Search results (tags) for: "renewing"

How-Tuesday: Miniature Stocking Ornament From Sweater Renewal

2009-11-10T14:30:00-05:00

As the season of bulky fibers descends upon us, I inevitably must clean out my sweater drawer for new finds. Pulling out fistfuls of thick wool, I mourn moth holes, shrunken sleeves, oil stains. The colorful knits, even flawed, nevertheless feel enduring, and thus when I came across Sharon Franco Rothschild's Sweater Renewal, I was already inspired. For this week's How-Tuesday, Sharon shares her wool felting technique, along with a template to make a cozy upcycled Christmas ornament. You could even enlarge the template to make a full-size Christmas stocking.

Purchase Sweater Renewal from Amazon or an independent bookseller

I am, always will be, a self-confessed sweater junkie. Whether I am designing, knitting, buying, felting, cutting, or wearing sweaters, I can never get enough of them. Sweaters provide comfort, warmth, and a certain sense of style.

We all have our favorites — some that make us feel fabulously stylish, some that make us feel incredibly comfortable, and those that offer a coziness and warmth that no other piece of clothing can compete with. As we collect and add sweaters to our wardrobes year after year, memories also attach themselves to each piece.

I will forever remember one of my all-time favorite sweaters, and its quick demise. I was sixteen years old, and the sweater (I can remember it like it was yesterday) was a pink mohair cardigan, the exact color of cotton candy. When I wore this sweater, I felt transformed. I felt grown up, stylish, even beautiful. But one of my father's first attempts to do the laundry for our family ended in disaster for this cherished piece of clothing. After some washing-machine agitation (in hot water, no less), my beautiful sweater shrank down to one-third its original size and was suddenly and completely unwearable. But my love affair with this sweater was not yet over. I kept it in my top dresser drawer, and every time I opened that drawer, I would look at my pink sweater and remember instantly how good it had made me feel. It was years before I could actually part with it. How I wish now that I had made something else out of it, something that I could have continued to use in my daily life, to remind me of my dad and the wonderful feeling that sweater had given me.

Fortunately, I have discovered that damaged sweaters, old sweaters, out-of-style sweaters, and sweaters that once belonged to a loved one can have a second life. So clean out your closets, start your washing machines, sharpen your scissors, and get ready to redesign, recycle, and renew your wool sweaters.

Miniature Stocking Ornament

It's never too soon to start thinking about the holidays. These tree ornaments are just waiting to be stuffed with tiny treasures and placed on your tree or above your fireplace. The stocking is made from a brightly colored mohair sweater.

Finished Measurements
3" (7.5cm) x 5 1/2" (14cm)

Materials
Yellow-green sweater made of mostly feltable fibers, at least 8 3/4" x 16 1/2" (22cm x 42cm)
Stocking template (download here) and tracing paper
Sewing needle and yellow thread
1 skein each Rowan Classic Cashsoft 4-ply yarn, 57% extra fine merino, 33% microfibre, 10% cashmere, 1.75 oz (50g), 197 yd (180m), in light brown and dark green, plus fuchsia for crochet flower (optional)
Crocheted fuschia five-petal flower (optional)
Four 10mm nugget beads, 3 amber, and 1 translucent white (2 amber beads and the white one are optional)
Small box of straight pins
DMC embroidery needle #5
Beadalon big eye beading needle 2 1/4" (5.5cm)
Tapestry needle
Size G-6 (4mm) crochet hook (optional)

Techniques
Washing and felting
Embroidery: Blanket stitch, running stitch
Crochet (optional): Silp stitch, chain stitch, single crochet, double crochet

Felt the Sweater

There are three methods for felting sweaters: in your washing machine, by hand in your sink or tub, or at your local dry cleaner. The washing-machine method is the easiest and fastest way to felt, especially if you are washing a whole sweater or blanket. If you are doing a small piece, such as a sock, hat, or a cut piece of a sweater, you may find the hand-washing method easier. If you do not want to deal with the actual washing and felting yourself, your local dry cleaner is a good alternative.

Washing-Machine Felting
1. There are two types of washing machines — top loaders and front loaders. Top loaders open at the top of the machine, and you put your clothes in a basket-like container that has a cylinder in the middle. Top loaders work best for sweater felting for two reasons. The first is that you can open the top at any time during the wash cycle and check your felting. The second is that the cylinder in the middle provides a lot of agitation, so your sweater will felt very quickly, often in one cycle.

Front loaders have a door that opens in the front of the machine, and they provide a much larger, more open space than a top loader. Once the wash cycle begins, the door automatically locks and cannot be opened until the cycle is finished. Because there is no spin basket in the front loader, there is less agitation. So with front loaders, I suggest that you begin any felting project using a very short cycle (hand-wash is best) and know that you may need to go through a few cycles before your sweater will felt the way you want it to.

How to Felt Using the Washing Machine

Place your item in a pillowcase. This will protect your piece and provide more friction (which is a good thing).
Select a very short cycle to begin. The hand-wash cycle is always a safe bet.
Set the water temperature to Warm.
Add about 1/4 cup (60ml) of Ivory liquid soap, or any dishwashing liquid with a low pH balance.
Select the shortest spin cycle and the gentlest wash cycle. Spinning the item for too long can distort the shape of the piece, but it needs to spin a little so all the water comes out.
Place the pillowcase with your item inside in the washing machine. Start your washing machine. Do not felt more than one piece at a time. After each cycle, take your piece out of the pillowcase and check to see if you need to wash it again.
When you have achieved the desired results, put your item in the dryer (still in the pillowcase). Run the dryer on a very low- or no-heat setting until the item is dry.

Make the Stocking

2. Trace and cut out the Stocking template (download here), enlarged at 200%. Pin the template onto the felted sweater and cut it out.

3. Pin right sides together. Machine-stitch around the sides of the stocking, using a 1/2" (13mm) seam allowance. Leave the top edge of the stocking open. Turn the stocking right-side out.

4. Turn under 1" (2.5cm) at the top of the stocking. Using light-brown yarn, the tapestry needle, and running stitch, stitch around the stocking to secure the top hem.

5. Blanket stitch around the machine-stitched edges of the stocking, using light-brown yarn and the tapestry needle.

Appliqué & Embroider

6. If desired, you may crochet a five-petal fuchsia flower.

Chain 4, leaving a tail 3" to 4" (7.5 - 10cm) long. Join with a slip stitch to form the loop. (Chain 3, single crochet 1 into the loop) 4 times. Chain 3. Using a slip stitch, join to the base of the first chain 3. You now have five petals. Fasten off, leaving a tail 3" to 4" (7.5 - 10cm) long.

Pin the crocheted flower in place on the front of the stocking. WIth the beading needle, sew an amber nugget bead in the center of the flower, simultaneously sewing the flower to the stocking front. Be careful not to sew the front of the stocking to the back while doing this. If you do not wish to use the crocheted flower, simply sew the amber bead to the front of the stocking at the same point where it would be if the flower were there.

Crochet Loop (Optional)

7. This loop will attach to the bead center of the flower, closing the stocking. Using dark-green yarn, join the yarn to the top center back of the stocking with a slip stitch. Chain 32, slip stitch into the 22nd chain to form the loop, work a single crochet in each chain from that point back to the edge of the stocking. Tie off the yarn and weave the end under the hem of the stocking.

Crochet Strap (Optional)

8. Using two strands of light-brown yarn held together, leave a 3 1/2" to 4" (9-10cm) tail and tie an overhand knot with the two strands used as one. Attach yarn to the upper left corner of stocking (on the heel side). Crochet a 7" (18cm) chain. Chain 10 beyond the 7" (18cm) point. Form these 10 chains into a loop and slip stitch to the end of the 7" (18cm) chained strap. Sew an amber nugget bead onto the upper right corner of the stocking (on the toe side). The chained strap will come over the stocking and attach to this bead by the loop. At the end of the strand of yarn you left as a tail at the beginning of the strap, tie an amber bead. Tie the white translucent bead at the end of the other yarn tail.

Thanks to Sharon Franco Rothschild and the good folks at Potter Craft for sharing this project with us. For more upcycling inspiration, check out Sweater Renewal.

More How-Tuesday Posts | Supplies Category | DIY Made Simple Gift Guide

Community Topics: Some Thoughts on Recently Listed Items

2009-01-29T16:53:00-05:00

Dear Friends,

Etsy has grown a great deal over the last two years, and in order to maintain site stability and speed we, like other large sites, are always tweaking the way things work. The engineering team at Etsy is constantly turning knobs and pulling levers to maximize site speed and availability, while also managing the growth in visitors, listings, images and many other variables. In the weeks ahead, Chad Dickerson, our CTO, will be telling you more about these efforts.

One lever that we recently adjusted was the way that listings, new or renewed, are delivered to the site (see this post). This adjustment involved delivering items in very frequent batches rather than continuously in real time. As an outcomes of this change, there is less of chance that an individual item will appear in certain ways of discovering items on Etsy, including the Recently Listed Items section of the Homepage, the Fresh Items list on the Buy Page, as part of Pounce, or in Time Machine 1 or Time Machine 2. Each of these product discovery functions works differently and the chances of sellers actually seeing their items appear in all of these places depend on many variables including listing volumes at specific times, site speed, and each user’s speed of navigation.

As many of you are aware, there have been several forum threads discussing this very issue. If you’ll bear with me, I would like to address some of the main concerns that have been coming up.

1. Etsy needs to communicate site changes more effectively.

Correct, and I take full responsibility here. I would like to apologize to the community at large. We did a poor job of addressing this issue in a timely or effective way. Several lengthy forum posts, a few days after the issue first arose is not acceptable. I didn't fully appreciate the need to communicate more comprehensively about this issue.

Many of you made suggestions about how Etsy can better communicate with sellers. One of the first steps we are exploring includes an “admin” (e.g. Etsy staff) announcement section of the Forums. Though the Forums get millions of unique page views per month, I realize that they are not read by all in the Etsy community. Nevertheless a dedicated Etsy admin forum might be helpful in making it easier to find our announcements about important changes. I will keep you posted on this.

In the mean time, I’ve learned a valuable lesson here, and will be working much more closely with engineering to make sure that important site changes and updates are communicated more effectively and in a timely manner.

2. Doesn’t my 20 cent listing guarantee me a spot on these features?

The 20-cent listing fee is the cost to list an item on Etsy. This fee provides a page displaying an item in your shop for four months, with up to five photos. Etsy does not guarantee that your listing will include exposure in other places on the site, like the Recently Listed Items section on the Homepage or other product discovery features. We will be making changes to relevant FAQs to make sure that this is very clear.

Having said that, Etsy does have a track record of creating innovative product discovery features that showcase the new and undiscovered on Etsy. We value those features and are always exploring new ways to engage buyers on the site by showcasing sellers and their items. We expect to continue that tradition as we grow, and are looking at ways we can improve the current features we have.

3. But Etsy has always told me to renew?

In various live workshops, the community moderated Etsy wiki, and in seller interviews such as "Quit Your Day Job", admin and community members alike have advocated relisting or renewing an item as a way to get it to the top of the heap, as it were. It is true, that Search and Category pages default to the most recently listed items in the search index.

Renewing may or may not get your item at the very top, but it will place it closer to the front in features that display listings in reverse chronological order. Nothing has changed there. That said, we think something should change. Renewing was never intended to be an advertising tool, but the way it was built – along with the emphasis on reverse chronological ranking throughout the site – allowed renewing to function as a promotional strategy.

In her Storque post in November, Maria Thomas, our CEO, touched on how we are beginning to think about changing Search. You can read it here. This work is still at a conceptual stage and nothing is changing in the short-term.

Next month Maria and Chad will be reaching out to the community again, to follow up on our thinking around Search and other matters.

I hope this clears things up. I know this is an important issue to many in the selling community and again, I apologize for how we communicated it initially. As always, you can reach me at matt@etsy.com. We're closing the comments here so we can follow your comments in one place in this forum thread.

Thanks, Matt

Etsy Finds: It's About Time...

2009-01-05T07:38:00-05:00

...to get this new year off to a great start! Greet 2009 with a fresh outlook, starting with your home decor. This collection of handmade clocks should help you keep track of the hours and minutes in style.

doily clock

By andfurthermore, $28.

View item | View Shop

Goth Clock in Vampire Red and Black

By EyePopArt, $65.

View item | View Shop

clock made from a recycled bike wheel

By pixelthis, $89.

View item | View Shop

Crazy Thermometer Wall Clock

By IMOTIME, $29.

View item | View Shop

CLOCK RECYCLED from REAL MACARONi and CHeeSe BOX Made into Wall Clock

By AlienBacon, $19.99.

View item | View Shop

Recycled Record Clock A NIGHT TO REMEMBER by CYNDI LAUPER

By retrograndma, $25.99.

View item | View Shop

yellow campy recycled bike clock

By 1byliz, $36.

View item | View Shop

1969/70 Mustang Hubcap Clock

By 8milecreekdesigns, $60.

View item | View Shop

Petal Manhattan Modern Wall Clock

By pilotdesign, $60.

View item | View Shop

Looking for more home decor Finds? Try these Etsy links:

Entertaining and Decor Gift Guide | Housewarming Gift Guide | Housewares Category | Vintage Housewares

Need a daily fix of Etsy Finds? Sign up for the Etsy Finds e-mail! Conveniently delivered to your inbox!

Tech Update: "Expiration Dates" Changes to "Renew Items" - Text Change Only

2008-08-13T17:34:00-05:00

Dear Sellers,

We wanted to inform you of a text change you will find in Your Etsy. The text link, Expiration Dates, has been changed to Renew Items. The line of text highlighted below now reads Renew Items:

"Renewing" has become the common parlance among sellers. It became clear to us that "Expiration dates" line of text was not catching the seller's eye. The text change should make the feature more user-friendly for sellers and more obvious to new sellers.

No other changes in functionality, pages, or text have taken place and you will still find all of the same information on the newly named Renew Items page. Looking for your upcoming expiration dates for your listed items? They will still be right there where they have always been, just with a new name.

For more news about site features, click on the TechUpdates featured column. Please see this forum thread for discussion.

Earth Tones: Growin' Guerrilla Style

2008-05-09T13:02:00-05:00

We've all seen that corner lot that's nothing but baked dirt and the occasional mound of trash surrounded by a guardrail. Some people pass by without a glance. Some people wonder why the city doesn't pick up the trash. Some people wish that someone would build something there. Some people think it'd be nice if they turned it into a park. Then there are the misfits...the gardening guerrillas. They see that empty plot that belongs to no one and start planning. Mission: cultivate!

Guerrilla gardening has been around for ages and has recently started making a comeback. People are turning abandoned, ugly plots of land into productive spaces, on the sly, all across the globe. Be it fruit trees or flowers, these plots are being reclaimed to benefit the environment and the local culture.

Studies have shown that things like litter and empty lots all negatively impact a community and that places like parks and public gardens are a positive change that can be made. A growing (pun intended) form of urban renewal happens to be planned community gardens on abandoned lots, but many areas haven't adopted the practice quite yet. A lot of times, plots stand unused and unmaintained because of red tape, ordinances, and general disbelief, but guerrilla gardening bypasses those factors. A handful of sunflower seeds scattered across a muddy back corner of an abandoned parking lot creates a bit of brightness in an otherwise bleak landscape.

Possible future community garden by technicolorcavalry on flickr.

Now just think what could happen when the trash was picked up and a can of wildflower mix was sown. Imagine casually throwing a handful of watermelon seeds into that drainage ditch you walk on the way to the bus and watching someone pull out a fat melon weeks later. Fast and easy and, oh, so satisfying.

But that satisfaction can be ended in one fatal swoop of a county mower. There's nothing so heartbreaking as finding out that your plantings have been removed or destroyed, for whatever reason, but take heart! They probably didn't go unnoticed. It's the price one pays for investing their time and energy into clandestine activities, but there are ways to help ensure the survival of your plantings.

Carefully observe an area for activity. It's a good hint that, if the area hasn't been mowed and garbage isn't picked up, you've got a place that someone probably won't mind being decorated a bit.
Use plants that are native or easily naturalized so that your plantings will last without constant care. Remember that "easily naturalized" doesn't mean invasive — avoid exotic invasives.
Start little and see what you can get away with. If that plot that hasn't been mown in two years suddenly gets cut when your wildflowers start blooming, it's a pretty good bet that more involved plantings won't survive.

greenthing, a big proponent of guerrilla gardening, has this terrific sign to leave as a calling card.

Mix seeds with peat moss or potting soil to give them something to germinate in. This is best if you don't have luck with random scatterings of seeds.
Avoid areas that are carefully maintained by landscapers. (Unless there's an area that they consistently miss.)
Make others aware. If there's a person who lives across the street from an abandoned lot, either make a concerted effort to work around their time schedule to avoid confrontation or let them know that you're across from their house planting stuff. This will help you avoid neighborhood watches and possible police encounters.

Do it and own it. Guerrilla gardening serves different purposes for different people, including protest against urbanization, a starvation of good ol' garden therapy or the simple desire to have fresh veggies in the summer. Whatever your purpose, make sure to own it. If someone asks what you're doing sneaking out of the apartment every night, tell them and see if they want to tag along. Build a force in your area to promote the beauty of the natural world.

To promote this subversive activity, the EtsyPHAT (Etsy Plants and Horticultural Arts Team) are going to begin a campaign to distribute seed packs randomly across the country. These seeds will be a special blend made up of seeds from our members. You might find them on park benches, outdoor eating areas, schools, and common areas by the end of May.

Stacy, aka fluffnflowers, gardens for therapy and shares her surplus and seed-grown goodies through Etsy. She lives outside Atlanta, Georgia in high suburbia with her significant other, cat, dog, and two guinea pigs. She strives to drive the neighbors insane with her lack of hedgerows. She spends most of her time outside, except in the summer where it just gets too hot! She blogs about her gardening exploits at fluffnflowers.blogspot.com.

Plants Subcategory on Etsy | Outdoor Subcategory on Etsy | EtsyPHAT Team | Earth Tones Series

Tech Updates: Changes in the Item Renewal Process

2008-04-21T13:37:00-05:00

Dear sellers:

I am always surprised to see an item listing set to expire in 2050 (we have some items expiring in 2100!). Wow! I am not sure what I’ll be doing next year, let alone 42 years from now. We expect that Etsy will be around for a long time, and we are concerned that buyers will be frustrated and disappointed if — 10 years from now — a number of shops with active listings have been abandoned or forgotten about by the seller. In an effort to keep the shops on Etsy updated and limit the opportunity for a store to be sitting idle with active listings for years and years, we are changing our renewal policy, as mentioned in a recent Town Hall meeting.

Currently, when you renew an item, 4 months are added to the end of your existing listing.

Example: An item listed on February 9, 2008 will expire on June 9, 2008. If you renew today, April 18, 2008, your listing would expire October 9, 2008. Renew again, another four months are added and the item will expire February 9, 2009, and so on.

As part of our ongoing initiative to upgrade the site’s ease of use and improve everyone's experience, we want to avoid this problem and have made the following change: if you renew an item, four months will be added to the item listing from the date of renewal.

Example: An item listed on February 9, 2008 will expire on June 9, 2008. If you renew today, April 18, 2008, the listing will expire on August 18, 2008.

Current listings with expiration dates beyond four months from today will not be affected. This will only impact listings renewed from today forward. You can read more about this and other upcoming changes in Rob’s summary of our recent Town Hall meeting.

We know that many people use renewing to promote and help gain exposure for their items. Search results and categories are both currently sorted to show the most recently listed items first. I have written about experimenting with pricing and promotion in the past. There are other ways to promote yourself on the site such as buying a Showcase spot, which many sellers find successful. We are also working on new promotional opportunities for sellers. At the end of the day, it is really about learning what works for you.

We want to do all we can to keep Etsy a vibrant and fun place to buy and sell handmade goods. If you have any ideas, add your suggestions to Rob’s recent forum thread. We want to hear from you.

If you are unsure about the Showcase, get a general introduction from Matt's article 13.5 Questions about the Showcase, and for deeper thoughts on figuring out if Showcase is right for you, see my Showcase Deconstructed article.