Friends, this yarn shop dream has a lot of moving parts. Or I'm juggling a lot of balls, and they're all on fire. As a person who loves to knit and work on knitting problems, spending the past few months up to my ears in the technology of a yarn shop has been a terrifying leap into incompetence. I have USED technology all my life, but I've never had to be really involved in how it works. As an extrovert, working from home in front of the computer all summer has been an exercise in willpower and determination. Through sheer, bloody-minded, hard-headedness I have managed to work in this technology for long enough to get it functional -- with the help of a very patient IT professional who has been absolutely indispensable and worth far more than we have paid him.
We got our inventory and point of sale system up and it all seems to be working as planned, so now it's time to throw another monkey wrench into the gears -- the website. The plan has always been to have full e-commerce capabilities, with everything in the shop also available online for our friends near and far. And the plan for the plan has always been to get one thing working before taking on another thing. But I'll tell you, nothing gives me more anxiety than this little cog in the machine.
A website is full grown stuff. Everybody can see it. If it goes poorly, I can have people mad at me all over the country, not just in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The possibilities for shame and disgrace are ENDLESS!
So friends, here it is. It, like everything, is a work in progress. I know it's not perfect. Some of the photography is, admittedly, hot garbage, and I'll be updating it piece by piece as I have time to take better photos and as I hope that my photographic incompetence is at least slightly less terrible than some of the stock images from our suppliers. (Maybe I should feel better about my skills when some of my distributors are so much worse than I am!)
Shipping will take place every morning as needed, and orders will be pulled and filled the evening they are received after close at 5 p.m. Eastern. Nothing will happen on Sundays for obvious reasons.
If there are errors, please know they are mine and I'm a real live person in a genuine local yarn shop who is very much trying to do a good job. I just ask that you give me a call or send me an email and let me fix the problem, because I will absolutely do it.
And, as always, I'm happy to listen to your questions, comments, criticism, and praise. We're a community here in the Chattanooga Yarn Company world, and I'm here for my people.
