Yarn, update
So last night I hung around at least ten minutes after I posted the blog, waiting for ONE OF YOU to save me from myself, having given you EVERY OPPORTUNITY to do so.* Don’t you have my best interests at heart? What? I may have knitted a row or two, waiting.** I may have done a little washing up. I may have riffled through the (CHEAP PAPERBACK) pattern books I bought yesterday, musing on this and that.
And then I GREW BORED WITH WAITING and nailed the freller. Four skeins***. Yessssss. Mine. Mine. And have I mentioned it was seriously on sale, as bin ends often are?
. . . But I was punished for my presumption. This is the email I wrote, after having narrowly survived the web site experience:
Dear Tranquillity Lake Yarns
Your web site is a disaster. This is my first order, Order Code: [tirra lirra by the river], and it will probably be my last. First, your site demands that I register if I’m to buy anything. It then repeatedly refused my chosen password. I have no idea why. It erased it over and over and over. I retyped it (twice each time) over and over and over. Eventually it let me through. Why? Why not the first time? If not the first time, why at all?
Then after I was already well into the check out process it refused my address. It was exactly the same address I’d typed in for the registration, and your site had already brought it up from my registration. But it sat there demanding I choose a country. The country was already chosen. I re-chose it about ninety times. I also had to keep rechoosing the first line of my address instead of ‘select address’ or ‘new address’. The address was also already there. There was only one address. And it already had a country selected.
Eventually it whimsically let me through again.
Then when I tried to pay, it hung. And hung. And hung. And hung. After about three minutes I hit ‘refresh’, whereupon I was sent back to the check out page again which now bore a red banner saying there was a problem and to check my details. My details were not the problem. Your site is the problem.
There is absolutely no way I would have lasted the course for this mess except you are the only site I could find this discontinued yarn still available on. ‘Tranquillity’ knitting? Don’t make me laugh.
Yours disgustedly
PS: Your ‘thank you for registering with us’ email came in while your site was still refusing my password choice.
I have had no reply. I did, however, receive a confirmation of order last night—and a confirmation of despatch this afternoon.†
* * *
* Okay, maybe not every opportunity. I didn’t actually tell you the name of the yarn or the name of the specific colourway of the yarn. Or the name of the site that was selling the last four skeins on the planet. But hey. There are only 1,000,000 UK sites that sell Artesano. You could have showed some initiative. You had at least ten minutes.
** I think it was Diane in MN who finally told me for the nth time that a Row Counter Is A Helpful Thing so that it finally registered.^ Also, row counters are cheap and I’m all over cheap as an alternative to . . . compulsive stashing.^^ I mean, you can’t go into a yarn shop without buying something.
And a row counter is a helpful thing. It would be an even more helpful thing, however, if it came with a tiny operating system that would sense every time the end of a row was attained and would shout TURN THE FRELLING ROW COUNTER UP ONE, STUPID. A programmable OS would be even better. Then it could say DECREASE THIS ROW when you can’t remember if it’s this one, the next one, or two from now and THE PATTERN SAYS FOR THIRTEEN ROWS. THIS IS THE THIRTEENTH ROW. STOP.
It still provides a useful clue to progress. It’s just with minor modifications it could be more like The Book of Knowledge and less like The Wizard of Oz.
^ Apologies to the fifty-seven knitters who had told me this already. Some of them several times.
^^ I really didn’t need another hoarding category. And in response to the sub-thread on the forum about stashing blank journals, notebooks, sketchbooks, pens, pencils, inks, watercolours, chalks, pastels+ etc . . . yes. And this particular aspect of my life will riot out of control again as soon as I get SHADOWS turned in and turn at last to the dust-draped doodle deficit. One of the bad scary wicked FUN things about starting to draw again last year was poking around in art-supply shops. NOOOOOOOO. And I’ve always had a paper-journal-to-write-things-in habit. Which is why, despite Astarte the iPad, my knapsack still weighs like it’s full of dense paper objects. Because it is.++
+ Personally I’ve never tried oils. Oils are for people who know what they’re doing. I’ve dabbled briefly in acrylics. But I like watercolours and inks and coloured pencils. Also there’s the whole paper issue—which paper for which medium. I start losing the will to live when I have too many decisions past ‘oooh—shiny’ to make.
++ Also your fountain pen and three refills weigh a certain amount.
*** Of Artesano Hummingbird Turtledove, since you were asking. I have no idea why they called the line ‘Hummingbird’ and then the individual colourways things like Turtledove and Lapwing and Quail and Kingfisher.^
Fiona says it’s harder to resist a yarn with a name than a yarn with a number. So you’re wandering innocently through your local yarn shop^^ and you are suddenly mugged by a shelf/basket/heap/mega-wodge of yarn. It is the most gorgeous thing you have ever seen in your entire life. You also have more yarn at home than you and six friends will ever knit up if you live into the 22nd century, plus nine starving children and a rhinoceros. Are you more likely to buy it anyway if the label says “Tirra Lirra by the river sang Sir Lancelot”^^^ than “1248664a/9723.50/z”?
^ I suspect a gross ignorance of natural history. Never mind. They’re good at yarn.
^^ Yesterday’s yarn store is in the old part of Frellingham, which is a trifle idiosyncratically laid out. We saw several worried-looking people walking slowly past, staring urgently at street numbers. We could sympathise, having been two of them ourselves shortly before. But one pair stopped and glared. It’s a yarn shop! uttered one of them in accents of deepest opprobrium.
^^^ Blues, greens and russets to die for, trust me.
† I did, however ring Grandsire Triples successfully enough at the abbey tonight to wring a ‘well done’ from Scary Man.
I like to think there is hope. As well as knitting.
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