Continuing to learn the hard way...
I'm going to have the phrase "And she never did learn..." engraved on my tombstone. In our last episode, I was eagerly awaiting the last of my tech edits so I could start printing my patterns on my brand new solid-ink printer. I managed to get almost everything, with the exception of a few of my plus-size patterns, formatted, tech edited and generally complete by last Thursday. On Friday, I started to print. The plan was to get all the pattern leaflets printed out on Friday night and Saturday, and then Donna was going to come over on Sunday to help me staple and pack for mailing. Oh, how the best laid plans, they go astray.
Friday night arrives. I'm happily printing away. I get through about 3/4 of my sock patterns when - you guessed it - I run out of ink. I'm not too worried - I figure I'll just run to Staples on Saturday after work and pick up some more. No problem. Except for the fact that Staples doesn't carry solid ink. Neither does Costco, or Office Depot, or any other place that I could find that's open on the weekend. In a panic, I have Bill bring my old laser printer up from the basement figuring I might have enough toner left to print out the most critical patterns. I get through one more sock design before the magenta toner runs out. I've got some discount toner that I'd ordered before the great printer switcheroo, and I plug it in even though it looks a little iffy. I start to print, hoping for the best. Of course the printer hate the cheapo toner. I get 50 pages with ghost images on them. Not good.
At 3:30 Sunday morning, Sydney wakes up with chills, fever and a horrible old man cough that makes her toss her cookies. We decide that Donna is better off not exposing herself to our germs, and I spend the morning trying to figure out how to get my hands on more ink. I finally resign myself to the fact that I'm going to have to wait until the Xerox dealer opens on Monday morning. Monday dawns, Sydney is still miserably sick, and I order my ink. I drag myself to work but get sent home early because I look so awful. I go home and sleep for two hours, get up and start printing again. I get about 3/4 of the way through all the patterns I need to send out and - guess what? - I run out of yellow ink.
I've got a couple of text boxes on my patterns with a pretty light-yellow background. I wasn't thinking that these boxes would eat the ink like they did, forgetting that there were three boxes in total on each pattern, meaning that each pattern had about 3/4 of an entire page area covered in yellow. Yup - that's not going to conserve ink. I changed the remaining patterns so that there was a transparent background in those text boxes, but the damage had been done. Bill and I stayed up until after midnight stapling and stuffing in preparation for a marathon mailing session today. I fell into bed, exhausted, but felt so ooky I couldn't get to sleep for another hour. Needless to say, I was not excited when Owen woke me up at 8 am.
Today has been spent fighting extreme exhaustion and headache while trying desperately to get the promised orders out. I ended up calling in sick to work, which is ironic since I ended up working harder at home than I would've at the shop. At least I wasn't exposing anyone but my family to my germs (and I don't feel sorry for them since they're the ones who exposed me in the first place). I had a fun white-knuckle drive through sleet over to the other side of town to pick up more yellow ink. It was all I could do to stay awake for the drive. Bill was a total champ and packed all the boxes up for me and took them to the post office. I've promoted him to shipping manager for Gardiner Yarn Works. He's thrilled, let me tell you.
To give you an idea of the scale of our operation, here's what the dining room table looked like when I got up this morning:
That's about 1/3 of the patterns that got sent out today. I should've gotten a picture of the boxes! There will be a whole slew of shops carrying my new (and old) patterns as of next week. Yahoo! I'll list them off at some point, but I'm just too exhausted right now. I'm trying to decide if I need a glass of wine or a nap. It's too early to go to bed and too late for a nap not to keep me up all night, so I'm thinking wine.
I'm also planning a fun blog contest for my loyal readers, so stay tuned! I will try not to flake out or keep you waiting for weeks. I want to do something to thank you all for sharing the gruesome details of my oh-so-glamorous life!
Friday night arrives. I'm happily printing away. I get through about 3/4 of my sock patterns when - you guessed it - I run out of ink. I'm not too worried - I figure I'll just run to Staples on Saturday after work and pick up some more. No problem. Except for the fact that Staples doesn't carry solid ink. Neither does Costco, or Office Depot, or any other place that I could find that's open on the weekend. In a panic, I have Bill bring my old laser printer up from the basement figuring I might have enough toner left to print out the most critical patterns. I get through one more sock design before the magenta toner runs out. I've got some discount toner that I'd ordered before the great printer switcheroo, and I plug it in even though it looks a little iffy. I start to print, hoping for the best. Of course the printer hate the cheapo toner. I get 50 pages with ghost images on them. Not good.
At 3:30 Sunday morning, Sydney wakes up with chills, fever and a horrible old man cough that makes her toss her cookies. We decide that Donna is better off not exposing herself to our germs, and I spend the morning trying to figure out how to get my hands on more ink. I finally resign myself to the fact that I'm going to have to wait until the Xerox dealer opens on Monday morning. Monday dawns, Sydney is still miserably sick, and I order my ink. I drag myself to work but get sent home early because I look so awful. I go home and sleep for two hours, get up and start printing again. I get about 3/4 of the way through all the patterns I need to send out and - guess what? - I run out of yellow ink.
I've got a couple of text boxes on my patterns with a pretty light-yellow background. I wasn't thinking that these boxes would eat the ink like they did, forgetting that there were three boxes in total on each pattern, meaning that each pattern had about 3/4 of an entire page area covered in yellow. Yup - that's not going to conserve ink. I changed the remaining patterns so that there was a transparent background in those text boxes, but the damage had been done. Bill and I stayed up until after midnight stapling and stuffing in preparation for a marathon mailing session today. I fell into bed, exhausted, but felt so ooky I couldn't get to sleep for another hour. Needless to say, I was not excited when Owen woke me up at 8 am.
Today has been spent fighting extreme exhaustion and headache while trying desperately to get the promised orders out. I ended up calling in sick to work, which is ironic since I ended up working harder at home than I would've at the shop. At least I wasn't exposing anyone but my family to my germs (and I don't feel sorry for them since they're the ones who exposed me in the first place). I had a fun white-knuckle drive through sleet over to the other side of town to pick up more yellow ink. It was all I could do to stay awake for the drive. Bill was a total champ and packed all the boxes up for me and took them to the post office. I've promoted him to shipping manager for Gardiner Yarn Works. He's thrilled, let me tell you.
To give you an idea of the scale of our operation, here's what the dining room table looked like when I got up this morning:
That's about 1/3 of the patterns that got sent out today. I should've gotten a picture of the boxes! There will be a whole slew of shops carrying my new (and old) patterns as of next week. Yahoo! I'll list them off at some point, but I'm just too exhausted right now. I'm trying to decide if I need a glass of wine or a nap. It's too early to go to bed and too late for a nap not to keep me up all night, so I'm thinking wine.
I'm also planning a fun blog contest for my loyal readers, so stay tuned! I will try not to flake out or keep you waiting for weeks. I want to do something to thank you all for sharing the gruesome details of my oh-so-glamorous life!
posted by knittinmom at 5:27 PM
10 Comments:
OK, take this for what you paid for it (nothing!). You could skip the staple. Any time I've received a pattern in a sleeve, it hasn't been stapled. I think I'd prefer it without a staple. There! I just saved you some time.
I sure hope you have some time for some extra slep in the next few day. You deserve it.
Oh my. I think I know why some people fear success. I'm sure this is all just part of the "ramp up" and you will have it all under control in no time. Just like parenting. *snort!*
Oh, my, at least it's done and you can call it. Have a *big* glass of wine, put your feet up. Be proud, be very proud!
Sounds like you've had a rough morning/day. I hope you feel better soon!
I'll second Maria's comment -- no staples. I've stopped stapling my patterns too. Saves tons of time!
Sorry about all the frustrations you've had, but congrats on all the orders that caused them.
Kim
I hope everyone is feeling better soon.
This is exactly why I think you should do a book. Let someone else do the printing ;-)
i just saw the online preview of the new interweave. congrats, your work looks wonderful!
Aww, man! That would have been enough to make me hire someone to print them. Hope you're feeling better soon!
Glad that you finally got your toner and was able to finish printing! My hoodlums have passed their colds on to me, so I know how you feel.
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