What a Week! What a Ride! Hang on!

Warning: long read!

In the calendar called LIFE OF QUILTED TWINS, this week has been one of the craziest, longest, most excruciating that has existed.

On the other hand, it’s been highly productive, but not without many tears of anger, frustration and inabilities on my behalf.

Most of you reading this realize that last Thursday afternoon, we were slated to get a new site. As always, in anything with me, it’s never quite as simple as it should be, or is for anyone else.

This project was no exception. I’m not sure if it’s just because I attempt to do things “too big,” or “too mammoth,” or whether I’m “too impatient” or just “too incompetent.” But regardless, things never go smoothly for me.

So, last Friday we basically didn’t have a website. I was unable to connect all night Thursday night (9/3) and even on Friday night, connection was very iffy for me, at my house. Most of the time, my computer would go straight to the old site, making it super hard for me to get things done – from checking on things, to writing an email to responding to where things were on the site or if we even had things. I was able to get in through the backend, but not the QuiltedTWins.com end!

By Saturday things were better, but it was very apparent that the blog link had not worked. It wasn’t a simple fix. Something about a subdomain.

Well, the tech who was helping me had left for vacation at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday night and would not be available until Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.

Instead of stressing, we decided to use our time in other ways. Becky was here and busily packing up boxes to ship to herself and preparing to leave. I was busily filling orders and attempting to run things, because the store was open all day Saturday, but my mind was whirling… trying to figure out the new way of doing things.

Sunday – Still no blog and no one to ask, because, of course, it was a holiday weekend. However, Becky never writes a blog on Sunday anyway, so we let it ride. On Sunday, we had a wedding reception for our music minister, who had gotten married last year, but just at the JP in another state. We had tried to do it earlier, but kept getting curtailed – COVID got our March celebrations and we didn’t feel like we could invite out of town guests until recently. We decided to do it on the day BEFORE Labor Day. It was a beautiful celebration with fun guests.

Monday – Becky gets on the plane, still no ability to get to the blog in site. Now, of course, we could have written it, but with no way for anyone to read it, it’s pretty much like that tree in the forest… You know, the one that drops in the forest, but no one is around, does it really make any sound? If you write a blog post, but no one reads it, is it really something that you should spend your time on? We decided it could wait.

Labor Day was supposed to be a holiday and my daughter had out of town guests here. She invited us up mid day for a cookout. That was nice. Becky and Mike were heading to Poland! We were celebrating by cooking out! Jessica and I worked at the store, because with a new system, there’s lots to learn and we didn’t want to get behind. I was stumped as I needed to give refunds, but there seemed to be absolutely NO WAY to do it. I also could find ZERO documentation anywhere about HOW to do it.

Tuesday, I still had no working blog link, and no answers to my emails, but our store was open, so I didn’t really care. When we have customers asking questions during the day, there’s no time to think about blog posts or even the website.

I had stopped and written a couple of emails asking for help by late Tuesday. No response. I checked super late at night. Still no answers.

Wednesday morning I wrote one of the “meanest” emails I’ve written explaining that I was pretty desperate for some help! I “finally” got a response. I got a quick phone call from one of the techs who tried to help me figure out how to give refunds. That was the single most important thing that had us stumped.  A lot of items off the old website that had been hidden away, or were deactivated were re-activated and brought out where people could order them on the new site. This created a bunch of refunds needed. Ugh. But, for the life of us, none of us could figure out how to do it. The system was quite different from Squarespace.

Ten minutes after I hung up from that tech, I got a call from the senior account rep who helped me set up the calendar with classes. (But still no refunds.)

So, by the time I left the office on Wednesday evening, we had a class calendar where people could actually see our classes, as well as sign up for them and some of the sit’ n sew days.

But, still no blog and no way to connect to it. And the refunds weren’t working. Can you feel my blood pressure rising? People are asking; texting, messaging and emailing. “Where’s the blog?” Sigh. “I’m working on it ,” is all I have energy to say.

My account rep had given me instructions and asked me to meet again at 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. I agreed to do that, despite the fact that it’s an OPEN STORE day and I don;’t usually make plans for OPEN STORE DAYS. This had risen to #1 importance, and together, we’d work through a joint phone call to SquareSpace and figure out why the blog thing wasn’t working. I decided that I’d contact them directly, in preparation of the event, and even though I was just trying to get a phone number, thankfully, I get a VERY knowledgeable account rep who was able to give me step by step instructions. I then emailed them on to my new senior account rep so she’d be prepared for our Thursday afternoon meeting.

Wednesday night late (after prayer meeting at church), is time to write payroll. (We’re talking 9 to 10:30 p.m). I got that done without any “hitches.”

Thursday, I’m excited about having the calendar up. It’s nice to look at the classes, even if no one signs up for them! Sandi has her first Weighted Pincushion class down in the Sewin ‘n Shop.

 Of course, the store is slated to open at noon, but people show up at 10:30 a.m. anyway. I let them in and gave up trying to be productive in the back. (That’s when I makeup packs and try to deal with issues..)

Then, 3:23 p.m. got here and my account rep called early! Yippee! She was able to get the blog hooked up with the instructions I had emailed her!

I got busy and hid all of the old Squarespace pages so that none of you would go in and order off them.  I got that all done by about 5 p.m. and heaved a HUGE sigh of relief. I did have to call in help from my son in Ohio to take off all the navigation links, because I was afraid I was messing things up. He left it the way that it is right now, with just the word BLOG at the top of the BLOG page.

Then, late Thursday night, I did have a chance to read a few comments. Some of you had asked if we could have a spot for the NEW FABRICS that had been put up recently on the site. So, I figured out how to do that. I even “funded” that with 40 or 50 fabrics on Thursday night and then another 100+ on Friday night!

Friday, I was determined to get a bunch of the refunds dealt with, even if it meant giving a call to my credit card account rep. But, guess what? I went in to try to make the problem replicate. I was armed with my cell phone so I could photograph the error message and send it to a tech at the company that we’re using! But, I’m so happy to report that it worked PERFECTLY! Refunds are now going through. Of course, paypal refunds have to be done manually in paypal, but regular refunds are working beautifully now.

Around 2 in the afternoon, I was able to chat with Becky briefly and she’s doing much better! So, we’re grateful for that.

What a week it’s been. A huge week, where every where I turn, there’s another battle to face.

Oh, I didn’t yet get the MEVO camera figured out and why my Facebook live feed decided that it was going to refuse me all week… but that was just one problem too many for me to work on!

But, despite all that, I want to show you some of the advances that we made here at Quilted Twins.

1)      We started going through the inventory and finding the fabrics that did NOT transfer to the new site. We started with 49 grunges on Wednesday and by the end of Friday we had over 160 grunge fabrics backup on the site and funded with inventory for you!

2)      Jessica got a nifty measuring tape set up on her desk so walk ins could measure their quilts with ease at her location. She did do this a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it!

we got boatloads of solids last week and by Friday afternoon ( A week ago) it was all accounted for, but I had to come in late Friday night (7 days ago now) and find homes for all of it!

3)      We got in 3 pallets of fabric last Thursday and in the midst of all the chaos, all of it was shelved and 99% of it was put up on the site. (No one could order last Friday, so it was a great time to take care of pallets of fabric!)

4)      I have tackled the “main room” in the store, and located MOST of the missing packs that did NOT get transferred over, and put most of those bundle packs up on the site. Of course, I have 5 more rooms in the store to go through, but we’re counting blessings here, not burdens!

These are my five new packs! One is being saved for Sunday’s eye candy!

5)      I have made up FIVE brand new to us half yard bundle packs! They are Awesome!

6)      I completed a bucket load of the You Are my Sunshine kits!

7)      I straightened up the back room in the “chop shop” and made up some floor space for the SIX pallets of fabric that are coming in this coming week!

I’m thinking this is long enough and you understand why this week has been one of the most momentous ones in Quilted Twins history!

I’m loving the new website. Every day we find new things that we can do, and we’re learning to be faster and getting things up. I’m super excited for the opportunities it affords. We’ll be able to get up more books, more 2.5” strips, more 10” squares, and more notions!

So, hang tight! It’s gonna be a ride!

Thanks for listening! And please get on and place an order!

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