Knitting Funk

Sorry, I have no pictures today. I haven't made any picture-worthy progress on anything since my last post, even though I feel like I've been knitting my fingers raw.

I ran out of yarn on my Dollar and a Half cardi midway through sleeve #2 last night, so I have to order a couple more balls of that before I can continue. That's OK. It will give me time to finish up my Something Red, (remember when I thought I would have that finished by the end of last weekend? HA!) so I'm working on that.

But I have a little story for you that has caused me to be in a knitting funk today: (warning, it's a little long)

I'm super bummed because waaaaay back in early March, a woman who runs a tiny little online yarn store out of her home advertised some Berroco Ultra Alpaca for really cheap, so I took advantage of her clearance sale and bought 25 skeins. Even though I am on a very tight grad student budget, I knew I would use this yarn and wanted to take advantage of such a great deal. Plus, the woman was more than accommodating and sent me lists of the colors she had available so I could have first pick.

Well, I placed my order with her and paid for all 25 skeins through PayPal. Then...disaster struck. For some reason, PayPal had never taken off my old Pittsburgh address, even though I have lived in Minnesota and now California since I ever lived in Pittsburgh. I didn't realize this until the shipment went out and I was eagerly following the tracking number...all the way to the Pittsburgh post office. WAH!!!

The seller was very pleasant and went to the post office to fill out a form to recall the package, but it still took a month for the post office to send it back to her in Texas. I was annoyed with PayPal, but it wasn't this poor woman's fault at all, and our correspondence was extremely pleasant.

Once the package was back in Texas, she re-posted it to me out in California. I made sure to have her send me another PayPal invoice for the new shipping charges (nearly $12!!!), and the package FINALLY arrived here today. YAY!

Except for one problem: there were only 13 skeins of yarn in the box. I paid for 25! Not only that, but she doesn't even list Ultra Alpaca on her little shop's website any more, which probably means that she doesn't have any left so I can't get more from her if I wanted to. There aren't enough skeins of any one color to make a sweater, so any additional yarn I would get would be in a different dye lot and that is beyond annoying too. I am more than annoyed. I am VERY ANGRY.

I paid cash that I don't really have right now (which is my problem entirely, but I was considering it a graduation gift to myself), I waited nearly 2 months, I paid shipping twice, and SHE ONLY SENT ME HALF OF WHAT I ORDERED!

Not to sound like Eeyore or anything, but this kind of stuff always happens to me. My life is a continuous comedy of errors. But I have been looking forward to this yarn for TWO MONTHS, people! I wrote my thesis while dreaming of all the sweaters I could knit as soon as I got my work done!

I sent the woman a very polite email, asking where the rest of my yarn could be, but I haven't received a response yet. I will keep you posted, believe me.

In happier news, Little Knits has a couple issues of Phildar magazine on clearance so I snagged those yesterday. I had never heard of their patterns (they're from France) until I started seeing some really cute sweaters on Ravelry. Does anyone know if you can get subscriptions? Or which yarn stores sell them? Too cute!