I'm on Regretsy!

Well, here at Stoat Towers I've been doing a little stoat dance of celebration every so often this afternoon because (... drum roll please... ) one of my items has appeared on Regretsy! Wow! I was just winding down after two nights of working till 05:00 when I decided to check out Regretsy for a snide snigger... only to find one of MY wands at the very top of the page... I was gobsmacked! And not only was a wand a featured item, but there were "honourable mentions" and links in the comments to a pendant, the bundles of sacred woods and the cat's whiskers! I'm tickled pink, over the moon, chuffed as punch and all those other quaint English expressions that no one else understands! :-)

For those of you who are not familiar with www.regretsy.com it's a kind of anti-Etsy. Just as Etsy is a brilliant site dedicated to all that's best in art and hand made craft with the emphasis on high quality, affordable pieces to grace your home, then Regretsy is a truly fabulous site for indulging your sarcastic, mean, say-what-everyone-else-is-thinking side by highlighting Etsy items that are shoddy, badly made, over priced, or just totally unintelligable in the build-a-heap-of-old-cardboard-boxes-and-call-it-art kind of way. As far as I can gather, the wand in question falls (mostly) into the last category because... wait for it, this is a profound statement... it's a stick! It also has an unusually long (even for me) and pretty pompous description that mentions magic, unicorns and Faeries, which seems to have hit a nerve in some Regretsians for reasons I don't understand. The only thing that slightly disappointed me was that the entire piece was built around "C'mon, it's a stick!" and I would have expected Regretsy to have come up with something original. I've been selling wands online for over four years and I generally get a message or email every two or three months saying "It's a stick" from someone who doesn't understand the concepts of my religion so I'm fairly used to it. In fact, as I've been a Witch for over 25 years now and never hidden my beliefs, I'm probably fairly used to most of the standard reactions I get from the uneducated bigots who haven't got a clue about any faith but the one they were born into. Ooops, I'm rambling off the subject again... that last remark was NOT directed at any of the Regretsians who left comments, as they were kinder than I would have expected. Actually, most of them seemed bemused rather than hostile, which seems fair enough. Some of them even seemed to know a little about the Craft, which I found encouraging. The thing that struck me as most odd after reading all the comments, was how many of the folks moved to have their say referred to me as "he".

I have often been tempted to simply write a description that says "It's a stick, buy it you bastards" but I don't think Etsy would allow it. Besides, there are times when the bullshit flows wonderfully, so I always feel it's best to go along with it. True, my better half sometimes amuses himself by calculating how much per gramme I can sell our kindling for, but I console myself by thinking that he obviously doesn't get it either.

I take my crafting and my religion very seriously, but that doesn't mean I can't laugh at myself or my life and appreciate how bizarre it all seems from the outside.

Oh, and the reason I spell it "faery" not "fairy" is quite straightforward. To me, "fairies" are those sickly sweet and horribly cute, skinny teenage girls or chubby babies with insect wings popularised by C. M. Barker. "Faeries" on the other hand, are the nature spirits who live in, look after and are part of everything in the natural world. It's simply the Gaelic spelling of the same word... I also write "gaol" instead of "jail". Neither is incorrect, just uncommon.

So am I hurt, offended, annoyed or even ever-so-slightly miffed at gaining notoriety on one of my favourite websites? Hell no! I've always half expected something magical to appear there, but didn't dare hope it would be something of mine! I'm flattered and slightly amused that one of my items has been capable of causing quite such a stir. Regretsy rocks and I remain a loyal fan!