April Showers need to bring Flowers - don't want to wait for May.

When it rains, it pours. And lately it's been raining a lot.

If you read my blog at all you know that we have been having problems with the mail service - or lack of it - for over a year. Things are taking an inordinately long time to get places if they make it at all. We have worked most things out on this end. On Tuesdays and Thurdays Tori drives to Kidder where her late husband's daddy is the postmaster. He makes sure our packages and letters get shipped out. What happens after that is anybody's guess but it takes an average of about 3 weeks for things to finally get where they're going. And that includes letters.

And now we seem to periodically be getting kicked off of the information highway. It seems that we're not getting a lot of our emails. Mr. Biddle (pattern purchaser at Moda) sent me 2 emails I never got. When one finally came through, he showed me a screenshot of the Moda computer records saying that they'd been sent. I believed him. I just never got them. I check my emails at least 2 - 3 times a day, usually more. Have no idea where they went. Cyberspace, I guess.

(On this note, my husband just got home from work. He got an email from Yahoo yesterday saying that there had been problem syncing email (he has an IPad, I have an I-Mac) and some emails had been temporarily unavailable. Yahoo created a "sync" file for him with the unavailable emails, they had finally resolved a problem and were giving him access to it. When he opened it there were 274 emails in it going back to July of last year.)

To quote Jack Benny "Well!"

I will say that most of our emails do come through, just occasionally one doesn't. But, of course, they're from the same people - like Mr. Biddle from Moda who sent 2 or 3 that didn't come through. If you don't get your order or just plain ole want to get in touch with us - and we don't respond to an email within a day or two (we get a lot sometimes) then there's the phone. We're here Monday-Friday 10:00-2:00 CST. But we're in and out. The answering machine says Wednesday-Friday so we can just work Monday and Tuesday but we are here. If you phone and the phone rings and rings and rings, it means we're on the other phone. If you don't get voicemail or the answering machine, we're on the phone. I have no idea why they did away with the busy signal. And if you get the answering machine, leave a message. If you get the voicemail, just wait and call back. Or call later and leave it on the answering machine. For some reason my son won't listen to voicemails. He'll call back the number on the missed call (but his phone only keeps so many) but he won't listen to voicemails. He is very good with the computer stuff, he's back in school, the father of my grandchildren and a very nice person but lousy at listening to voicemail. (At a suggestion from a relatively otherwise rude woman, I will have him change the message - good idea.)

And for those of you who don't read the comments, I am not a businesswoman. I am

first and foremost a wife, mother & grandmother and then a designer of fabric & quilts.

I only started doing kits because people asked me to because they wanted a quilt just like

mine. Linda (Brannock)and my look is a niche part of the quilt market, not available

everywhere. I started a website back when the dinosaurs roamed so that people who

lived in areas where shops don't carry this look and fabric would have access. It has

been going nicely for many years with only an occasional glitch until about last March

when the post office fell apart. Since then it has been somewhat of a nightmare as

people get very understandably frustrated at delivery (or nondelivery) of their kits.

As I was pondering how to handle all of this - most of which is out of my control

- I needed something to make me feel somewhat in control and just plain old better.

Quilt's make me feel better. They're a big way that I take care of myself.

This is one that Linda and I designed together. She came up with the big basket and

flowers. I adapted it to a Turnover and did the color and fabric. I think I changed a

couple of the flowers too. The big leaf and berries are hers. I think they're awesome.

Anyway, I decided to put the kit on Special this week. It's Basket of Blooms and

on special this week for $55.00.

It's getting close to Market with all of the deadlines. Better go stitch. :) Thanks for

all of your patience. Take care of yourselves.