16 posts in 16 days

Alright. I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions. But I did want to try to do this one thing: every day until school starts on the 17th, I will make at least one post per day. I have a ton of stuff I've been meaning to blather about, but while school's on, it's just impossible. While I've got the time off, I mean to make the most of it, blog-wise. So, a post a day, at the least. If you look closely, you will see that I've already screwed this up, as I didn't make a post yesterday - but I'm cutting myself some slack there, because I left home at 6:45 a.m. yesterday and didn't get home until after midnight. Since I made two posts on the 1st, I'm calling it even (this is my game, I make the rules - which, thanks to this Yarn Harlot post, is one of my new favorite sayings. Hee.).

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of knitting... what the heck happened to The Knitting Connection's website? I used to have a link to it down there in the Syracuse Links section, but I just tried to click it to check their store hours for the week, and it gave me a "server not found" error. Did they just give up on the site and let it lapse? I think that's what happened with the site for The Village Yarn Shop/pe (aka "the snooty local yarn store"), because when I googled it, I found a few references to their website on other sites, but not their site itself (another "server not found" error). Ditto for Elegant Needles. What is with LYS's giving up on their internet presences? Is this just a mirror of the tech bust, with stores thinking a website could bring them profit with minimal work, only to find it was more trouble/expense than it was worth? Or do places just not see the point? Because, for someone like me, who absolutely hates to interact with people using a telephone, a website is a fantastic place to get simple questions answered (like, "how late are you open today?" or "are you open tomorrow?" or "which days will you be closed for the holidays?" or "where are you located?") without having to actually "reach out and touch someone," as it were. Increasingly, I feel like places that don't have websites don't really exist, in some way - as if they didn't have a phone line or weren't in the phone book.

I can understand how, for a truly local YS like The Knitting Connection, a website in not really worth it, as it provides roughly the same benefit as a Yellow Pages ad while requiring more cash and time to keep up. But, OK, remember that super-bulky purple yarn I bought for a mere $5/ball at Rhinebeck? It was made by a place called Hudson Valley Sheep and Wool Co. Don't bother looking for their website - it used to be at www.hvsheepandwool.com, but it's not there anymore. And that kills me! I would love to know more about the place - What kind of fiber animals do they have? How big is their herd? Do they do all their own wool processing, or do they work with an outside mill? Do they have needle size or pattern suggestions for this gigantic yarn I bought? Do they have a store, or do they just sell at fiber shows? If they have a store, when are they open? How do I get there? - but I can't really find out anything online. Sure, I found a phone number I could call, but... I haaaaaate the phone. Plus, alright, it's an 800-number, but I don't have a land line, so if I were to call during "normal business hours," it still wouldn't be totally free for me. And I'm sure I'd have to call during "normal business hours" if I actually wanted to talk to a human being. Whereas if they just had a website, I could get all my questions answered (if it were a halfway decent site, anyway) at 2 in the morning while sitting on my couch in the dark in my pj's, without making a sound louder than a click.

If you're going to try to be more than just a local YS (which, I would argue, any vendor at a fiber festival is trying to do), you've got to have a web presence. It doesn't have to be flashy, and it doesn't have to be updated that often. Take the NorthWind Yarns site. They cover all the pertinent info (hours, directions, etc.), and they give plenty of things to click on, but they don't really say all that much on any of their pages. They give a rough summary of what they carry, but don't get bogged down trying to post details like exactly what they have in stock at the moment. Their site is pretty, but not tricked out with bells and whistles. It probably took a bit to set up, but now that it's up, it's probably very low-maintenance. And it sure enticed me to want to go to their store and spend money. Actually, more than that - it enabled me to go to their store without having to call ahead (because, as noted - haaaaaate the phone).

Soooo... I didn't intend this to become a pro-internet rant. But I really just don't get how a business owner wouldn't want to take advantage of every possible media outlet to get information about their business to potential customers. I mean, I want to go yarn shopping when I travel to a new place, and I'd google for yarn stores near my destination when planning a trip, but I don't have a phone book for, say, Peoria to check out before I go. And there can be a happy medium for business owners, where a website could be way more useful than that hypothetical Yellow Pages ad, but almost as low expense. More yarn store owners just need to find that internet zen state, so I can do more yarn shopping with less actual human contact.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to head over to The Knitting Connection (I broke down and called them) and scope their selection of size 9 dpns.