I seem to be holding fairly steady at about a week behind, at this point. That’s not so bad; it could be far worse. The thing is, I could be caught up, except for the week’s worth of wrinkles encountered. I’m presently livid beyond belief at PayPal MultiOrder Shipping, which I won’t use for large shipments any more, after I switched back to it following problems with my other shipping software in August. In brief, I’m still awaiting the refund of 4 rounds of shipping labels for Batt Club, nary a one of which printed, all of which billed, all of which are marked as failed, all of which have moved from “refund pending” to “transaction complete.” It all adds up to making UPS look a lot more appealing than it has in the past. Since originally posting this, I’ve heard from a number of folks who had issues last week about shipping. Turns out the USPS back end went down and most of the online postage printing options were affected. Ugh! And frustrated though I may be, I’m sure PayPal will straighten things out for me eventually. PayPal is great; I just seem to have outgrown their bulk shipping software, and realizing that is a shock.

I must be shipping more stuff! That would explain why I seem to keep running out of stuff so fast too. I feel like a walking TV commercial for small business services of some kind — the ones where the businessperson realizes she can’t do everything and has to solve that problem. It’s all very interesting in the abstract, and very frustrating in the “get this done right now” sense.

I’ve made one huge leap in that department, though, and that is, I’ve had someone else do web wrangling work on my blog. Seriously! I’ve taken my hands off something. I deliberated about whether or not to blog about this, and then decided, you know, this blog is about running a fiber business too, and this is part of that. And what’s more, get this: Abby’s Yarns! launched a year ago on Friday.

I felt like I should do something. You know, bake a cake, spin a special yarn, something. Maybe have a maudlin retrospective, though I did that with the 100th post. So fix my known blog problems, maybe. But that would take time I didn’t really have. So when a friend of mine who’s a designer and web wrassler extraordinaire just happened to say hello last week, I threw myself at her mercy. She’s started working her wonders already; for example, categories are working again thanks to an upgrade I simply have not had time to do for ages, and she’s fixed various other things I haven’t been able to get to, and isn’t done working her magic yet either. Soon, it should be much easier for folks to find some of the back content, and wade through things in ways other than by date. Plus things will look different. And now that I’ve taken my hands off, it’s a huge relief, and things are moving faster, and it’ll likely be that much easier to… what’s that word? “Delegate.” Yeah, that. It should be easier to do that in the future. I’m so proud!

I’ve also managed to finish a nice selection of workshop outlines and proposals; stuff that is repeatable, priced out, and can be taken on the road to teach. Seriously! I know it seems quiet on the blog front, but there has been a ton going on, and you’ll all be seeing the results shortly!