Fixing the Mix-Up
Last week I accidentally sent the wrong pattern to a buyer. Thankfully she was nice about it and sent the pattern back, so I could give it to the correct buyer and send her the pattern she actually bought. However, I did have to pay an extra $5.00 ($3.00 to cover her postage for sending the pattern back, and $2.00 to mail her the correct pattern). In addition, both buyers had to wait two weeks to receive the correct item. I really wouldn't recommend making this mistake.

Oops, I Forgot a Fee
I noticed this week that I have been forgetting to list my Paypal fees in the "expenses" column. In order to receive money through Paypal, you have to pay $0.30 per transaction plus 3% of the total amount. I included this week's fees and also the previous weeks' fees in the "expenses" column below.
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The Bottom Line

Income: 
Low End Lot- $24.50
High End Lot- $20.51
Total Income: $45.01

Expenses:
Pattern Mix-Up: $5.00
10% Ebay Fees- $4.50
3% (+ $0.30 per item) Paypal Fees- $1.95
Previous Paypal Fees- $4.25
Total Expenses: $15.70

Net Profit: $29.31

Hourly Wage
I only spent two hours listing and shipping my lots. It took less time because I only had to take and edit a few photos, and I didn't have to count pattern pieces or carefully list the details of each pattern. With my high end lot, most of the pictures and information was already done and I just had to copy-paste. 

$29.31 divided by 2 hrs = $14.65 per hour

Hey! Finally a decent hourly wage! One more reason I like selling stuff in lots.

Price Per Pattern
Though I technically got less per pattern in lots than selling individually, I did sell the patterns. So instead of selling one of my high end patterns for $10, I sold four patterns at $5 each. This ultimately equals more money for me and less stuff to sit around in my sewing room. Plus after a couple weeks of re-listing, I wasn't sure if my high dollar patterns were actually high dollar. 

Likewise, I could have sold a couple of my low end patterns at $5 a piece (even though this is not really worth my time... see above). Instead I sold each pattern for $0.75. I think this is great because some of these patterns were worth NOTHING, or perhaps $0.25 at a garage sale. At any rate, I don't have a box full of patterns I'll never use sitting around in storage.

Coming Next Week:
I'm going to try super hard to sell everything that is left in my treasure box. It will be my last week of selling. Stay tuned!

-Bethany

Learning to Enjoy Winter
As a kid, I enjoyed winter. It was the time for hot cocoa, building snowmen, riding behind the snowmobile and going skiing. And Christmas! But somewhere as the years went by, between cold, icy farm chores, praying that I wouldn't drive into the ditch, and not being able to EVER get warm, I lost any fondness of winter. Even downhill skiing, which I had loved as a teenager, was not fun anymore. I would do anything to stay out of the cold. I wore a coat and hat everywhere, even at home and at work. I just couldn't shake the feeling of being cold.

Now that I'm married, most of the bad parts of winter have seemed to disappear. I no longer spend hours in the cold milking cows. I no longer have to drive to work every day, and our apartment stays cozy warm all winter long. Christmas is fun again because I have someone to spend it with, and I have my own home to decorate and bake cookies in. Who doesn't love baking cookies?

A Season of Rest
The best part of winter now, though, is my season of rest. Finally I have time to do things like sewing, needlework, home decorating, reading, and learning new cooking skills. While most people take their vacation in the summer, because of Hubs' work we take ours in the winter, so there is that to look forward to as well. Christmas is a lot of fun because now I have the time to make floral arrangements from greens in our very own backyard. Hubs has more time off because work slows down during the cold weather.
​ 
Cooking, even, is significantly easier. A jar of this, a frozen bag of that... soup is incredibly easy to make, and we have it all the time during winter.

Things I am looking forward to this winter:

-Knitting and embroidery for gifts
-Spinning on my new drop spindle
-Trying new recipes
-Reading books
-Cleaning out the pantry
-Propagating and growing some new exotic plants
-Restyling some outfits for vacation
-Working on new ebooks
-Making a marketing and branding plan for our hobby farm
​-Seeing friends and family

What do you enjoy doing in the colder months?

This week, Ebay selling was a fail not only on one, but TWO accounts!

Relists Only
This week I decided to try just relisting what had not sold before, after lowering some of the prices. Some of my items got watchers, but no bids. I also noticed that several patterns didn't have a single view- and THIS is obviously not good for sales. These patterns will probably go into a box to sell as an entire "lot". It's an easy way to get rid of a lot of patterns (including the ones you don't really like) at one time.

Another Shipping Hiccup
My WORST fail this week was a shipping mistake that I made. And it wasn't a small one, either. On Monday morning last week I went to ship a coat pattern. I picked out what I thought was the right pattern, but it wasn't. Just as I got up to look for the right pattern, I saw that the one I held in my hand had already been marked "shipped". Horror of horrors! I had mixed up the two coat patterns and sent one to the wrong person!!! I messaged both buyers and told them about the mix-up. The new buyer said "That's okay, I'm in no hurry to get the pattern." The second buyer took several days to reply, but finally told me she would be shipping the first pattern back in a day or two. Whew! Due to this mistake, I'll have to knock a few dollars for postage off of my profits the next time something sells. It was my fault though, and it's important to me that I make things right with my buyers.

This week may be a hit-or-miss with sales. I will try to list a few new items, but with Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, my little assortment of patterns may be overlooked.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Can you really save money by raising your own chickens? I believe you can.

First, Do the Math
The cheapest eggs I can find around here are about $0.13 per egg, or $1.56 per dozen.

It currently costs us $33.00 per month to feed our 35+ chickens with one bag of laying mash ($23.00) and one bag of whole corn ($10). On average, it costs us $1.07 per day to feed the hens.

At first, we were only getting 2-3 eggs per day. Now we are getting 5-6 eggs every day. You can see how the price of each egg goes down as production goes up.

1 egg per day... $1.07 per egg
2 eggs.... $0.53 per egg
3 eggs.... $0.36 per egg
4 eggs.... $0.27 per egg
5 eggs.... $0.21 per egg
6 eggs.... $0.18 per egg
7 eggs.... $0.15 per egg
8 eggs.... $0.13 per egg
9 eggs.... $0.12 per egg
10 eggs.... $0.11 per egg
11 eggs.... $0.10 per egg
12 eggs.... $0.09 per egg

As of right now, our eggs cost us $2.16 per dozen. Why are 35+ chickens only laying six eggs per day? For one thing, about five of them are roosters. I kept these for breeding stock, in order to eliminate the cost of chicks. Some of the hens are probably too old to lay, and some are too young. But the primary reason, I believe, is that I unintentionally let them molt this fall. After putting a light in the coop, production tripled. It tripled from two eggs per day, that is.

If you've got production up as high as possible and you still aren't breaking even, there are ways to make a flock pay for itself. For one, you can butcher the roosters and old hens. A 5 lb. bird at $1.00/lb is worth $5.00. If I butcher one bird per month, this cost savings can be subtracted from the feed. Plus, that is one less bird that you have to feed. In theory, each bird costs me $0.93 per month to feed, so that is one less dollar I have to spend. But for simplicity's sake, we'll keep that out of the equation.

$33.00/mo minus $5.00 = $18.00

1 egg per day... $0.90 per egg
2 eggs.... $0.45 per egg
3 eggs.... $0.30 per egg
4 eggs.... $0.23 per egg
5 eggs.... $0.18 per egg
6 eggs.... $0.15 per egg
7 eggs.... $0.13 per egg
8 eggs.... $0.11 per egg
9 eggs.... $0.10 per egg
10 eggs.... $0.09 per egg
11 eggs.... $0.08 per egg
12 eggs.... $0.08 per egg

Reducing Feed Costs
Another thing I'm in the process of doing is reducing feed costs. This is done by 1) switching feed, and 2) not buying feed. For example, instead of feeding all laying mash, I can feed one part mash and one part whole corn. Or I can feed one part mash and two parts whole corn. This is what the price difference would be:

All layer mash.... $46.00/mo.
1 part mash, 1 part corn.... $33.00/mo.
1 part mash, 2 parts corn.... $28.67/mo.
1 part mash, 1 part corn, 1 part free food.... $22.00/mo.

What is free food? Every day I take a bowl of kitchen scraps down to my hens. If there aren't very many scraps, I add some rotting produce from the garden or a few fallen apples from the orchard. They love apples, and we have plenty of them.

With this even lower feed cost ($22.00/mo) and saving $5.00+/mo. by butchering a chicken, the new cost for keeping my chickens is $17.00 per month. Obviously the cost per egg is going to be much cheaper.

1 egg per day... $0.55 per egg
2 eggs.... $0.27 per egg
3 eggs.... $0.18 per egg
4 eggs.... $0.14 per egg
5 eggs.... $0.11 per egg
6 eggs.... $0.09 per egg
7 eggs.... $0.08 per egg
8 eggs.... $0.07 per egg
9 eggs.... $0.06 per egg
10 eggs.... $0.05 per egg
11 eggs.... $0.05 per egg
12 eggs.... $0.05 per egg

Eliminating Other Costs
The ONLY way you can actually come out ahead with chickens is if you eliminate most other costs- things like shelter. Some people literally pay thousands of dollars for a chicken coop. That is okay for special pets, but my chickens are not pets. We have made a little "chicken corner" in the barn where our goats hang out. This corner is where the feeder and egg boxes are. It prevents the goats from eating and getting sick from layer mash, and it also gives the hens somewhere to escape from the goats. Up on the barn wall (higher than the goats can reach) we have put a roost where the hens sleep at night. The chickens can also free range in the goat pasture (or other pastures, if they get out). 

I was super happy to have the new animals. Another goat was what I had really wanted, after all. Of course I didn't plan on getting six of them, but it just worked out that way. What worked out even better was that the new goats were also small (pygmies), so we could breed our Pyrogas to the same Nigerian Dwarf buck as our first doe. Plus these new goats had softer, more valuable fiber than my run-of-the-mill Suffolk sheep. 

A Buck Makes Ten
When I called to arrange a breeding date for Adi and some of our new goats, I was in for a surprise. The owner of the buck had listed him on Craigslist and wondered if I was interested in buying him for $150. To board and service a doe costs around $50, so to breed our four does would already exceed the cost of the buck. In addition, it would be a hassle for us to pack up all four animals and take them to a breeder every year. The owner of this buck offered to drop him off at our house, and I was sold! 
​

Having a registered buck will allow us to sell registered Nigerian Dwarf goat kids, should we decide to do so. The buck is small enough that he won't hurt me (I grew up around mean Jersey bulls... safety is a concern!). His size is also important because it is never wise to service small does with large bucks- the offspring will be too big for the mama to deliver and cause all sorts of problems.

There was only one piece that didn't fit with my new goat expansion plan: our sheep.

Saying Baa-bye
Breeding our sheep turned out to be more problematic than we had thought. We contacted two breeders. One gave us a price of $100 for boarding and service, and another didn't give a price ("whatever you think it is worth") but wanted us to bring the ram to our house. In my internet studies on breeding sheep and goats, I discovered that sometimes they will service each other and produce hybrids- most of which abort early on. This would mean that our sheep and goats would have to be separated during breeding season. Separating would also be required to keep the sheep from eating the goats' grain.

Apart from breeding, there were other problems.

A month or so ago, I noticed that our sheep was gnawing on the goats' mineral block- literally chewing it away. Mineral blocks are supposed to be licked, not chewed. I also noticed that she peed all the time! I wondered if this was some mineral/feeding deficiency that I would have to deal with later on.

There was another problem I noticed with our sheep- she was ruining our new fencing. She had a tendency to climb up and pull down our orchard/type fencing. You would think that the goats would be the climbers, but ours are not tall enough or large enough to do any harm. The sheep, however, would stand on her hind legs, leaning her front legs up on the fence, and push on it so the top and bottom of the fence curled in. This was ruining our fence and causing the goats to get out all the time. Just when we thought the fence was fixed, they found another curled spot and crawled under.

She would also do this same climbing thing on the barn door. One day I went to open the door, only to find a full grown sheep "standing" in front of me. I screamed and slammed the door shut! After that, I would always have to wait for her to climb and then get all four feet back on the floor before attempting to open the door. This was a nuisance, but I dealt with it.

The last straw was when she literally knocked the wind out of me. I was busy pouring grain into five different bowls, bent over, when all of a sudden she came out of nowhere and butted me so hard that I fell over. After I got up and brushed myself off, it still took a few minutes to catch my breath. The grain was dumped all over and she was busying herself trying to eat it all. Sheep aren't even supposed to need grain, but here she was getting fat on it, just because she was big enough to push all of the goats out of the way. I decided it was time for her to go.

It was such a relief for me to get rid of our sheep. Not only was she a bad fit for our hobby farm, but I don't have the skill set required to keep sheep and I'm busy learning about goats right now. In the future I would like to try sheep again, but maybe after we have the proper infrastructure (fencing!) in place and when I have the extra time and money to invest in it.

Conclusion
Like many people, there are a lot more things I would like to do here on our hobby farm. However, I need to know what we are NOT going to do on this hobby farm. Too many irons in the fire is not a good thing, especially if one animal is causing 90% of the problems.

I need my animals to support themselves. The only thing I could sell from my sheep would be wool ($17) and her offspring ($50 each), if they survive. This would barely cover the cost of breeding and shearing, let alone hay during the winter, vitamins and other sheep-specific purchases. 

Buying the sheep wasn't a total loss. We got to support a 4-Her, and also got some meat. While we were butchering an old cow of my parents', we decided to do our sheep as well. In the end, we still got about 35 lbs. of meat. Because she was such a grain hog, our sheep had a lot of fat. I've been careful to save this fat to use for soap.

Do you have a hobby farm? Did you ever buy an animal that was a bad fit?

Even though Hubs and I were on a road trip last week, I was still able to list and sell some patterns, as well as work out a shippping/payment hiccup from a Week 1 buyer.

Ebay Scheduling Saves the Day
I used Ebay's scheduling feature to plan eight auctions. I made and scheduled the listings on Wednesday, we left Thursday morning and the auctions went public on Sunday evening at 10:00 pm (Eastern time), while we were halfway across the country.

One thing I forgot about when I planned the 7-day auction is that I would not be home to ship out any "Buy It Now" purchases. On Monday, four days before we would be home, one of my patterns sold. My Ebay policy says that I have two days to ship out patterns. Thankfully, Wednesday was Veteran's Day (and therefore not a business day) and we actually got home that night so I was able to ship it out Thursday morning, on time.

The Bottom Line

Income: 
Simplicity #2936- $5.99
Vogue #6586- $15.50
Vogue #8090- $21.99
Total Income: $43.48

Expenses:
Shipping- $6.75
Ebay Fees- $4.35
Total Expenses: $11.10

Net Profit: $32.38

Shipping Hiccup
Two weeks ago when I wrote my first selling post, I guessed on one of the shipping prices because the buyer had not paid for the item yet. When a buyer doesn't pay, you can't print the shipping label and thus cannot know how much the shipping will cost. When I got on Ebay again to see if the buyer had paid, I noticed that she had sent a message.

"Hi - can you mail this to me just in an envelope by first class international? Usually I pay around $3 for this postage to Canada so it saves a considerable amount."

I checked, and she was right about the postage being much lower outside of Ebay. I told her I could fulfill her request. What I didn't know was that my free shipping was only to the US anyway, and didn't apply for other countries, thus SHE was obligated to pay the considerable abount. I also didn't know that sending something to Canada is a big, customs forms-filled hassle. 

The lady was honest and nice enough. She paid like she said she would and sent $3.50- more than she thought it would be- for shipping, through Paypal. However, Ebay flat out refused to let me mark the item as paid, or print a shipping label. I could not get Paypal's international shipping website to work, so I had to hand-write the address and take it to the post office. When we got to the post office, the workers were off to lunch, so we had to wait a half hour and try again. Then I had to fill out a customs form, and when I was done there were five more people in line and I had to wait again. Finally I got up to the counter, and discovered that anything SOLD internationally has to have even more forms, and so I sent the item as a "gift". After it was shipped, I had to cancel the order on Ebay because it still was "unpaid".

It took literally TEN private messages from the buyer and at least two hours of my time to try and work this all out. The worst part is that all of this happened one day before we were supposed to leave. I was already busy trying to list other patterns and get things done before we left, all the while worrying about how this pattern was going to get shipped. We ended up shipping the pattern at some post office in the middle of the Upper Peninsula, DURING our trip. This wasn't convenient either because it took an extra hour out of our day between the post office being closed for lunch and waiting in line. It was just not worth it.

In the end, I learned my lesson to NEVER ship outside of Ebay, especially when I have nothing to gain anyway. The buyer told me, "When I see the global shipping program on any listing I usually just click out of the listing because the prices are so exorbitant. I guess it's another way for ebay to make some money. But I couldn't resist this hat - my daughter is SO into rockabilly and will love it!" However, you would think if she really wanted the pattern for her daughter she would have just paid the extra shipping. When I looked on her profile I noticed that she is also a re-seller of vintage patterns. I can't help but wonder if this pattern will end up on Ebay again in a couple weeks. 

The shipping actually cost less than what it would have to ship inside the US, so technically it was a good deal for me. However, the extra two hours at home and hour lost on the road was definitely not worth a dollar or two.

Hourly Wage
I spent two hours listing and two hours with the shipping hassle, plus 20 minutes to ship each pattern that I sold this week. That makes a total of five hours worked.

$32.38 divided by 5 hours = $6.48/ hour

Even with the big shipping hassle last week, I still made a decent hourly wage.

Til next time,
-Bethany
​

Really, there is no such thing as free meat. However, there is such a thing as paid-for meat that nobody wants. Apart from road-kill venison, the only other truly free meat that I've discovered is roosters.

Where to Find a Rooster
I decided to write this article several weeks ago when we were given our sixth free rooster. It was getting to be Bethany's Rooster Farm. Fall is a great time to pick up free roosters, because nobody wants to feed them over the winter. Ours were not someone's pet roosters, but Craigslist free roosters and roosters that got dropped off at our house because someone was sick and tired of hearing them crow every morning, feeding them, and not getting any eggs. The Craigslist lady was so happy to see us take her roosters. "Oh my gosh. They're just running around eating feed and crowing ALL DAY, pecking at the hens and I'm just so thankful to see them go."

The Secret Is In the Cooking
Some people think that rooster meat is tough, bland and not good for anything. This might be true. However, I've discovered a wonderful thing called pressure canning that makes meat soft and tender. It literally falls apart when you lift it out of the jar. Rooster then is still not tasty, but you know there is this other thing called taco seasoning, enchilada sauce, salsa... if you use rooster meat in casseroles or other heavily-spiced dishes, you won't be able to tell the difference between that and rotisserie chicken.

Why Doesn't Everyone Eat Rooster?
I'm not 100% sure why other people are giving away roosters instead of eating them, except that it's a bother to butcher only a few roosters, and nobody knows how to do it. It took Hubs and I a couple hours to butcher four roosters the other day, but it was a rainy afternoon and I told Hubs it would be like a date. A bloody, feathery date! I enjoyed spending time with him.

Learning how to butcher chickens is the only thing standing between you and free meat. There are plenty of good chicken-processing tutorials on the internet, so I will let you find one yourself. It doesn't require a lot of equipment to butcher chickens; we did ours with some sharp knives, a pot of hot water and a cardboard box for the guts and feathers. 

To preserve and cook the meat, I pressure canned the legs, wings, and necks. The carcasses (breasts and back) were to big for me to cut and fit into jars, so I put those in cheap plastic bags to freeze. I also saved the feet to clean, scale, and make broth with. I love canning meat bone-in because you get such excellent broth without going through the work of making it every week, then dealing with an oily crock pot. In order to make broth, simply fill the jars of chicken the rest of the way up with water. You can put in less chicken if you want more broth. If I have a jar that isn't very full, I pop a few chicken feet in. The broth isn't seasoned, but I use it to make soups that already have spices and seasonings added.

Using the Meat
The frozen carcasses will be slow-cooked in a crockpot with homemade simmer sauce (made with homegrown, free tomatoes!). Add a few potatoes and there's a meal. There is plenty of meat on each carcass for Hubs and I.

To use the canned meat, I drain the broth first into a plastic container, which goes into the fridge. It is liquid at room temperature, but will gel when refrigerated. Then I empty the contents of the jar, pick off the meat and discard the bones. The meat also goes in a separate container in the fridge. One jar's worth of meat can be used for two or three meals. I imagine a bigger family would use one or even two jars per meal. 

A Sustainable Meat Solution
The wonderful thing about chicken meat is that it will keep perpetuating itself. While we do butcher Craigslist roosters, I still keep some in our flock to do breeding business. When our broody hen goes broody, she'll hatch out a couple free hens and probably a rooster or two as well. As the flock matures, we'll keep butchering the extra roosters and possibly some older hens as well.

You don't have to have a flock of hens to get free roosters. As I mentioned before, Craigslist has plenty of free roosters. Also, if people know you are willing to take animals, they will drop off roosters because they don't know what else to do with them. 

Meat is one of the hardest things to find inexpensively, especially if you want free range, grass-fed, etc. The frugal homemaker would do well to make the most of every opportunity and have skills to be able to do so. By butchering four of our free roosters, we were able to get 20-25 lbs. of free meat in the time it would have taken to watch a movie.

And we are just rookie processors! Imagine what YOU could accomplish!

-Bethany

One of the hardest foods to find frugally is meat. Cheap meat from the store is less nutritious and laced with questionable substances. Even home-raised meat can be expensive if you count the cost of feed and especially paying to have it processed. If you feed grain from the local elevator, it is probably full of GMO corn and soybeans, but to buy organic feed would defeat the "frugal" part of raising your own.

​Hunting is Not Free
Even hunting, touted as a frugal alternative to raising your own without all the work, has gotten expensive. In our state, you need a base license ($15) as well as a regular deer license ($10-15). If you add these costs to the cost of a hunting gear and/or bullets, you still end up paying about $0.75 per pound IF you do the butchering yourself. While this could still be considered frugal, there is work and skill involved, too. Health-conscious readers need to remember that deer graze on GMO corn and other non-organic crops. One wonders if it would be better to just buy cheap meat from the store at $0.75 per pound, and avoid the hassle.

 There are a couple ways to get totally free meat, however, and today I'm going to share one of them.

Road Kill
Yep, I really am suggesting that you eat road kill. But not opossum, however. If you or someone you know has just hit a deer with you vehicle, you can let the police know you want to keep the deer, and they will bring out a deer tag for you. The tag is free, and there is no license required to keep the deer.

A road-killed deer is fresh, and most likely has some good meat on it. If you are quick about it, you can drag the deer home and butcher it. If the meat is put in reusable plastic freezer boxes, there is no cost at all. Canning the meat will add about $0.15 per pound. But really, that is negligible. 

Recently, we were able to butcher a road kill deer and split the meat with in-laws. We brought home about 20 lbs. of meat, and also a lot of fat that I'm using to make soap with. Half was chunk meat, and half was ground. I canned most of the meat, but did freeze some ground meat for hamburgers. We like to can chunk meat and stew meat, because the heat breaks down fat and gristle. After it is processed, the meat just falls apart. It is fabulous for using in tacos, fajitas, etc.

Now obviously you can't plan to fill your freezer with X amount of road kill deer. Like garage sales, these kind of deals are hit-or-miss, and if you hit them you might be paying for some vehicle repairs. :( However, you might as well make the best of it and take advantage of some free meat.

And the first week of the Ebay Flip Project was a success! This week I sold almost half of the patterns I listed. Both Vogue coat patterns and the Simplicity hat & bag pattern sold this week (first in the slideshow). The other four patterns had some watchers but no bids.

The Bottom Line

Income: 
Vogue #S-4023- $14.99
Vogue #9024- $14.99
Simplicity #3322- $7.99
Total Income: $37.97

Expenses:
Shipping- $4.75
Box of Patterns- $6.00
Ebay Fees- $3.80
Total Expenses: $14.55

Net Profit: $23.42

There we have it! A profit the very first week. I also paid off all of my initial start up costs (the box of patterns). 

Hourly Wage
I spent four hours last Tuesday listing these patterns, and it takes about 20 minutes to package each one for shipping. That makes a total of five hours spent on this project.

$23.42 divided by 5 hours = $4.86/ hour

My goal for most homemaking/housewife projects is to make/save at least $4.00 per hour. This is the number I use to gauge if something is "worth my time", all other considerations aside.

Pricing
Ebay is supposed to be an auction site, but unless you list something that is pretty popular, you'll probably only have one bidder/buyer. I price each pattern according to what I think it is worth and not any lower. I can always relist something in a few weeks for no cost.

If something doesn't sell, it might be because it is too expensive. It might also be that your buyer wasn't online that week. There are a million vintage sewing patterns being sold on Ebay, so it boils down to what an individual customer finds attractive. Some patterns have a better chance of selling, but there's no guarantee that they will.

One of the patterns I thought would sell this week was my vintage glove pattern. However, at the end of the auction it still had no bidders and not even any watchers. It seems to be a popular pattern, but perhaps it was the wrong size, or my buyer found the cheaper pattern on Etsy for $11.00. I think mine was priced very reasonable, however, so I probably won't be changing the price when I relist.

Ebay's Timing Feature
Next we will be out of the state. It is not very smart to list patterns when you won't be home to ship them out! Because of this, I'll still be spending a couple hours listing patterns, but I will schedule the auctions to end when we are home to ship them out. Ebay didn't have scheduling when I first started selling, so I'm pretty excited to use this feature.

Til next time,
-Bethany

***

P.S. I've put a widget in the sidebar that shows my active Ebay listings. This is under the "Ebay Flip Project" picture and earnings. Feel free to bid on something if you like it! :)