Good news: You all ordered enough yarn to tide you over for the 3 weeks between this Sneak Up and the next. Holy cow!!

Bad news: We’ve packed so many orders that we’re dreaming about them in our sleep.

Good news: We ought to be all finished up by tomorrow so that we can get a good night’s sleep again.

Bad news: The mailman is extremely annoyed.

Good news: He’s a sub. Our regular mailman will be back on Monday and still likes us.

Bad news: I’ll be leaving Monday morning, so no blogging for 2 weeks.

Good news: I may need to slip in a post sometime, if anything exciting is going on. I’ll miss you all too much.

Bad news: Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll be too busy knitting.

Good news: Our first case of Wollmeise arrived so I can take a skein to knit on vacation.

Bad news: It’s just one of several cases and the rest haven’t arrived yet.

Good news: You are going to LOVE this yarn, if you haven’t tried it before.

Bad news: I do, too. I had a hard time picking just one color.

Good news: Susan-the-awesome-assistant (who has put in so much overtime this week to help with all of these Sneak Up orders – we love her) will be here packing orders for you while we’re gone.

Bad news: That means that you can still get orders while I’m gone.

Good news: That means that you can still get orders while I’m gone.
(ahem – some will see this as good, some will see this as bad. Take your pick.)

Bad news: We already have some more really wonderful yarn in-house for the next Sneak Up. (Oh – wait – that’s good news!)

Good news: Using the Random Number Generator, the winner of this month’s “What was your first job” contest is Phyllis! She gets a $35 Loopy credit in her account, to buy some fun Loopy Loot. (I had so much fun reading all of your comments. I’m thinking that most teen-agers ought to read through them all. They’ll realize how nice they have it nowadays, don’t you think? Wow – there were some doozies in there.)

Have a great couple of weeks and get lots of knitting done. I’ll be asking about that when I get back! I’ll also share the Q3 Loopy Challenge with you when I return.

Hugs to you, Sheri (gotanygoodnews/badnewstosharewithmetoday?)

To my wonderful international Loopy Friends:

Good news: I did so much research (online and at my post office) before all of this postal rate update to figure out the new international postal prices. I just knew that all of you international Loopys would be ordering right away on Monday as usual, and I wanted to have everything in place for you in terms of the new postage.

Bad news: Wrong information from my postal ladies which led to wrong research on the usps.com website. Although I’m not sure the right information would’ve helped much. Have you tried to wade through the mumbo-jumbo on the usps.com website lately?

Good news: It means international rates won’t be QUITE as bad as I had feared.

Bad news: But they still went up.

Good news: I was right – you all ordered on Monday and Tuesday, so Tuesday morning I took several country/size/weight variations into the post office.

Bad news: I packed them in the regular Global Priority boxes. (Last week – The Week of Misinformation – they had assured me that I could still use them.) This week, The Week of Enlightenment, they assured me that I could not.

Good news: I can ship in reinforced envelopes which cuts down on the weight.

Bad news: I had to repackage the boxes right there in the post office with 5 other postal customers impatiently waiting their turn.

Good news: I didn’t mind.

Bad news: They did.

Good news: I had the clerks weigh everything, then gave them different scenarios. “Now if it was going to that country and weighed under a pound, how much? And then over two pounds to that country, how much? And now this country – how about this one? And the next?” etc. So I got a complete picture – the correct one, I believe – of the pricing. I’m just glad to know there are options.

Bad news: This made the five postal customers even more impatient with me. Bad news #2: some of you will be receiving your orders in envelopes that were very hastily written at the post office counter.

Good news: It didn’t cost you as much shipping as you and I thought it would. With the help of the postal ladies (who are now in the Week of Enlightment – aka, The Week of “Now that the updated postal program has been downloaded into our system, we can stop telling you information that we assume is right, and start giving you the cold hard facts directly from our computers”), I have been able to take our average sized international orders, and figure out the postage, and knock that down a bit, to come up with new international postal rates which will not drive either of us too batty. Although you know I would much rather be delivering all of these in person anyway. We have switched the website to the international prices that are the best low-average that we can come up with. When it costs more than that on some of your orders, we will cover it. So glad to have this settled.

To everyone else:

Bad news: I will be away from the computer Thursday through Sunday.

Good news: College Guy comes home on Thursday and we head up to see our friends in Iowa for the weekend on Friday! (They have llamas. I’ll take pictures.)

Bad news: no blog post on Friday, no order shipping on Saturday. (We will, however, be shipping Thursday and Friday. Although not too many on Thursday because the postman has already warned me that he intends to play golf on Thursday afternoon and does not want too many boxes on my porch to have to deal with. Well alrighty then.)

Good news: Susan-the-awesome-assistant and College Guy will both be helping me pack weekend orders for you on Monday so you shouldn’t have to wait any longer than usual.

Bad news: WH tells me I must stop buying yarn, as there are too many yarns waiting to be photographed so that we can put them up on the website for you.

Good news: I’m not listening to him. (but don’t tell him)

Sheri doyouhaveanygoodnews/badnews/badnews/goodnewsitemstoshare?

P.S. You “miter” want to check out Wendy’s gorgeous Miter Sweater made out of sock yarns, that she just posted to our “Sock Yarns but Not Socks” photo gallery. It’s amazing!