Thanks to the miracle of a 12-foot basement ceiling, I'm not tall enough to reach the inside shut-off valve for the water hose at the front of my house. The other day as we were getting coffee, I observed that Matt is much taller than me. And his parents live near me, so I asked him if he'd drop in to help out. He's such a nice guy, he actually showed up! Yay!
Also showing up were Kate and Gavin (Lili was at a farm with the Girl Scouts). We all hung out for a bit, which was really awesome. I love living someplace that's large enough to have folks over! They'd probably show up even if I hadn't bribed them with thoughts of white chocolate coconut cream pie (on a gluten-free crust)! That said, I did only manage to clean one room before anyone showed up because I have to many to clean. Oh, well.
Kate later brought Lili to hang out for a bit while Kate knit and I started winding yarn.Lili helped. Then, we cleverly distracted her with some movies so that I could begin untangling the yarn. Heh!
Today, I stirred not from Hampden Place. More puttering around the house. More yarn winding. Some knitting. Lots of pondering.
I wondered, for example, about my sock yarn club. I joined one early in the year with the idea that I would then just use their yarn and not buy any others this year. Hahahaha! N00b! Anyway, I signed up for a whole year, enchanted by the idea of a club in which I could make monthly payments. Most clubs, and they aren't cheap, make you pay all at once up front. Montly payments were just want I wanted, and so I signed up. Still, my total cost is over $230 for the year's membership, even if it is paid in smaller doses.
In July, I'd asked them to confirm whether I was already paid in full. I resent the email a month later, and received a response that they were a bit busy at the moment, what with making up our September shipments, starting school for their kids, and so on.
Then their website went down. For a week. I posted about it in their Ravelry group and was told to just PM their customer service person instead of posting something like this, but they'd get it sorted out. Around the same time, my email to them about my account started bouncing back to me.
We were supposed to get a yarn shipment in September. Someone else posted to ask where the shipments were. As of now, no one has received them. Their rep on the board said the post office lost our orders, but not to worry, they'd re-dye and then send us our September yarns in November with the November shipment.
I know it's a small company, but it's still a business. This whole thing about "oh, we can't sit down to calculate what you might owe right now because school's started" is bullshit. The yarn (supposedly) goes out every other month. The kids go to school the same time every year. The web hosting service doesn't just wink out without someone at the company noticing. Emails don't sit around with no response until the customer posts on a public forum.
My guts have been telling me since August that this is a company in trouble. =\ A real shame, as they do have nice yarn. But, after this episode (and presuming I get the three skeins owed me for this year), I'm not buying from them again. Probably won't be able to; I suspect they're going out of business.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about today as I wound up several skeins of yarn.
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