I love surfing on Etsy. There are some amazingly talented artists there, and there is so much great, fantastic stuff that you simply can’t find anywhere else. Here are some Etsy items I’ve marked as my personal favorites:

I have purchased the hand stamped heart necklace and wear it daily; I think it’s absolutely beautiful and I love the interpretation of treasures and hearts. I’m also toying with the idea of buying the custom map necklace. I love the idea behind it! If I do get one, I’m going to request Hong Kong as the city for my custom map.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve never actually come out and stated what my usernames are for various social networking sites, so I thought I would list the prominent ones all in one go. My LiveJournal account has friends only entries and crossposted entries from my blog, my Dreamwidth account will be sporadically updated with friends only entries once I get around to customizing my account, and my Twitter account is protected to avoid spambots.

Feel free to add/friend me at any of these social networking sites if you like!

• LiveJournal: eternitycrash
• Dreamwidth: disalarming
• Twitter: eternitycrash
• Last.fm: eternitycrash
• Etsy: disalarming

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve added two new items to my Etsy shop yesterday: a cream-colored wave stitch scarf, and a crimson-colored twisted drop stitch scarf.

Cream-Colored Wave Stitch Scarf

All the scarves I have knit previously have either been in a simple garter stitch or a rib stitch, so knitting the wave stitch was a welcome change. The pattern was worked in ten rows, so I just repeated the pattern until I got the desired scarf length. The great thing about the wave stitch is that it is reversible so that there is a “wave” pattern on both sides, which is always a must with scarves! I loved the cream color of the yarn too, cream is a great color that goes with any outfit and I like it better than the brightness of white for a scarf.

Crimson-Colored Twisted Drop Stitch Scarf

The twisted drop stitch was also a new stitch for me. It was much more simple than the wave stitch, so it was a quicker and easier knit. I worked the yarn over slightly larger needles than needed for the gauge for a looser knit, as the gauge wasn’t necessary for this particular project. The twisted drop stitch, like the wave stitch, is also a reversible pattern, so it looks the same on both sides.

Both of the scarves have fringes at the ends, which is something I’ve never done with my knitted scarves. When I was done knitting them, I felt like they were missing a particular element, so I added a fringe and the scarves were complete! I find that not all scarves look good with an added fringe, but I feel that these two particular ones would look unfinished without one.

As always, feel free to follow my Etsy shop’s Twitter account for all my Etsy updates!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve thought about opening my own Etsy shop for a while, and I’m proud to say that I finally bit the bullet and have done so. I’m not looking at this as a serious business venture that will generate massive amounts of income as that would be unrealistic; I’m looking at this as a hobby/side project, an entrepreneurial experiment, if you will¹. Regardless of whether or not my Etsy shop existed, I would be making crafts anyway as I’ve loved to knit, sew, cross stich, etc for as long as I can remember!

My Etsy shop can be found at disalarming.etsy.com. Currently, the only items listed are scarves knit by me with novelty yarns such as fun fur/eyelash and boucle. I’m looking at adding more scarves knit in with traditional yarns, as well as beanies and berets. I don’t want my shop to be limited only to knitwear though, so I’m looking at dabbling my hand in some other projects, one of which involves hardcover books!

I’ve set up a Twitter account for those who are interested in being notified when new items are added to my shop: twitter.com/disalarming. Feel free to follow to be updated on the status of my shop. I realize that this is all at a very bare bones, basic beginning stage, but hopefully as time progresses and I add more items to my shop, this will be at least a little successful!

1. And if I didn’t try, then I wouldn’t know how it would have turned out, right? [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Well, “better than ever” is probably a little too ambitious, but I can always hope, right?

I’m back from my short hiatus! I did a lot of thinking about the formatting of this blog and I’ve decided on a few things:

• I’m changing the format of my reviews. The current format of summary, initial reaction, final reaction, and overall rating isn’t doing it for me anymore. Frankly, there are far better and comprehensive reviews of popular movies and TV shows out there, and they weren’t fun to write anymore. Instead, I’m going to have a short summary, five adjectives I would use to describe my reaction, most and least impressive (no more than a sentence or two), and then overall rating. It’ll be shorter, far more concise, and most likely spoiler-free.
• Interviews will be put on an indefinite hiatus. I have loved conducting all of the interviews that have been posted, but lately, my heart just hasn’t been into coming up with questions for each interviewee. I figure that for now, I’ll put interviews on hold. In the future, if I am interested in doing interviews again, I will contact the remaining people who have expressed interest in being interviewed but have yet to receive questions. If there is still interest in the interviews then, I will start them up again. For now, though, there aren’t going to be any interviews anytime soon.
• Wednesdays will now be used to talk about all things related to my personal ventures into arts and crafts. Since the opening of my Etsy shop, I’ve been spending most of my free time either making crafts or looking into new crafting ideas I can try my hand at. I’ll essentially be using Wednesdays to promote my Etsy shop and getting the word out about its existence, as well as showcasing individual crafting projects I’m working on, both personal projects and those related to the shop.

Things will go back to normal around here with these new changes starting tomorrow!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.