3716 Sorry Sari Seller

Sunday, April 14, 2013

It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs.

-- Malaclypse the Younger --

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I would dearly love to use tussah silk saris for curtains.  I'd need six for the living room, four for the dining room, and two or three for each of the larger bedrooms.  I buy saris on eBay, where you can get beautiful, new, printed, silk saris for less than $30 including shipping, and fancy gold-threaded, embroidered, and/or beaded used saris for even less.  Unfortunately, the saris in my price range tend to be unique in colors and patterns, and I don't want to mix patterns.  I want them all to match on any one window.

It's next to impossible to find several matching saris for less than a few hundred dollars each.

So last night when I accidentally came across a seller who not only had close to a dozen NEW tussa silk saris in each of two patterns in colors that would work for me, I got really excited and placed bids on a bunch of them that were going to end overnight.  I woke this morning to find that I had "won" all that I wanted --- but that my bids had been cancelled....

Duh?  Why?

...because the seller had screwed up, and had listed the same two saris (one in each pattern) multiple times.  She sent me a note that she really had only one of each, that I could have, but she'd have to cancel the others.  I told her I can't use one of each.  Cancel them all.

I am so very disappointed.
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3172 Satisfaction, so easy.

Friday, November 26, 2010

"Facts have a notorious liberal bias."
-- Stephen Colbert --

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I don't know why, but there's something very satisfying about doing laundry in my new washer and dryer. I've been washing every bit of anything washable coming from the old house, partly because I smoked in the old house, but mainly because the old house was infested with clothes moths imported from the middle east a few years ago in some wool camel bags, and I don't want any moths in this house.

Fabric things that aren't washable, like carpets, get vacuumed topside, backside, topside, backside, over and over until nothing comes out.

Yesterday and today I mostly washed pillows. I have something like 12 bed pillows packed away from when Jay was sick and we needed pillows to tuck around him in bed to prevent pressure. I'm washing them one at a time, on the "heavy duty" setting with hot water, double rinse, and maximum extraction (1.5 hours!), and drying on high heat. I'm very pleased with the way they're coming out. Only two got lumpy, and those two are also the two that don't seem to want to dry completely, even after several passes through the dryer. They'll get taken apart to stuff decorative pillow covers.

Daughter wonders why I need so many pillows now, but on a queen sized bed I'll use four pillows, so with two queens and two twins, that's ten right there.

I have a feeling the water and gas bill will be shocking this month, but it's a one-time thing.

Right now I have a huge old hand-crocheted tablecloth in the washer (it may become curtains, or bedspread), and I've been feeling so virtuous I'm poking around for other things to wash. (Jasper? Here, kitty kitty....)

My new bed for bedroom #2 arrived this morning. I like it.

It's very sturdy for what little I paid for it. I like the simpler head and foot boards. I got the "low profile" box springs, 3 inches thinner than regular, because the regular box, although it made the bed look more luxurious, made the bed so high it was awkward for me to get in and out.

I have some mother-of-pearl inlaid tables from India that will be perfect on either side.

Now I need curtains in that room. Actually, I don't think I can sleep there just yet. The bed is new out of the box and it still smells of stain and varnish. I guess it will need to air for a while.

The quilt spread is made of sari trim. I've had it for a long time, but hadn't used it. You can't actually sleep under it because it has a lot of metallic thread in it so it's super heavy, but it's pretty. The camera just doesn't pick up the shine and richness of the colors.
I think I'll put some tassels on the pillows, and make a contrasting neckroll or two from some different sari fabric. Right now it's too much of the same all over.

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Current thorns:

• "All intensive purposes" - That should be "all intents and purposes" folks.
• "Doggy dog world" - Aaaaagh! Hasn't everybody heard by now how wrong that is?
  

2072 Vote, Saris, Leaves

Friday, October 17, 2008

Important - If you plan to vote a straight party ticket, to make sure your vote counts, READ THIS:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/straightticket.asp

The description is confusing. On one hand, I get the impression that if you vote for the president, and then vote "straight" party, that amounts to two votes for president, and your president vote will be thrown out. On the other hand, I get the impression that if you simply vote "straight" party, without a separate vote for president, this does not necessarily include a vote for president.

It's confusing.

The solution, if it isn't clear on the ballot or in the booth, is to vote for every candidate separately, even if you do intend straight party.

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I had a long lunch yesterday with a young Pakistani woman from whom I buy saris. I had noticed that many of the used saris I buy on eBay and elsewhere are advertised as "worn once". She told me that the younger Pakistani and Indian women in the US wear saris pretty much only to ceremonies and family parties (only "Aunties" wear them daily). And the women tend to be supremely competitive where clothing is concerned. Since you always see a lot of the same people at the occasions where you'd wear a sari, once you've worn one, it's done. You can't wear it again without losing face (and making your husband look cheap, I suppose).

Wow! That can get expensive! Given that a silk sari can easily run $180 for a print to $1000 and more for gold embroidery, and given that families and communities are large so occasions are frequent, well, my head spins.

So women will sell a sari for pennies on the dollar after one wearing.

I said it sounded like there might be a market for rental saris, and she was aghast. No one would wear a rental! "It's like a wedding gown."

Then I was aghast.

Hmmmm. There might be a market for "American" styles custom made from a favorite but "done" sari. Jackets, skirts, robes?

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I don't like fall, mainly because it means winter is coming, and I hate winter. Other people rave about the colors of the autumn leaves, but they mostly leave me cold. Literally. I figure if I've seen one red tree, I've seen them all.

Driving cross-county through the mountains to lunch yesterday, I found something I can appreciate. I love seeing clear areas, like open woods, large lawns, completely covered in yellow maple leaves. Especially with a flock of wild turkeys scratching in the leaves.

That's pretty ok.

Then, driving south to dinner last night, the sun was at a steep angle, so that it was hitting the trees on the east side of the road straight on, and in some cases lighting them from underneath, so that they were firey bright.

That was pretty ok, too.

But I still hate winter.
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1689 Online auction addiction

Monday, February 11, 2008

I can tell I'm a bit depressed lately by the contents of the mailbox. I've been shopping online. I do that when I feel like I need pampering. Shopping online is more satisfying than shopping in stores, because when packages arrive in the mail, or when the big brown or yellow trucks come up the driveway, it feels like someone sent me a gift. Somehow it gets disconnected from the money spent.

Some of the shopping has been on eBay. I hadn't visited eBay since the fall of 2005 (except once to buy something from a friend), but since last July I've been indulging far too much, in spurts.

There's a method to get the best deals on eBay. I don't understand people who bid early in an eBay auction. It's not at all like a live auction, when you want to register interest with the auctioneer so that you don't get left out when the bidding gets hot. Registering early interest on eBay is NOT a good thing, and it's completely unnecessary, if you understand automatic bidding. If you want to make sure the seller doesn't end the auction early, just ask a question. That tells the seller you're interested without alerting other bidders.

I'll see a nice sari, with three days to go on the auction, and six or seven bids in on it already, invariably from people with less than 80 in feedback count. They obviously don't understand eBay's automatic bidding and they're just bidding each other up. I don't bid until the last few seconds of the auction, and I almost always win at the lowest possible winning amount. If I had placed the same bid earlier, someone would have "nibbled" my bid all the way up.

(Bidding in the last few seconds is called "sniping", and it's despised by people who don't understand automatic bids. The explanation of automatic bidding is complicated, but once understood, the concept is simple.)

So I do a little research on the other bidders who have revealed their interest. I look at what they've bought ("won") lately, and how much they paid, how much they're willing to go for an item of this type. I look at what their interests seem to be. I look to see if they have a habit of "nibbling" up automatic bids. I look to see if they ever snipe.

And frankly, I look just because I'm snoopy and I want to know what they bought. Sometimes I find some good stuff, good sellers, that way.

One woman I researched today had a very strange buying history. She was buying all kinds of pure junk. Then I realized it was all very cheap junk, and she was getting it at the starting price (often very low) as the only bidder. It looks like she opens with the lowest bid on a LOT of junk (we're talking like $.50 and $1.25 shipping), and then either gets outbid, or wins for a pittance. She has bought and got feedback on about 50 items in the past two weeks. I suddenly realized that she isn't buying stuff - she's spending a little money to build a good feedback rating. I'll bet that if I look back in a month, I'll find her listing all that junk for sale, along with some of her own stuff that she wants to sell.

She's smart. A lot of people won't buy, especially expensive items, from someone who has less than 50 feedbacks, or less than 99% positive. Most people won't notice that her perfect feedback is all from buying piddly things.

She's the one I'd worry about. The sari she has bid on is already higher than she has paid for anything else. It's obvious she's smart, and she's specifically interested in this particular sari. This means I should bid very close to the end of the auction, leaving only seconds. Super snipe.

And that's the lure of eBay. Not only do I get "gifts" in the mail, but I get the thrill of the hunt, chase, and kill.

Of course, the question is, why do I need that boost now?

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A sari? Yeah, I wear them occasionally. And where else can you get six yards of bordered silk for $25?

The best sari seller out there is Bee Patel [http://stores.ebay.com/Bee-Patels-Sari-Palace]. Her saris are always in perfect condition, described accurately, well photographed, and priced right. My only complaint is that she doesn't sell the sari together with the matching blouse (choli). They're separate auctions, and it's possible to win one and not the other, which is maddening.

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Later: I was just wandering around eBay, and I found a seller, Everydaysource, who has a feedback count of 710202. That's over 700,000 individual eBay ids he has sold stuff to. Not 700,000 sales, the sales number is at least 1,035,309 (feedback from any id is counted only once). That's mind boggling!
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