April 6, 2020

Hi Fellow Stitchers!      

       Sorry this newsletter is late, but I was working hard in the shop the past two days and at 6:30 at night just wasn't in the mood to sit at the computer.   Go figure.   LOL

     PLEASE READ AND BE ADVISED ... we are STILL under a mandatory state wide shut down until April 13 (that should be extended tomorrow according to our Govenor, but how long has not yet been announced). 

• LouAnn is the ONLY person in the shop (her decision) and is trying to process orders and get them mailed, even if incomplete - she is unable to respond to emails nor the phone at this time.  NO customers are allowed to come into the shop. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding.   Your BEST BET IN ORDERING is to place your order via our Online Catalog ... and put in the COMMENTS section what your additional instructions are.  Email orders will ONLY be read once a week!!   If you order online, please IGNORE the shipping charge - it is a "system generated gusstimate" and we DO reduce it to actual shipping costs. 
• I go into the shop when I can be the ONLY ONE THERE on Saturday and Sunday to finally answer your emails, open shipments to fill and pack up orders, etc.  Emails may not sound like much, but Saturday morning when I turned on the computer, I was greeted with 917 EMAILS!   Most are spam, some are inquiries and orders, some are just you saying 'thank you' ... but mostly spam.  I have to scan each and every one by subject to make sure .. then I can start to delete.  When I delete span or junk mail, the system then dumps each in to a 'deleted file' .. where I once again have to scan through each to permanently delete them!  So .. we're talking several hours of just checking to make sure I'm not deleting something I need to keep/respond to.  (There were another 103 emails on Sunday!!)   That is WHY LouAnn cannot respond to your emails during the week .. she's too busy trying to process your orders!
• Debbie is working from home .. updating the catalog and ADDING to the SNT Classics Sale catalog.  I'm doing my best to keep my employees 'employed and with a paycheck' during these trying times. We are currently running about 1 1/2 weeks BEHIND in mailing your orders out to you due to all of this.

      AND .. I found out something very unsettling on Saturday morning .. when I was greeted by emails from several of my manufacturers/distributors about shipments of product to me that were being returned as 'undeliverable'.  Apparently FedX is under a 'do not deliver to non-essential businesses' in Michigan!!!   So that answers my question about 'where in the heck are my shipments'!  I know UPS is delivering as I recieved a huge shipment of packing materials last week .. but nothing from FedX despite the note on my door telling them "if the lights are on, please knock" ... they're just returning the shipments back.  And that means the last 3 orders I've been waiting for from Hoffman Distributing were returned .. reshipped and returned again.  DEEP SIGH    So I started emailing several companies to have them RE-SHIP to my home address ... they'll deliver residental but not businesses it would seem.

     Due to states being under the 'shelter in place' mandate, we can only get reorders in from some of our designers and companies right now.  Distributors are filling orders while they can and some of the designers do not have an 'in house printer' for charts and since printing companies are also considered non-essentail, once their 'in house supply' runs out of a title, they cannot fill our order for that chart. We're all in this together and will get things to you as quickly as we can, but really appreciate your understanding during these unprecedented times.  I also THANK YOU so much for your orders!  I'm having orders filled and send incomplete to you as quickly as I can .. if I know I cannot get the reordered items back in stock in a 'normal time'.  Whatever I cannot reorder, I WILL get to you when I can!!!   

so without further delay .. here's what has just arrived at Hoffman Distributing ...

SEE THEM HERE!

and ... click here to see what's NEW at Yarn Tree

and ... click here to see what's NEW at Wichet Imports

Most of what Hoffman, Yarn Tree and Wichelt are showing have already come back with me from Nashville Market and are in the shop.

WHAT'S NEW IN THE SHOP

Check out my What's New Page

I've added a 'small ton" of handdyed fabrics that are New To You from Nashville Market as well as standard size frames.  I THINK I have everything from Nashville finally added on!