Anyone watch Doc Martin on PBS? LOVE IT! His Auntie has an organic chicken farm and I'm always looking around the plot and story to see her chickens. I think it was the first episode where she picked one up and snapped its neck for dinner. Reason enough to keep watching. There was another episode where she was battling the neighbor for spraying pesticides near her property, afraid she might loose her organic certification. Anyway, just a point of interest if you haven't watched it. British humour.
Speaking of the Brits. I've been "battling" a customer from the UK over a sample of yarn. She's doing her senior thesis in fashion design and set her eyes on one of my hanks for sale on Etsy. She is working with a straw element and the yarn I made was very straw-like in color. I don't like to take samples from hanks but I told her I would and then I got it out and the color didn't match the photo I'd posted of it last year. Two things were at play. First, the natural dye darkened some while in storage. It was dyed with walnuts from my yard. These things happen. It was still a rich and beautiful brown but not straw gold like my picture showed. So I took a new photo of it, wanting to be honest and kinda-sorta hoping she decided against me shipping a sample overseas and then changing her mind. But then the photo I posted to her didn't match the photo I had open in Photoshop. The color management settings were off. Talk about frustrating! When I finally got it sorted out and a new picture up, she decided she still wanted the sample. I had quoted her a low price, enough to cover shipping and a token for my trouble. When I went to make the label, the stinking Etsy shipping app tried to charge me three times what I'd charged her. WHA??? I know the rates are going up and services being dropped but geeze! Luckily my handy-dandy desktop shipping program and the ACTUAL post office was on the money and I got it printed for the lower, quoted price. That was probably really lucky too because I'm betting in the future, it's going to be the higher price - like $6 to send a 1 oz. letter to the UK.
But what a hassle. I hope she likes it because I'm *THIS CLOSE* to shutting down the Etsy shop. I had a return last month because the yarn apparently didn't match what the customer saw on their monitor despite every effort to match photo to product (and I ALWAYS have a disclaimer as such) and another return about the same time from a customer that thought the yarn was weak and poorly spun. UGH! When I got the yarn back, I promptly knit it into some leg warmers, strong and warm legwarmers. It was fine. I've never had these problems before and all of the sudden, BAM! It's so hard when you can't touch and see the yarn in person. I need to find venues to sell it locally so that people can see what they're getting, for real.
Anybody know a place? Heheh.
