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Blue Moon KonMari and yarn/shipping updates

Well, my friends, we have have one storage pod empty and the other half empty. Holy moly – what an undertaking. It’s amazing how much stuff can collect when you’re not looking. Hell, even if you are looking and are just busy. You know how it goes. “I’ll just put this here and then come back and sort it all out later when I have time.” hahaha.  And then the next thing you know, your closet is overflowing … or your bookshelves or both of your storage pods, as the case may be!

Anyway, if anything this Pod-KonMari process has been an interesting trip down memory lane. I am sorry to say we are not holding everything and thanking it.… well, maybe the knit samples. Oh my goodness.

Karen is here for the weekend so we can work on a bunch of Club and school stuff and do some planning. Last night we dug through four of those big Rubbermaid bins! And oh my goodness: the things we used to knit! I will post pictures over the next few weeks. It’s pretty interesting and was certainly entertaining after a pretty stressful week.

I have lots and lots and lots of socks! Some pairs and some singles and we are thinking up some de-stashing fun for those. So look on Instagram for our sock de-stash party.

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Of course we found more yarn for Mill End Mystery Grab Bags, so I have put a few more of those up for sale.

We also found a number of panels of grid-wall and extra hooks leftover from our Sock Summit days. We are selling those locally, since who needs 80 grid-wall slats? (80! I kid you not!) If you are local to the Portland area and interested, you can email info@bluemoonfiberarts.com for details.

Our BFL Sport Farewell Special is still running and lots of you are supporting our send-off, so thank you. It does make it a little more palatable (if no less sad). We are starting to run a little low, though, so if you have yet to order and would like to play along, now would be the time to do so. Samantha (the designer) is thrilled we are going to do a Vancouver Shawl KAL! And as ever, I am available for color consulting: send me an e-mail and we can chat color options!

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As I mentioned in the newsletter today, we will not be going to Stitches West this year. It’s a hard decision and not one we made lightly. I do know that we are not the only ones making this choice as hard as it is. I love Stitches West and being back there last year was all kinds of wonderful. And… I have pretty much been looking forward to this year’s show since the last one ended. However, with all of the yarn delays and being behind because of them, we decided it was best to sit this one out as we get caught up (and also ensure that we don’t get in this position again anytime soon!!)

YARN AND SHIPPING UPDATE

What is being held up by the Sock Yarn delay:

• Rockin’ Sock Club, School of Yarn and Out of the Hue Club.
• Any website orders that are for only Socks that Rock.
• If you placed a mixed order (Socks that Rock plus other bases), we are shipping out partial orders with the yarn we have available; the Socks that Rock will ship out separately.
• The Anniversary package was held up by the bags, and now that the bags are coming in, the yarn has become the issue! Of course it is. For those of you who are next in line for your Anniversary packages, we are offering other yarn base choices as substitutes for the Socks that Rock in your package. I am in the process of emailing those of you who are in the queue.

Mills are not the best at time frames or communication. We are passing along the information we get, as we get it. I expect to start seeing sock yarn this week.

Besides our Socks that Rock delay, I have some other yarn news to share to keep you in the loop and to also to share with you all where we find ourselves in the yarn industry right now.

As you may have noticed, Tigger is currently hidden on the website. We are almost out and the stock we do have on hand is dedicated to School of Yarn and a few LYS orders. As of right now, the news from the broker is that the mill that made Tigger won’t continue to do so. It is a high-energy cabled yarn, which is not the easiest to make to begin with. When you add in the factor that most of the mill equipment in this country is pretty old, that makes it even more challenging to make. We are looking at other sources and options and I will keep you posted on that.

Our lot of Single Silky Targhee is running a little low; we are trying to reorder that and coming up with the some of the same issues as with the Tigger. Oh, and did I mention that we are also running up against low amounts of Targhee wool in the States?

The mill that has been making our Silky Victoria has declined to do so. (Are you sensing a theme here, cause I certainly am.) So it will now be made elsewhere, but it takes time to get a yarn started at a new mill (lots of samples, testing and such). We have our needles crossed that this will be a seamless transition!

I believe that we are going to be seeing more and more of this mill-shuffling in the future; as a result, we will be having to plan farther and farther ahead than we have in quite a while (if ever).

COMMUNICATION AND CUSTOMER SERVICE

At the moment I am your lead in customer service (with Kalia as backup in shipping).

I am answering emails as soon as I can, usually within 24 hours unless they come in on the weekend. (Which a lot do, since most us all work during the week.) I do work through the weekend, but sometimes I won’t finish answering a weekend’s worth of e-mails until the beginning of the week.

I update this blog every weekend (there’s also a blog for the Rockin’ Sock Club, which gets updated less often, as necessary). Also once a week (usually on Fridays), I send out an e-mail newsletter through Constant Contact. The newsletter goes out to all our mailing lists every week; however, because these are bulk emails, it is possible that your firewalls see them as spam and aren’t letting them through on your end. It happens.

What I do see (by looking at the analytics on the back end here) is that while there are bounce-backs, a lot of people don’t click to open and read the newsletter. And hey – I understand why. As fiber-loving, creating people, we are inundated with email newsletters all the time. But if you’re looking for information about yarn status and general news about what’s going on over here, I am reaching out with this information in several ways – it’s in all those places for you to see, in addition to my being here on email.

We know a lot of you are on social media in all sorts of places these days; and thank you for sharing your love of Blue Moon there! But we need to remind you that Social Media is not someplace we can or will do customer service. There are just too many places to keep track of, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Ravelry. Some large companies employ one or more people just to monitor their social media feeds! And even then, the folks who work on all that would likely refer customer service questions back to the people who are next to the yarn, or on the computers with the orders, to answer specific questions.

For customer service questions and issues (order status, color questions, yarn updates), please communicate with us directly via e-mail. In an e-mail conversation, we can address your order questions and concerns directly and personally (in a way social media threads can’t support).

If you ever e-mail us and don’t get a reply in a day or two, please check to see that our replies aren’t getting filtered out or caught in your firewalls. When in doubt, try sending your e-mail again from another address (gmail addresses almost always get through!). We are doing our best to get you the information you want right away.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we get out footing back.

Have a great weekend!

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