Interview and Helpful Hints From CricketsCreations!

After reading so many of her forum posts and other articles and reading her advice to other team members in the Etsyknitters Team, I asked Celeste of CricketsCreations if she would pretty please do an interview and give us some insight into this brilliant and very kind person:

When did you start knitting?

I took an elective class when I was eight years old. From there, I
studied knitting books and tried out patterns. Now I design all my own
work and can get really creative!

What is your favorite thing about what you do?

I'm a color and texture junkie who also happens to be a Gemini...scarves are great because I get to play with all kinds of crazy combos and don't have a chance to get bored (I make 2-3 scarves a day, generally)!

What does a typical day look like for CricketsCreations?

Get up in the morning, shower and get dressed (I like to "get ready for
the day" even though I work from home). Then, I start working for Best
Friends Animal Society from my home office (which is also my home studio
for scarfin'). If you're curious about what I do for Best Friends,
please see http://network.bestfriends.org/Blogs/PostDetail.aspx?bp=5628.

On my breaks, I take a few minutes to do the following daily on Etsy:

1) Answer any Conversations (convos), relist sold items, send a note to
customers thanking them & letting them know when I'll ship their order,
renew popular scarves on Etsy, etc.

2) Scroll through the pages at http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php and
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_west.php looking for gold stars next to the
treasury title. A gold star tells me I'm in that treasury, so when I
see one I enter that treasury, click on each item and leave a comment.

About once a day, I feature one of the curators who's included me in my
blog at http://cricketscreations.blogspot.com/ (I wish I could feature
them all, but I'm usually in several treasuries at once).

3) Visit
http://www.majaba.org/heartsitems.php?userid=&submit=Submit&name= and
check for new item hearts (this gives me an idea of which items are most
popular and/or which to make sure I have plenty of in my inventory).

Once work at my "real job" is completed, I spend the rest of the day
shipping scarf orders (its' such a thrill!), remaking scarves which have
sold or creating/photographing/listing new designs.

I integrate family & friends...either visiting while I knit, or taking a
break from business to have dinner, see a movie or go for a drive.

If you could branch out to any other medium what would you choose to learn?

Lampworking and glassblowing! I'm utterly fascinated by chemistry, physics & other sciences and love the transformation of glass to works of art!

Are there any other tid bits you want to throw out there? Anything at all :)

Here's a link to my success tips:

http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=5838121

Thank you so much, once again, for doing this. I really do feel that your wisdom and helpfulness is priceless and I hope to one day aspire to your success!