To Spam or Not to Spam, That is the Question

This is an open letter to all the charitable organization's out there.

How To Land In My Spam Box

I know that raising funds for your charity is very hard work. Lets face it there are millions of charitable organizations out there. You do everything you can ethically to raise money and you are still not reaching the goal that your board of directors has said that you need to reach this year.

So you cross the ethical line. You think that because our parents or grandparents supported your cause that I should too. Is this because the letter addressed to them, but sent to my home address are regularly put in the recycle bin? So you start sending out fundraising letters to my e-mail account addressed to them. In fact I receive multiple e-mails a week, because it does not cost you money to send them out.

I really want you to think about this. Would you call my phone or ring my doorbell asking to speak to the person you know is dead. Probably not. So why then is it your new mission in life to clog my e-mail account by sending letter after letter to people in my life who have departed this world for the next? You organization has been told multiple times that they have passed. If you don't beleive me just Google their names.You do know how to use Google, don't you?

My generation thinks that my e-mail address is my own, albeit it may ultimately belong to my Internet Service Provider. Only a copywrite guru knows for sure. It does not belong to a family line. My parents or grandparents were not allowed to use my personal e-mail address when they are alive, even more so now that they have departed this world. If you must really send out letters to our dearly departed on a regular basis, please contact me once by snail mail asking for the name of the cemetery and the plot number. I am quite sure that they would enjoy the attention, as they currently don't receive much mail.

In the meantime just know that all e-mail sent to dead relatives via my e-mail account will be put in my spam box. No exceptions to this rule. If you still do not understand this, please send me your home number and what time you eat dinner and I will call then to explain it to you.

Results.

I meant to spend the day finishing with the cleaning and organizing of the craft room. I got distracted. I instead spent the day working in the living room.  So far I managed to fill 3 boxes for Goodwill. Hopefully we can get it out of the house tomorrow. With each bit of decluttering I do, I feel a little lighter. The space around me seems to be getting larger, with more room to move.

The things that I pared down today were baskets, about 50% are leaving the house. Flower vases seemed to be another thing that we have too many of, so far 7 are leaving the house and I will still have a nice selection of vases.  What are the odds of me finding anymore vases? How did I land up with so many vases? Also since we went to a new drawer storage system, all my old dividers are leaving the house too. Some things that seemed so important to me in the 1980's and 90's just don't seem to be necessary anymore.  I am a lot more casual when we have company over.  Can we all give a collective bye-bye to the individual butter plates. Yes, special plates just for butter, the thought of having a proper table and pulling them out then washing them by hand both before and after a party is gone.  

As a family member of generational pack rats it seems at times very hard to do all this decluttering. I think back to one of my grandmothers houses and my parents house and have made a conscious  decision to change my ways. It is a long and slow process. I strongly suggest that family members be patient and not do any pushing. You might cause a stalling of a project that you so dearly want. 

If One Nap is Good then....

Today started out very busy with 2 errands before Knitting Guild.  We had a lovely yarn tasting with Vicky Konecky from Grandma's Spinning Wheel here in Tucson. I so wanted to break my yarn diet and head over to Grandma's after the meeting, but I was so tired that I headed home instead.

I took some homemade chicken soup out of the freezer for lunch. John cut up some fresh carrots and celery to add to the soup. Before it had finished thawing and was warm enough to eat I had fallen asleep. Two hours later, I did not have time to eat the soup, but instead went and picked up Eric at his program. I did manage to cover a person's desk in yarn, knitting needles and knitting books before I left the building. I do love to do a good yarn bombing every once in a while.

We were not home for 30 minutes before I fell asleep again for another long nap. It is my hope that these naps today will help my body heal from both the cold, which is still lingering but also the arthritis flare up that it has caused. John served the soup for dinner along with some fresh bread.

After dinner I packed up some more charity to leave the house tomorrow. This time hats, scarfs and special needs bibs. They will head over to the Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank.

Three's

Today was a day for 3's. I worked in the craft room cleaning and decluttering for 3 hours. I managed to fill 3 full bags for the recycle barrel. The last chore I did today was fill, you guessed it 3 boxes for a Goodwill pick up on Friday. So today has been brought to you by the number 3. 

A Place for Projects

John spent part of the weekend putting up a shelf in the craft room for me.  I filled it up with projects waiting to be started. It took me less time to fill up the shelf then for John to install it.  I think I have enough projects to keep me knitting for a while.   By moving some of my projects off the first rack, I have more room for larger items on the first rack.   

Slowly things are either finding their way to a better place or out the door. We finished the rest of our Bookmans runs today. The rest of the books will go to Goodwill on Friday along with a few other boxes. 

I Tink I Must

While I was reorganizing the craft room today, I found a sweater that I started over 5 years ago. My plan was to finish it. I thought just for the heck of it, I should try it on. Well it was 2 sizes too big. So I decided not to finish it.  So I think it is time to Tink the sweater.  For those of you who don't knit, tinking  is knitting spelled backward. So it is time to rip it out. So tonight I will rip out my first sweater in progress and start it again.  Hopefully I will finish it before it is 2 sizes too large again.  

Really!!!!

Yesterday Lisa and I did a craft show. The promoters promised music, food trucks and lots of traffic. Well it was not exactly like that. My total sale for the day were $5.00, not even enough to cover gas. There were less than 200 people from 9 am to 2 pm. But I did take away a lot of laugh lines. No names will be attached to any of this randomness.

On the subject of WiFi. A vendor near me could not find a free wifi hot spot. So she asked if she could use my WiFi,. I politely said no, but wanted to say hell no. I told here just to use the one on her phone and offered to help her get her wifi working. So out comes a phone style from so last century, It looked like the phones I had in the 1980s and 90's. Someone told her that it was an android phone and did not get apps or have wifi. Thank you AARP for the basic phone, but you might want to tell people it is not an android phone.

Know your audience. I have one of my spinning wheels up for sale. So I took it with me. A man approached me wanting to buy it. The Lendrum is a complete package with with both a high speed flyer and a plying head,  with extra bobbins. I had a sign asking for $600 or the best offer. He said it was too much. So I asked what he was going to be using it for. So he told me he worked with a day training program for the disabled and seniors at a ranch down the road.  So I told him that I would sell him the basic wheel for $450.  He said it was still too much, would I trade the wheel for 1 bag of alpaca fiber (not skirted or or washed). I said no. He then went on to tell me how tired he was at the end of the day when he left work to go home (really!!! he gets to go home at the end of the day, how lucky). How I just did not understand how hard it was to work with the disabled all day, trying to get me to give him the wheel for free. I said I did not think my husband would go for it. A very good try though.

No, to be honest, I did not tell him about Eric or about the week from he double toothpicks that we just came out of. We were all sick and we still had to take care of Eric 24/7. What got me is that he felt that he was entitled to a free spinning wheel just because he took a job working with the disabled. One person I know used the Yiddish "S" word when I told the story. This is a family friendly blog, I will not use bad words here.

Will I undercut Walmart's prices. A mother was shopping with her daughter. The daughter liked one of my $18.00 scarfs and wanted to buy it. The mother said that if I would sell it for less the she could buy the same scarf at Walmart her daughter could have it. Do I look like a Big Box store using low quality materials and sweatshop labor?

Speaking of Big Box stores, a lady liked my hand spun art yarn which I sell for $5.00 per ounce. Not a bad price for using yak, silk, mohair, camel, different kinds of wool and other high end fibers. She then went to to say that she could get 8 ounces of yarn (heavens only knows what fiber) for $5.00 at here local Big Box Craft Store. She could get 12 ounce for $5.00 when it was on sale. Would I sell her 12 ounces of Art Yarn for $5.00? Really!!! Do I look like a Big Box Craft Store?

Sending out the scouts. I really liked the mother (not) who sent her children to scout out other booths taking pictures of things that they like so that she could duplicate other people's work. Really, with sites like Pintrest and Raverly which are free to use, is is really necessary to send your kids out to rip off the creative work of other people? Lots of people are will to share their ideas and patterns for free.

To top off the day I was offered a spot at another craft show next weekend. The promoter would take the 1st $15.00 in sales, then I could keep the rest. This was not really a craft fair but a promotion for a charity in town. She just wanted people to have something to look at after they dropped off their donations. Oh and she wanted a special order too, but refused to put money down. My booth was filled with a lot of special orders which people requested, but did not put money down for. Then after the hand knit was made they said no to making the purchase. So this has prompted a new policy.

Special Orders require a 50% non refundable deposit, which will be applied to the purchase price of the finished object. No exceptions.