Oh… shiny!

Seriously, y’all, it’s been one of those days where nothing, no-thing, was going to keep me on task. Head not in the game. Train of thought derailed. What was I talking about again?

The good news is that a small portion of the work craziness has abated, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have stacks of paperwork to be dealt with. And, really, I suppose, looking back, I did get a fair amount done, but it felt like I was a paper salmon swimming upstream, getting all soggy and bogged down in the process, towards a paper mill.

Other highlights of the day included the sole of one of my shoes decided to mostly come apart from the rest of the shoe (luckily I caught it and fixed it before it was irreparable or embarassing). True, I gave it a bit of thought and I did buy this particular pair of heels in 1999, so I suppose I’ve gotten my monies worth, but still!

Some might ascribe it, and the various computer crashes, et al. to the inauspicious date, but honestly I couldn’t care less about what numbers showed up on the calendar. I’m more in favor of the impending full moon this weekend throwing things wonky.

For when heap big nasty spider appears on your ceiling round about bedtime and you need something sturdy, with a base more than an inch wide, with good reach so you can take out the big hairy beast in one tactical strike.

* * *

So yeah, I’m getting ready for bed and, bleary eyed because I’ve just slipped off my glasses, I happen to glance across the room and see a shadow of something on my ceiling.

‘Oh, this is not going to be good,’ I say to no one in particular.

So, as Dvorak’s pianist lilts away on a Humoresque, I go in search of something in my home to slay the beast (of which there was nothing humorous about!). Yay for having crutches because, hey, they fit all of the above stipulations with the added bonus of something I don’t have to fool with very often. See, while I did kill the spider (which was about 1″ long in the body and 3″ if you include the leg spans) by merciless squishing and then drowned him/her in the sink for good measure, and the drowning rinsed off the crutch tip followed by a Clorox wipe for good measure, I’m still thinking the halflife of spider cooties is fairly long and glad to be able to put the crutch away for a while.

Was I not clear when I said I was too busy for company last night?

And why is it that even I, when faced with an icky creature in the presence of other more testosterone-laden beings, will switch into damsel in distress mode but when alone I just take care of business? Granted, I suppose I *could* have traipsed upstairs to ask my neighbor to help but, ya know, I’m thinking that it might have come off a little strange to say ‘Hey there, I’ve got a spider in my bedroom that needs slaying, do you have a strong pole that’ll do the job?’

Y’all this is a full-on rant.

So I’m knitting this sweater, and for me it’s a big deal because I’m using somewhat pricey yarn, a good cotton/wool blend that is absolutely heavenly to handle, and it’s not even for me. So I start this pattern and I have all of the main color that I need but I still need to two contrasting colors for the stripe section.

Now, we now have three local yarn shops, and since I do not have a whole lot to spend on fibers I decided to go to the newest one which had just opened the week before which carried this brand of yarn and see if she had the colors I needed. She did not, but offerred to order them for me as she had other items to order from that company.

This was a couple of weeks ago. It did occur to me that it had been a little while, but since I wasn’t to the color change in the pattern yet, I didn’t worry. But today I get a call. It goes something like this:

Erica: May I speak to *scraps*?

Me: Speaking.

Erica: Hi, this is Erica from Wooly Bully and I have a note here to call you when the Cotton Fleece you wanted came in. Well, I placed the order and part of it was backordered, so then all the rest came in except for the colors you wanted. So I called them and asked about it and apparently those colors are being discontinued and I told them to hold off because I wasn’t sure what you were trying to match.

Y’all, I’m not kidding with this next part: The colors I wanted?

Black and White.

Really.

BLACK and WHITE

HOW can a yarn company discontinue black and white??? What the hell?

I mean, I understand about limited edition colorways. By their innate scarcity they bring a higher price and an increase of perceived value. I get that. But Black? and White?

The Hell?

So this is the email I just sent the company from their comment form:

Hello there!

I got a very strange call from my local yarn shop (Wooly Bully in Tallahassee, FL) telling me that the two colors of Cotton Fleece I had asked her to order for me (for a sweater that is already in progress for which I have all of the main color I will need) were discontinued and therefore unavailable. Now, my consternation comes when you consider the two colors I requested:
White and Black

Are you really discontinuing the two most ubiquitous colors ever? Why would you do that?

Or is it that we’re just using the wrong names? I look on the Cotton Fleece page and I see Cavern (which looks pretty black to me) and Cotton Ball (which looks pretty white to me). If I call my yarn store owner and tell her to ask for those colors will it do me any good or am I going to be forced to start over on this sweater with a new yarn brand to get the colors that I need? (Because, let me assure you, if I cannot get a white yarn and a black yarn from you I will not be purchasing your yarns in the future for *ANY* project.)

Absolutely confused…

But really, if a retailer called up and asked you for black and white yarns in a certain product line, and you knew that you called them different things, wouldn’t you do the responsible thing and say we have Cavern which is our black and Cotton Ball which is our white? You wouldn’t say they were discontinued just because she had the wrong color name and risk missing a sale, would you?

I just don’t get it…