Orders for my wool and potholders filled up two pages of my email. When I have so many orders like this, I always start at the bottom of my emails so I can fill them in the order they came in. I don’t look at them all first, that’s too confusing.
I complete each order then move onto the next.
So today I was very surprised when I put the last skein of teal yarn in a shipping bag, printed out a shipping label and sealed the bag only to see that the next order I had to fill was for teal yarn.
I assumed I miscounted and let that person know of my mistake apologizing and feeling especially bad about it because she always buys my wool.
Then I went on to the next order and saw it too had an order for teal wool.
Now I was beginning to freak. I broke my rule of not looking ahead and scanned the remaining orders. There were way too many for a counting error on my part.
So I went to my Etsy Shop and saw, as I had known all along, that the teal wool was sold out. I checked the listing I had put up yesterday (you can look back at sold-out listings) and saw that there was only one skein of teal listed as available.
That made no sense, I originally had eleven for sale. And if there really had been only one for sale I should have sold less not more teal wool than I had.
I’d never had a problem with Etsy like this before. But I could see that the teal skeins of wool weren’t selling anymore so whatever had happened at least wasn’t still going on.
The thing with selling wool is that people often buy it with a project in mind. So if they buy four skeins of wool and one isn’t available there’s a good chance they won’t want the other three.
I emailed everyone who was affected by the glitch. They were all very understanding and kind. I refunded a couple of orders and was able to substitute colors for some of the others.
I thought about how in my video from yesterday this was just the kind of thing I said I was most anxious about happening.
And now it had happened.
It was upsetting for a while, but I figured it out and handled it as best I could. The good part for me was that I got to experience again the kindness of the people who read my blog and buy my work.
I sold more than half my wool between yesterday and today. I still have yellow roving and about thirty skeins available, natural gray, barber pole, mustard, burgundy, and burnt orange.
They’re all a mix of Romney, Border Leicester, and Cheviot. Each skein is 3 ply worsted, 200 yards and they’re $27 each + shipping.
You can click here to see them all (with pictures of the sheep they come from) and buy them.
Isn’t it wonderful to lose control, handle it, and realize you can come out the other side, wiser and calmer? I love it when your yarn comes in and it goes out quicker than a cat out of a pond. And it has happened again. I wish I had could afford more burgundy, because that is a color to die for. But it will sell. Someone else will see it for its richness. I had no idea you had hit such a quagmire with the teal. Your reply was the usual “cool-as-a-cucumber Maria.” You make it easy for your customers to act like adults. Turnabout is fair play.
Susie, thank you, I’m really glad to hear that you didn’t pick up my panic about the teal. Who needs to spread that! And yes it does feel good to know I can handle it. I guess I’m learning that about myself.