Saturday, November 10, 2007

Buy handmade!

Kimberly forwarded a message to the YaYa listserv about a new product recall. Hobby Lobby is warning its customers about some little Halloween baskets on which the imported ornaments are coated with lead paint. A couple of YaYas are moms of small children. One of them, Janna, responded that the volume of recalls has made her feel like getting her little boys only handmade wooden toys for Christmas--if she can find them.

I thought, "Of course!" And I immediately searched Etsy for handmade toys. Here are some of the things I found. Each artist guarantees that the item is made with all-safe materials (or, in the case of the monkey doll with button eyes, can be custom ordered with embroidery substituted for the buttons to avoid choking hazards for little ones).

There is a campaign on Etsy to "take the handmade pledge." I'll find out more about it and post the information here. But I believe the gist of the pledge is making a commitment to buy at least half of your holiday gifts handmade. This puts the money directly in the hands of the artist-creators (rather than Wal-Mart). A fringe benefit is that, if your item is defective in any way, you know exactly where to go for a remedy.

Here are some of the wonderful toys I found on Etsy this morning. I don't know how the formatting on this will work out--Blogger won't accept a table, and formatting directly with HTML tags doesn't work very well. Even if the format comes across all wonky on your machine, please make the effort to look at these toys. Or go search Etsy for the keyword "toys." It will so be worth it.

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