Laffing Horse Crafts

My old pappy always said ” excuses are like…” um, well, chances are your old pappy said the same thing, or an acquaintance somewhere at any rate. The gist is that everyone has one and none of ‘em smell sweet.

No excuses then. I screwed up. I got backlogged and a lot of folk are waiting to get their TriLooms or knitting needles or crochet hooks. No excuses.

But it didn’t stop there. in the process of trying to get caught up I missed the renewal deadline for www.trilooms.com. This right when Jen was sending out ads all over the place. Makes me look like a bumbling fool and a bumbling fool I am… but it’s a passing thing I hope hope hope.

No excuses, then. How about an apology? I’m sorry I dropped the ball.

Some assurances? I’m working me poor wee hiney off trying to get caught up (more than 17 sets of knitting needles, crochet hooks, and hair sticks carved yesterday) and Lena was kind and diligent enough to pre-sand all of the TriLooms in production (about 6 of ‘em)  and the only reason I am able to pause long enough to write this short post is I am on terminal hold with the hosting company (yep… the same one) trying to get my domain name back.

Since I’ve written all of this while on hold, I think I want to rant a little here… you can click a link or close the browser window now unless you really want to read on. I promise it won’t get foul.

Seems to me that the days of customer service are long gone. Why, oh, why would you program a computer to say “we appreciate your call” and “we know your time is important” when it so obviously isn’t. How can they thank me for patience I no longer have… patience that I lost after holding for the first 20 minutes.

It’s annoying, aggravating, and dishonest. Why offer 24/7 sales and support if you’re only hiring one  narcoleptic person to man the phones most of the time?

I think we could improve customer service if we, the consumers, were allowed to charge for our time after a small space of time… say 20 minutes? After 20 minutes we should be able to charge minimum wage. If our time is as valuable as the pre-recorded message has told me for the past hour, then shouldn’t they put their money where their mouth is?

But let’s not stop there! If a clerk is rude, the company should pay a percentage of your order. If an order is not met, they should ship the remainder to you free of charge… I hate rainchecks – especially in the days of online, instantaneous computer inventory (our inventory is terrible and we know this, but as most items are custom made to order, it’s hard to keep those items in stock… but that’s another story), and long trips into town with $3/gallon fuel to pick up the orders. One recent order cost us four days of 120-mile round trips to fill… that’s 480 miles… at 20 mpg that’s 24 gallons or $72 worth of fuel. I could have almost bought the tools necessary to make the item I was ordering for that. Oh, and the manager of the store never even apologized… he had an excuse.

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“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated“
Mark Twain

New post on a new blog?

Or is this a new post on an old blog?

It’s not possible, is it, to have an old post on a new blog… I’m so confused…

What you’re seeing here is a desperate attempt to keep afloat digitally. I’m putting redundancies everywhere. I’m only paranoid because they’re out to get me.

Well, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, and maybe I should back up a bit. And, maybe i should have backed up a bit more… you’ll see… read on.

Several days ago, we began to get complaints from friends, family and customers that their emails to us were bouncing. Usually, that means we have an account over limit… too many emails, too little storage space. I jog over, clear the virtual log jam and things start flowing.

There wasn’t anything there.

Next step is to contact tech support. I am a geek and I know quite a bit, but I’m not gonna even try to hack my own service provider’s server to get email back. Duh. After waiting in Live Chat limbo for abut an hour, the Tech support dude tells me there was a DNS cache problem. Cache cleared, problem solved. He said I would be getting emails again in a few hours.

I decide to write about this dilemma on my blog so folks know that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth.

That’s when I discovered I had fallen off the face of the Earth.

My website was gone. I don’t mean down. I don’t mean deleted. I mean no account, no files, no email, no domain name (just a nasty 404 error), no folders, no FTP, no blog, no pictures, no… well, you get the idea.

Naturally, I’m a bit concerned.

Off I go to contact tech support again. This time, after another hour long wait in limbo, I’m told the previous tech cleared the cache, but forgot to enable it again. Who knew? I’d be back online in a couple of hours.

A couple of hours go by and by now I’ve heard from several people with outstanding paid orders wanting to know what’s going on. Wanting refund. Thinking I’m fly-by-night. But that’s OK ’cause the website’s gonna be up any minute now… any minute… just a few more seconds…

*sigh*

This time I attack from the front and the back. I call and log into live chat at the same time. Then I wait on hold and in chat limbo for 2 freakin’ hours. I coulda watched a movie. I coulda carved a crochet hook or set of knitting needle or made a loom. I coulda taken on online course in underwater basket weaving. I coulda set up another blog service and started letting people know I was alive and well.

After that interminable, agonizing wait they said that it was a… can you guess… a DNS problem and it was solve and would be back up in a couple hours. Oh, yeah, and my case was escalated to tech support 2.0 or some such nonsense.

By this time, it’s late… as in midnight. I’ve managed to spend more than 7 hours on hold. I’ve wasted an entire day.¬† I still don’t have a website I am angry, but it’s futile to sit at the computer and click refresh every 10 minutes to see if the tech support 2.0 people could do what tech support 1.0 could not.

I go to bed.

The next morning I awake and race through chores and breakfast on the farm and race to the shop to find that I still don’t have a website. I log into chat again and I give the poor soul that answers a piece of my mind! I have to stop doing that as I’m running low on pieces… ouch.¬† I harangue the poor guy and harass and bully and type really loudly. But I’m proud of myself. I never curse and I never lose my cool. Not even when he says that the problem is solved and I should see results in a couple hours.

I then pointed out in calm terms that this was the same answer I had been given more than 36 hours ago and that the answer was no longer accepted and that he better get tech support 3.0 over to the terminal and get the problem fixed or he had better cut me a check for a refund and send me on my merry ’cause I was taking no more.

I admit it was a hollow threat. What does a large hosting firm care if one measly account quits. They have the contract and I have diddly. I mean, what could I do? What… write on as many bogs and forums that I could find that this hosting company is the pits? Word-of-mouth them to death? Yeah, right… as if… I’m just this one guy, y’know…

Sure felt good though and the website IS back up.

I just thought having a few copies of said website might not be a bad idea.

Oh, and I’m not going to badmouth the company here in public… these guys are trying, I’m sure. however, I’m not going to wish their slowly degrading into slime service on anyone. If you’re considering getting hosting, let me know and I can steer you away from these bozos. If you have hosting you’re happy with, let me know, too… It’s time for a move.

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I spend a lot of time connecting things… people with looms, knitting needles, crochet hooks and hair sticks… I hope.

But a lot of time is also put into my blogs and to chatting with other folk in the community… here and elsewhere (Colorado and Louisiana and where ever else we travel).

For instance, last week I spent an hour talking with the wood turner at the Folk Center (where Jen’s working part-time now) and he has a lot of hints, tips and tricks I would not have garnered any other way. It was great and time well spent.

Today, I found a blog service that does much the same thing. It makes connections. You can see the widget over in the sidebar … blogrush… yeah, that’s it. Now, when I write a post here you can glance over there and find other posts with similar content.

If you would like to try this yourself on your blog, feel free!

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So, this nice young lady down Texas way has ordered very nearly every crochet hook I make. She’s ordered a couple TriLooms, too. I really appreciate her
business.

Then she emails and asks if I can carve hair sticks with the same designs I use on my crochet hooks. Hair sticks!

My natural nice guy inclination is to say “Sure, no problem, I’ll get right on that.”

There’s a part of me that’s upset, though.

I turn to Jen and say “I make fiber arts tools, not jewelry. Should I do this?”

Without missing a beat, she responds “Hair is a fiber, too.”

*sigh*

“Oh,” she continues. “I want a set with a twist and some nice beads.”

Introducing Laffing Horse Hair Sticks (Jen wouldn’t let me be lyrical and call ‘em Mane Manglers)

Doesn’t Jeanette have pretty hair?

P.S. I’m kidding about being upset. I really enjoy new ideas and challenges. Thanks Liz!

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Remember the Fantastic 4? There was that guy that could ignite himself by saying “flame on.”

This has nothing to do with that.

You know those chips and snacks from FritoLays (I know there’s more than one, but all I can remember is Cheetos)… the Flamin’ Hot ones?

This has nothing to do with that either.

You know when people start calling each other names in emails – especially on groups (Hi SheepThrills )? Flame wars, right.

This has nothing to do with that.

I started making some of my crochet hooks and then adding some freehand carving at the top of them, just for the fun of it. One of the designs – one of my favorites – is the flame.

I sold the original and another and thought nothing more about it.

That was about a dozen Flame Crochet Hooks ago.

Seems that Flames are hot!

OK. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I can apologize and get back to work… oh, and Callahan, if you’re reading this, tell Doc to top that one!

I also want to apologize for the low quality of the video… it’s what I gots!

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There was a job listed in the newspaper for some help at a local woodshop. I called, thinking I could use a break and it would be nice to see someone else in action. I got the interview and went down to visit with the guy.

I started by telling him, honestly, I couldn’t take the job. Seems an odd way to start an interview, but when I saw his operation I realized that he needed a person full-time and then some and I could only spare him an day or so a week. He understood and appreciated my honesty.

Then we started talking. We spent about an hour talking about hardwoods, tools, processes and pride.

The upshot of the visit is this: I can have all the scrap he can’t use in his products in exchange for my willing help should he ever run into a bind. He also told me about a lumber yard that deals with real nice hardwoods and delivers.

I wouldn’t have known any of this if I had sat at home and ignored the ad – even though I knew I couldn’t take more than a couple day a week job.

Networking works!

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I’ve been writing – off and on -in this blog for about 3 years now in one form or another. There are a couple hundred posts, almost 100 comments. I never thought I was worth noticing…

I wanted that to change, so I’ve been reading up and subscribing to various blogs about blogging. In my research, I’ve found that there is one undisputed blogging guru – Darren Rowse who runs ProBlogger.net. Like any other blog he gives his readers an opportunity to comment.

I commented one day… ’bout 2 days ago, I think.

Today, I got a nice email from Mr. Rowse stating that he had quoted my comment… I was number 6 out of 10 for tips on writing blog posts.

Wow! Who knew? I always thought I’d be quoted some day, but I always figured it’d be for spinning or weaving or some such.

Thanks, Darren… quite an honor.

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Had a “ha ha” moment this morning as I went over my TODO list.

I know we live in a rural area, but we’ve got electric and DSL and hot and cold running water so I never thought we were “living in the sticks.”

But then I saw my TODO list. There are no fewer than 10 sets of knitting needles or crochet hooks waiting to be carved (as well as a few TriLooms and spindles of varying sizes and shapes). That’s a lot of sticks… seems we’re are living in the sticks and living off of them, too.

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Whew!

Who would have thought that sitting there carving 18 crochet hooks in the past two days (along with chores, and blog posts and helping the neighbors set up 4 10-foot towers worth of scaffolding) would make a person tired.

But that’s what I am… tired.

Oh, yeah, and I got this, too:Technorati Profile

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I used to think people were buying my hand-carved crochet hooks to have a one-of-a-kind showpiece. Sure, I make ‘em to be usable and I want them to be used, but I thought they’d have that one nice wood hook and the rest would be the plastic and metal hooks.

With that in mind, I never engraved the size on the hooks.

The people wanted sets. “OK, I’ll engrave the sets,” I said to myself.

Then the sets got bigger… well, longer. Sets of afghan hooks were requested.

I neglected to engrave the sizes on several sets… I had never done it on afghan hooks, so it just slipped my mind.

Now I’ve shipped a second set out to a young lady in New York because the first set was¬† a step higher than what she ordered… she wanted g-h-i-j and I sent h-i-j-k. (Hi Lucy)

You can bet that’s a mistake I won’t make again.

But, then again, mistakes are useful learning tools that way, aren’t they?

Today, I began work on the largest ever order of hooks… g-h-i-j-k-l-m-n-p-q in both 14- and 22-inch lengths… as well as one of my flame hooks… and a learn to spin kit and learn to triweave kit and an Andalusian and a mega weaving hook. (Hi Elizabeth)

Looks like I’ll be busy for a while and have a chance to put that lesson learned thing to the test!

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