Guest Author - Pegg Thomas

e-Bay has become the first place many people look to find all sorts of items they want to purchase. It’s no less popular for handspinners. The variety and amount of rovings, fibers and fleeces at any one time can be overwhelming. This morning I typed in “wool spinning” and it brought up 133 items for me to view. Typing in “wool roving” brought up 159 items. Every color in the rainbow is there and many different blends. So how do you know what to buy when you can’t touch it first?

Knowing the breeds of sheep will help tremendously if you want to purchase fleece or rovings from e-Bay. If you want good sturdy rug wool, for instance, you should be looking for Karakul, Lincoln, Navajo-Churro or another of the rug wool breeds. Buying a Targhee fleece to make a rug, for example, would frustrate any spinner/weaver. That fleece is too fine to make a long lasting, hard wearing rug. In the same way, buying a Hampshire fleece to make a baby sweater would also frustrate the spinner (and likely annoy the baby!).

While making e-Bay purchases you’ll want to be aware of four things:

1) Colors are not exact. Whether in the photography, scanning or viewing stage, colors are very hard to represent exactly. Pay close attention to the description of the items and not so much to the represented color on your computer screen.

2) Many e-Bay sales are for small amounts. If you want to make a sweater or any larger project, you may have to buy more than is listed on the sale.

3) Shipping costs can drive the price up above what you are willing to pay. Always, always, always… check the shipping costs before bidding on anything! Even if the seller has set up a direct link calculator for UPS or USPS, take the time to plug in your zip code and see what the shipping will cost. I have found, as a seller, that those calculators are not very accurate and have added extras to the order to help off-set those costs.

4) And last, you’ll want to click on the seller’s name and view their positive/negative feedback. If you see negative feedback over 10%, you may want to shop elsewhere. Most sellers will have some negative feedback (even things beyond the seller’s control like colors and shipping costs can cause buyers to leave negative feedback) but when it reaches 10% that says something about the seller.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the old sayings, “buyer beware” and “never buy a pig in a poke.” Both of these are good advice when purchasing on-line! But as handspinners, we don’t often have a shepherd next door to purchase our fibers from, so the Internet has given us a whole new world of shopping opportunities. I don’t want to discourage anyone from shopping on-line. Both this article and the article Buying Fleece from Internet Venders were written to help spinners in this area. Happy shopping on the WWW!