DSC00823.JPGThanks for all of your interesting comments about the Sneak Up this week. (And thank you to soooo many of you who sent me the very sweetest emails. I really appreciate you!) I thought today would be a good day to address some of the thoughts on it all. (And then we have some fun new website features to tell you about!) I didn’t have any photos to put in today, so you get my “flowers in Colorado with Sheri’s head shadow” shot. :-)

- Yes, the Wollmeise went quickly. But remember, we knew that it would. Also, remember that we will have more in a few weeks, and very regularly after that. You will have the opportunity to get it often. (So how many skeins of Wollmeise did I keep for myself? Well, you know that I used one to knit a pair of socks. Then I took one other one. That’s it. But I do plan to take a couple of skeins with each order that comes in, because I like this yarn just that much.)

- I totally understand those of you who would like us to limit purchases in the Sneak Ups. Really, I do. I wouldn’t want to be missing out on anything good, either! (Of course I’m just the kind of person who would also set an alarm to get up and check on whether or not something was happening if I was waiting for a particular yarn, but I probably shouldn’t admit that.) The only thing that we have limited here are the Loopy/Louise/Bart stitchmarkers, simply because they are so few and far between. So we set the limit at 2 sets per person. I want everyone to feel welcome and appreciated here, whether they buy one skein, or 20 skeins. I think that if we put limits on it, the “20 skein” people would not feel so welcome and appreciated. I will say that no one is buying in massive quantities to re-sell to friends, relatives and strangers. You all are just generally buying things to add to your own collection - and that’s great. Some of you collect skeins in every colorway. How fun is that? Others of you buy one or two from each line so that you have a great representation of all the different yarns. Still others pick and choose and appear to be very disciplined, and I’m still trying to figure you out. How DO you do that, when confronted with so much beautiful sock yarn? :-) In order to continue to be welcoming and appreciative to all, we won’t limit your purchases, but we WILL continue to schedule regular and frequent and large orders from all of our yarn companies. If you don’t get something this time, we promise to do everything we can to have it here for you again as soon as possible.

- Timing for the Sneak Ups - let’s just say it will be every Wednesday night at 8 pm Central, ok? That would work best for me and then you don’t have to be stressed and wonder when it is. (Oh. Wait. We can’t do that, can we? That’s what made Loopy roll over, and caused the whole Sneak Up thing to start in the first place. Dang.) Ok - we’ll continue to mix up the times and days and will try to make everyone happy, one week or another. I DO think that I’ll have Web Guy build in an automatic “release” for me, so that I can set the time and go to bed and not try to wake up at 3:30 in the morning any more.

- “Losing” things from your cart. Yes, it’s true - it’s not “yours” until you have clicked through with your payment. At that point, it is taken from our online inventory and no one else can have your skein. That’s just the way these things work. But we have a new warning system in place for you, which might help. (See below.)

Now the fun stuff. Web Guy has been working hard this summer, and here are the latest website features to show for it:

1) Colors!! Consider it “beta” at the momen, meaning try it out all you want…but let us know when/if you find a bug or how we can improve it. Paint yourself a skein by adding and subtracting different colors in your combinations to find out how many color combos you like. We’re still experimenting with the system, but we have about 400 of our items on there so far for you to color with. For example, when I click on one of the reds, I get these choices. Then I can click on any of the other dots to see red WITH something else. So if I then click on green, it narrows it down to this. It’s way too fun to play with.

2) “New” product icon. Whenever you encounter a product that’s been added within the last week to our store…we now have a little orange “NEW” icon that shows up after it’s name

3) Easier shopping cart additions. When adding an item while you’re browsing the store…you don’t even have to change pages anymore. When you click the “Add to Cart” a little popup will come up alerting you about the new item in your cart. (Check out the What’s New page. See the “add to cart” on each product box? Now you can shop directly from there on Sneak Up nights if you need to!)

4) Wishlists!! Err…not yet. Still working on it.

5) Popular shopping cart items. In an effort to soothe the frustrated (a.k.a. the “distressed people”), we’ll now highlight when an item that you have in your shopping cart is popular. So, for example…if you have a skein of Yarntini in your cart during the next Sneak Up, it will check to see how many others have the same idea. If more people have it in their carts than we have in stock, we’ll add the little orange message to your item. So if you see a little orange “Popular item right now” line by an item in your cart, you probably want to skedaddle your way through and complete the Checkout process. Yes, skedaddle.

So - what do you think about the new features? Fun, eh? :-)

Sheri hopingtogetsomegoodknittingtimeinthisweekend.ImustfinishmySockapaloozaPal’ssocks!