You couldn't crochet a bikini to save your life. You can't stitch a halter top from vintage scarves, whip up blown-glass sculptures, or forge hoop earrings. You've got a one-of-a-kind–loving, hand-crafty soul minus the DIY skills.

If you haven't already, maybe it's time you visited the Etsians.

"Most of the members of our site call themselves Etsians," said Adam Brown, spokesperson for the Internet, retail, and cultural phenomenon called Etsy. Etsians aren't from another galaxy. They are sellers and buyers on the gargantuan marketplace at www.etsy.com/. They are uncommonly friendly. "Even if you just come to shop, you make a connection with the people making and selling their things," Brown said. "People have gotten married because of Etsy." Uh-oh.

Three-year-old Etsy is the mother lode of all things handmade. You could call it eBay's hipper, DIY sister, but eBay has no cool credo like "Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade". Etsy is a mind-bending universe of, at Brown's last count, about 200,000 virtual shops. "There are several thousand items listed every day," Brown said. Random search: 12,938 pairs of hoop earrings.

In a sense, Etsy is nowhere and everywhere. "We have members in about 140 countries," said Brown. Etsy stats: 82 percent in the U.S.; 95 percent women. But if Etsy is anywhere, it is in Brooklyn, New York—in DUMBO, meaning Down Under the Manhattan Bridge, hipsterville of design, high-tech companies, and Etsy headquarters, from which Brown telephoned the Straight.

Like most "admins", as Etsy's 60-odd employees are called, Brown has a virtual shop (among his wares: paper goods, furniture, Mermaid Parade costumes, paintings). "It's empty," he said, laughing. But he knows Etsy success. "If you have a unique, well-made product, you photograph it well, and your shop is well-organized, someone will find you." Etsy claims a 20-cent listing fee, 3.5 percent of sales.

"The community drives what happens on Etsy," said Brown. Half of Etsians, said Brown, are bloggers. "The rise in blogging is huge. So much of our traffic comes from blogs."

What can Etsy traffic find? Dishware from New Zealand printed with subversive sayings (trixiedelicious). Blackly beguiling prints from Athens, Georgia, of odd children (theblackapple, an Etsy star with 18,000+ sales). Hand-knit halters and wrist warmers from London (ileaiye). Antique-lace minis from Portland (clairelafaye).

What's hot? "Steampunk," said Brown, isn't "bleeding edge anymore". "Prairie glam" is simmering. "Amigurumi", Japanese-style knit dolls with oversized heads and eyes, are hot. "Kawaii", general cuteness, is always hot.

As Etsy hotness goes, Vancouver English-lit student Letitia Henville's experience isn't too shabby. "Etsy makes it possible for lots of people to make a living," Brown said. Henville is his "people".

"I don't know if I could have paid my rent last year without Etsy," said the good-humoured Henville on her cellphone from Vienna. She was teaching at the University of Nice, not making enough money to live on. She couldn't resist vintage jewellery. "I'm addicted to beads," she said. She channelled addiction by dismantling flea-market finds and creating new pieces. Studying in Toronto a few months before, she'd made a sale on Etsy.

"I put up an incredibly corny photograph of an underpriced pair of earrings that sold within two hours," said Henville. From Ontario to Quebec to France, she made more. Suddenly, in Nice, things snowballed. She stopped worrying about her rent.

A year later, Henville, a blogger, has over 600 Etsy sales (seller name: letitiah). She's continuing jewellery-making as she hits the University of Toronto this fall. "It's nice to think that something I bought in a Prague flea market is going to be made into something in Vancouver and sold to Australia or California or the Northwest Territories. It's nice to think about all this stuff moving around."

Vancouver silversmith Colleen Baran landed in the jam-packed Etsy jewellery arena from another corner. Her airily sculptural rings have travelled to galleries. Her collections have names such as Like Wearing a Love Letter series. Locally, her rings sell at Dream, the VAG, and the Crafthouse. New York City Web site Fred Flare named her a Next Big Thing finalist.

Baran, who blogs, has sold over 250 jewellery items on Etsy. "Everything becomes so much closer," she said, putting aside her blowtorch to talk by phone from her studio. "The world really does. I can ship something to Australia and it will be there in three or four days." An Australian bought her first Etsy ring. Then the Koreans arrived.

"There was a picture of my ring on a Web site that is like Yahoo! for Korea," recalled Baran (who sells under ColleenBaran). For days, the South Koreans bought Bubble Lace rings. "It was madness," Baran said. Now Baran sells many rings to U.S. buyers. She considers bemusedly the early Etsy days. "If you open up your store and don't do anything with it, it's like opening in a forest."

Other Lower Mainlanders are Etsy-ing too. Midohana makes solid perfumes and sushi soap. BuenoStyle and VintageMusings rework jewellery from vintage pieces. Itsyourlife designs Blythe-doll clothing. Tomokotahara creates charming hats. Newer Etsian twinsyndrome designs unexpectedly sexy high-rise panties.

A final unexpected fact about Etsy—really a kind of ongoing, supersized craft project itself: it was founded by Robert Kalin, who isn't a female bikini-crocheter, but a 20-something computer-techie guy who spotted a niche. Which came first, the crafts movement or Etsy? "I think in popular culture there has been an upswing in crafting," Brown said. "But Etsy was a unique idea. It filled a vacuum."

"In the last five, 10 years there's been an emergence of DIY culture," said Baran. "It was a Zeitgeist thing."

Question: what does the word Etsy mean? Brown laughed. "It was Rob's idea. Whenever people ask he says something different. It's an Italian or Japanese word. It involves a Fellini movie." Which one? "8 1/2." Which makes more sense than a Bergman film, somehow.