Who's the endangered species?

     When I talk about my Etsy shop, my friends always say, "How are you doing?  How's it going for you?"
       I guess I should answer, "Well, I'm not ready to retire yet."  It kind of makes me feel like a failure because honestly, I'm lucky to sell 1 item a week.  I've never been able to get my finger on the pulse of what's popular.  I remember taking a test when I was applying for a retail job where I had to choose what would be most important to the consumer in regards to several items.  I didn't get a single answer correct; in fact, I was wildly off base on most of them.
     I've learned to live with my off-center brain but I wish I could come up with a successful item for Etsy.  I get so excited when the emails come in that notify me of a sale!  Last week, however, I received a different sort of email from Etsy.  Here is the content, edited for brevity:
 <<...we’ve changed our prohibited items policy to include certain animal products. This decision is informed by the US Endangered Species Act... In light of these changes, we’ve removed listings from your shop that may no longer be sold on Etsy. >>

Whaaat?!

     

     I signed in to my account and found that Etsy had deactivated 3 items that feature fossilized mammoth tusk or enamel.  Incensed, I fired off a reply to Etsy pointing out that mammoths are not endangered as the last remaining population went extinct approximately 4000 years ago.

     To their credit, they responded immediately with this:

<<Thank you for your response and for providing me with more information about the item you wish to sell. However, our policies prohibit the sale of all ivory products regardless of their age, origin, or legality.>>

     And you know what?  I get it.  And to top it off, I was collaging a birthday card for a stepson this weekend and opened a back issue of National Geographic to an article concerning the craze for hunting mammoth tusks in Siberia.  The beautiful, spiral curved tusks of these extinct relatives of elephants wind up in the same damn places as modern poached ivory: carving and medicinal shops in Asia, for the most part, which continues to fuel the hunger for modern elephant ivory.   

     Bummer...

     So, after a highly productive summer setting up my Etsy shop and starting my blogs, I've settled back into a guilt-free respite of knitting.

     I can't make money knitting; I'm too slow, there's too many machines that do it better, and for that matter, there's too many humans that do it better, but I'm going to knit, regardless, so I'll keep adding my projects to my Etsy shop and maybe when the holiday season crops up, someone in a colder clime will take a liking to my rustic style.