I love finding free places to promote your shop and I can’t believe I haven’t found the EtsyMini blog before now. It is essentially a collection of all the Etsy Mini’s of anyone who signs up, organized into categories, and it is a great way to browse Etsy Shops visually. It serves as a little unofficial catalogue of shops in each category, and we all know how much I love catalogues. Wait, do we know how much I love catalogues? I wonder if I’ve ever said. Well, for the future, I LOVE catalogues.

Getting your mini included is as easy as leaving a comment with your name and shop number under the category you best fit into. There are also lots of opportunities for more exposure by becoming a volunteer and assisting in the maintenance and marketing of the EtsyMini Blog.

Supply and Vintage sellers are not left out, either, as there is a SuppliesMini blog available as well.

I finally added the most recent entries sent to me for the Etsy Sellers Blog List, so it is all up to date. Over 1450 Etsy blogs are currently on the list – Is yours? You can add it by going to the bottom of the list and filling out the little form-thingy there.

You can also link to the list in your link list or with one of the buttons I made.

The most popular posts on Sixth & Elm this year..

1. The Wedding Files: Project #1 - Guest Favours
2. Things We Learned While Painting the House
3. The October Tree
4. Turkey Day
5. On Weakness and Strength
6. Death By Cashew
7. Photographic Evidence
8. Font Cheat Sheet
9. The Story of My Craft
10. You’re Not Going to Throw That Out, Are You?

Take a peek over on Modish today for the Sixth & Elm Handmade Spaces interview, and a write-up of my studio. Thanks again Jena!

A quote I found by Brian on his blog, “the Bleacher Life:”

When people say that, “life isn’t fair,” they’re right, but you can still react to that unfairness in a way that fights for equality and justice…for fairness. What happens to us is out of our hands but how we react to it isn’t. Accepting that life isn’t fair is absolving yourself of the responsibility to do something about it.

Of course, being Brian, he also lists this helpful piece of advice just above it:

Try not to put yourself in a position that makes it necessary to use a toilet amoungst 70,000 other people. On most occasions it ends up being a bad idea.

I don’t know much about Dot, except that she’s a genius. In the world of doilies and macramé plant hangers, the art of crochet has a distinct age-stigma attached to it but the patterns Dot has published on her blog, aptly named “Patterns by Dot” are a nice break from the norm. Almost everyone I meet asks if my grandma taught me to crochet and I have to respond that “No, I don’t think she even knows how.” Now Dot may very-well be a grandmother (as I said, I know little about her) but her patterns are funky and distinctly ruffle-free. My favorite is her hot pink crocheted Miami cowboy hat featured in the Happy Hooker Crochet Patternbook, but her blog also hosts a goldmine of patterns that she provides free of charge and waives the marketing rights to for finished products (meaning you can sell what you make with her patterns, but don’t try to sell the patterns themselves or claim that you came up with them). In the milling whirlpool of proprietary controversy, this is a welcome change from the “For personal use only” tag on everything these days.

I think my first project from her site will be the Scrap blanket because I have an entire wicker trunk of leftovers that I was keeping, trying to convince myself I would use one day before I give up and throw them out.

I’ve been tagged by Stormy Designs to share 7 facts about myself. Last time I got tagged I waited too long and then forgot who tagged me, so I better do this one before I forget again.

1. My favorite food is berries of any kind.
2. I cover my ears in scary movies.
3. I put ketchup in Lipton Chicken Noodle soup and have since I was little.
4. When I was 12, I broke my arm when I fell asleep while riding my bike. (What? It was a really long downhill coast and I was tired!)
5. I have walked on top of the Green Monster at Fenway Park.
6. I hate black licorice. Like barf-hate.
7. I started to stain the unfinished wood stairs down to the dungeon studio, but got distracted after one stair. The cat won’t step on that one stair now, for some reason.

Adam asked me to note that he gave me most if these answers because I couldn’t think of any except the first one.

Here are the 7 people that I’m tagging:

um. I don’t actually know who to tag - I tagged everyone who would do this the last few times I did this and now I am out of people, and I am too shy to tag people I don’t know. So, if you read this and want to participate you can consider yourself tagged by me! Passive tagging.

Here is what to do:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.