Pepperberry Crochet

A word about CPSIA-- International Day of Blogging

Do you know what CPSIA is?

It's a new set of laws that will be coming into effect on February 10, 2009. These laws are well intended--the idea is to protect babies and toddlers from lead poisoning. It mandates testing of all products intended for children under the age of twelve for lead and other potentially harmful substances.

The problem? There's no exemption for small businesses or independent artists. Artists can't just label their products as "Not for children under the age of 12" because it's up to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make that determination-- see an article at Forbes for a clear explanation.

For hundreds of crafters that make their living making plush toys or baby or child items, this is effectively going to mean the end of their businesses. Personally, I would no longer be able to attend craft fairs or sell plush toys.

Please check out the CPSIA Resources at Etsy, and join the fight to keep toys both safe and HANDMADE!

You can link to a list of participating bloggers here. If you want to join in the blog-in, you can link here, or just post about it!

Etsy Web Analytics

Better photo of the dino

Since I finally receive the Etsy Tech Updates newsletter, I found out yesterday that Etsy has added some sort of web analytics setup to pages. I apologize, but I am only tech savvy to a point, and haven't experimented all that much with Google Analytics--I use the Typepad Stats setup here on Typepad if I'm interested in any kind of information about my blog. It's not the MOST helpful stuff, perhaps because I don't know how to interpret it correctly :) but it does let me keep track of what sites are referring here.

That being said, it would be more helpful for me to be able to analyze how people are getting here, ditto for the etsy shop. What I'm not as cool about is that I'm going to have to learn to use an entirely different program, set up a whole bunch of crazy code, and fiddle like mad with it in order to get it working. I know. I tried setting up Google Analytics for this site and gave up in frustration. Again, possibly this is because I am an idiot.

Don't get me wrong, I like etsy, I'm not one of the "We Hate Etsy But Still Sell There" people. Etsy's the reason I've been able to do a lot of things, including designing for Crochet Today and maintaining a semi-successful pattern business. However, I have some form of easy to comprehend stat tracking on every website that I pay to use, like Typepad and Flickr (I have a pro membership). I even have a form of stat tracking on a website that I don't pay to use-- Ravelry. I'm a little confused as to why Etsy chose to go through the time and effort to set up this whole Google Analytics teamup rather than taking the time they need to make simple stats available.

In the end, I suppose I should be grateful for access to any kind of statistics, and I guess I'm going to attempt to set them up. Then, I'm going to Ikea! :) Have a great weekend, all.

ETA: Okay, I just tried adding it, and it's quick and painless, but I still would rather access it from Etsy rather than google *sulk*

Resolutions

Finished dinosaur

It's the first week of January, and like a lot of people, I've been thinking about New Year's resolutions for myself and my business. Although I think resolutions can be difficult and self defeating (I never want to eat more than when I've resolved to lose weight) they can also be a useful tool and reminder for goal setting.

For my personal resolutions, in the past I have resolved to lose weight, be more assertive, eat healthier foods, keep my apartment neater, or, appropriately, to be better at following through on projects. I have not managed to accomplish any of these, because I haven't had a plan. I also haven't enlisted any help from the proper people. Therefore, my resolution for the upcoming year is to plan more and get better at asking for help when I need it.

This also applies to my busniess. I haven't "planned" a lot of what I've been involved in. Not to say that I don't work hard--I do--but I've been incredibly lucky with the opportunities that have been offered to me. I also haven't done a wonderful job planning my blog posts, to the detriment of my readers. :) Some planning would help me to better structure both my time and my writing.

With "plan" in mind as my theme for 2009, here's the 2009 Pepperberry Crochet Plan:

1. Continue to help fight the CPSIA legislation.
2. Submit a toy to "Stuffed" Magazine 
3. Write a crochet book
4. Publish a free pattern or tutorial every other month
5. Publish a new pattern every month
6. Design and begin selling crochet kits
7. Participate in 3 craft fairs
8. Blog daily... or, almost daily
9. Comment on blogs every day
10. Meet new blog friends and find new blogs to read.

What are your resolutions this year? What's your theme?