What the hell, Michaels?

I don’t think I’ll be shopping at Michaels again.  I wanted to make a hooded sweatshirt based of Annoo’s patterns which uses Red Heart’s Unforgettable yarn and I picked the Tealberry color.  I was able to make 10 squares with 1 skein and it sells in sets of 3 on the site, so I bought 6 more.  It also called for Caron Simply Soft in Bone, but I have A LOT of white already. Simply Soft is really soft and shiny, I prefer to work with it on double strands which would clash with the delicate ‘unicorn hair’ unforgettable yarn. Then I dropped some Caron Big Cakes into the order because it was on sale and got free shipping. Plus it’s super pretty. Anyway.

The order was on Nov 2nd.  I got an email on the 7th that they were processing it.  Processing time on their website is 1-3 days. My order still just says “processing” with no tracking as of the 14th.

I chatted with their company and asked where my order was.  Uh, they don’t know, they put in a ticket to check.  That was on a Friday.  There was no update by Saturday so I called and asked where my order was.  Uh, they still don’t know.  It could be in the warehouse, it could be shipped, they have no idea. I asked what I was supposed to do and they said check back in a day or so.

Well on Monday it was still processing so I chatted again and asked for an update.  They still don’t have an update from the warehouse, and can’t tell me anything. That was on the 13th, so I went on their Facebook page which typically generates some kind of serious response and commented that I hadn’t received my order yet. No reply. Opened a direct message “oh sorry I’ll forward to our customer service team”

Still no update as of 11-14. If you don’t even know where the fuck an order is or what the status is, you don’t belong running a business.  I’m going to try out knitpix.com next time.

Blizzard Square Finished

It came out slightly about 6 inches, between 6 and 7, but I liked it better with the SC border.

Blizzard Crochet Square

Originally when I started getting hard core into crochet again, I had some ideas of making things game-themed.  The first rather time consuming project was the scarf for Mistwidget.  I picked the yarn in a sage color for his mistweaver, and picked the broomstitch lace pattern because it reminded me of the monk icons and their twirly healing spells.

I thought perhaps I could run with a theme like that. Like, make items that are unique to a class but subtly so, where people could wear it and it wouldn’t scream ‘omg dork!’.  Broomstick lace for monks, a sharp wave stitch for rogues, perhaps Tunisian lace fan for priests, etc. Buuuut, would that association really help and, could I get in trouble because I don’t work for or own Blizzards stuff?

Not sure how that would work out.  Randomly ran into this little event however, which is to cloth the orc in front of Blizzards headquarters with knitting or crochet squares.

It had to be in grey and blue, for some reason, and I thought about it for a while but went with the flower stitch I’ve done before.  It ends up looking 3d and I did it in grey because it’s slightly reminded me of an Iron Star.

Sizing problems

I follow a couple of channels on youtube who create patterns I like, but I’m finding one in particular has everything coming out way too big.  I use the same hook, the same yarn, but it’s simply WAY too large.

One was the mandala pattern.  I wasn’t even finished but it would have been dragging on the ground and sagging from its own weight, so that had to be frogged and many hours wasted.  And the problem with some patterns is you have no idea it will be too big until you are almost done!

We also had the cocoon sweater, which would be waaaaay too large the recommended size of about 42 inches.  I made one like that which required a pound of yarn and then some, but then it ended up hanging past my knees.  I’m almost petite sizing so that might be some of it, but I find I have to reduce everything by about 8 inches for it to work for me.

The scarf pictured also came out way too long, at almost 10 feet and if I had repeated as the pattern called, far too wide as well.  I stopped at 2 repeats and I think I’ll finish it  but the next one will be reduce by about 2 entire feet.

I should have paid better attention when I chained the first line on that one though.