by tin miners in Devon.

But the three rabbits also decorate mosques, and the appearance of this traveling symbol in synagogues may be a reference to the Jewish diaspora.

Hares have been associated with the Virgin Mary– and most likely is attached in ancestral memory to an older Goddess, one associated with the moon and lunar cycles.  In Chinese Folklore the Moon Rabbit is said to be pounding out the elixir of immortality in a mortar for the moon Goddess Chang’e. The Aztecs also have a moon rabbit legend as well as many other cultures. Some say you can see this rabbit by looking at the shadows on the moon which form its shape.  One wonders if the moon gazing hare is looking up to see its big goddess in the sky– it’s a nice image to contemplate at this time of year.  At least, I like to think on it.

In the days before special effects, the optical illusion of the three ears must have had been amplified with a kind of shifting mystery. These rabbits turn and turn in the mind, spinning the wheel of the year toward spring.

As an aside, I have been listening to the neo folk band, The Hare and the Moon a lot lately– they describe themselves as “spook folk”.  You might like to give them a listen! http://www.myspace.com/thehareandthemoon

Blessed Spring Equinox, dear reader!

The Hare and the Moon, Labradorite and Pewter Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy.

The drystone walls of the Yorkshire Dales

When I think of Yorkshire, the first image in my mind is of wide open space marked by the patchwork of drystone walls.  And there are invisible boundaries, tracks: public foot paths often are the very same Death Roads, or ancient rights-of-way through private land, which allowed people their funerary rites. And there are fragments of Roman roads, as well as dream-paths or ley lines.

This island is a sacred palimpsest, scored and re-scored, and yet all the marks remain as either archeological evidence or fairy paths.

Today is the Roman Festival of Terminus, the god of borders and endings. Ovid, in his usual warm, vivid and simple verse, describes the ritual:

Terminus, whether a stone or a stump buried in the earth,

You have been a god since ancient times.

You are crowned from either side by two landowners,

Who bring two garlands and two cakes in offering.

An altar’s made: here the farmer’s wife herself

Brings coals from the warm hearth on a broken pot.

The old man cuts wood and piles the logs with skill,

And works at setting branches in the solid earth.

Then he nurses the first flames with dry bark,

While a boy stands by and holds the wide basket.

When he’s thrown grain three times into the fire

The little daughter offers the sliced honeycombs.

Others carry wine: part of each is offered to the flames:

The crowd, dressed in white, watch silently.

Terminus, at the boundary, is sprinkled with lamb’s blood,

And doesn’t grumble when a sucking pig is granted him.

I love the affectionate irony in the last line, which speaks to an intimacy Ovid (and it might be said Romans in general) had with the gods.  What a hard blessing are boundaries and wise endings, and how necessary.

Glowing coals from a broken pot. Ember Berry Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

It’s Fat Tuesday, and I’m indulging in some wistful homesickness for New Orleans, one of my favourite cities in the US. The city definitely influences much of what I create– the riotous colour of carnival juxtaposed against the black iron balconies of the French Quarter, the cities of the dead, the motley beads of carnival, particularly vintage Czech ones, were some of my earliest inspirations as well as the stories of Marie Laveau and the markings on her grave, which inspired the piece below.

It’s also the New Moon– time to embrace new beginnings.  New Orleans’ survival after Katrina is truly something to celebrate.  I remember vividly watching from across and ocean as the destruction of the hurricane and the ineptitude and racism of the Bush Administration threatened to destroy New Orleans and the surrounding area.  I felt quite helpless and anguished.  When English people are incredulous about why I would leave the US, sometimes I wish I could explain the feeling of doom much of the country shared while George Bush was president. I love Bob Forrest’s cover of Randy Newman’s “Louisiana”– which sums up that emotion very well.  Here he sings it with his son.

Blessed New Moon to all my readers, may you bring some New Orleans style carnival and maybe even a bit of the city’s survivor spirit to whatever you choose to begin now!