Squishy Parcel

It is always fun when you get a parcel in the mail, and you know exactly what it is. We have a nice postman and always has a big smile on his face when he knocks on our door and hands us a parcel. It is always nice when we get a chance to say hi to him because we don’t get a lot of mail or parcels, so it is a treat. 

This parcel is something that I ordered during a sale, and I have been trying to wait patiently for it to arrive. Of course, I have been tracking the parcel since I got the notification that it had been shipped, and it finally said the expected delivery was “today”. It is going to be nice to open the bag and see what is instead. I know that I am going to be busy after the bag arrives, but it is always nice to see what is inside the bag.

The parcel is from Arcane Fibre Works and they are a Canadian yarn dyer, and I have loved their yarn since I got my first package from them. I started purchasing from them just after I heard about them on Facebook as I was looking at where I could purchase some nice fingering weight yarn, and it was available from within Canada. 

Now, getting this yarn also means that I am going to have to figure out another shawl that I am going to knit with it, and I am looking forward to doing that in the next little while. I do have lots of fingering yarn that does need my attention but getting some more to add to my inventory makes me feel good.

It is always a lot of fun when I get this bag and again today when this bag parcel arrived our postman knocked on the door with a huge smile on his face when I opened the door and got my parcel. Here are some pictures of what I received today.

Here are the colours that I got this time

Turquoise Treasures

Beaches Be Crazy

Stormy Seas

Being able to spend some time figuring out the next project or so is going to be a lot of fun and I hope to be able to get that done soon so that I can start working on one of these projects. It is always nice to receive a squishy parcel and now the next part of the fun begins as I decided what project comes first and then what yarn I will use.

Read reviews don't just look at the star rating

 Recently I purchased a product through Amazon, and I ended up returning it as it didn’t meet my needs at all. I purchased one of those watches that will monitor your sleep, count your steps, answer calls and a bunch of other things. I took a chance on a watch that was a very reasonable price. I received the watch and immediately charged it and then started to wear it as I am someone that does track my steps because it helps keep me moving and motivated.

I wore my new watch, and we went for a walk-through Ikea as it was a place I knew roughly how many steps I would get while doing that walk. It was interesting to see the outcome of this walk once we sat down to grab a hot dog for lunch. My step count was in the lower 800 steps while my husband was around 3,200 steps. The 3,200-step number is roughly when I normally get when walking around Ikea because of course we have to look at things and not just stay on the path. Seeing just 800 steps told me there was something wrong. We then did some other walking that day and I finally got to around 1,500 steps while my husband was over 5,000 steps. Yes, there was a problem with the watch, but I decided to try it a couple more days to see if things changed.

The result was the step count was way off, and I decided to return the item because it wasn’t working as it should. I also had made sure that I had entered all the information that could possibly affect the measurement of my step count. I have been wearing a tracking device since around 2014, so I understand what is needed to accurately track my steps. The return process was very easy, and the refund came quickly which also made me happy. I decided to do a review of the product on Amazon because I wanted people to know that the watch out that the watch might not be right for everyone. The review I left was a 1-star review and said my honest opinion about the watch. I thought it was over but found out differently.

About a month after purchasing and returning the watch and posting a review I received an email from the company, and they offered to send me a replace watch and attached the information on how to get the watch to correctly count your steps. The funny thing is this is the first thing I checked when the step count was wrong. So, I figured I would accept the new watch and at least then I would have a spare and one that I could wear when I didn’t want to damage my new watch that I purchased by a known brand.

I provided them my order number and mailing address and figured everything was going to be done. Well, I finally get an email that says that my new watch is going to be on the way shortly. What I didn’t like was the next part of the message and it reads:

“1.We have successfully registered a new watch for you. Once the logistics tracking number is successfully created for you, we will send it to you as soon as possible.

2.In addition, we sincerely ask you to re-share the review for us. You don't need to change the content, just change the star rating to five stars. If you are bothered by this, you can also delete the review directly. If you are willing to help us, we will be very grateful to you, and we are happy to send you two free bands. Please tell us the band code you want . Thanks.”

When I saw the just change the star rating to five stars, I know there was something extremely wrong with this. I then started looking at a bunch of the other reviews for this same watch and I saw that quite a few people had changed the start rating to five starts with the headings like these

• Not Great

• Product doesn’t last

• Poorly made

• Changed my review

All of these are for now 5-star reviews and all of them said that customer service was great, and a replacement was offered. It is amazing that replacement products have to be offered to so many people and the heading of the review doesn’t match the initial wording of the review.

I have left my review as it because I wanted to give an honest review and I have also told the company that they can keep their product.

So here is my word of warning when you are looking at a product that the price seems maybe a little lower than you expected. Sure, there may be a lot of 5-star reviews but go through and look at the heading of the reviews as well as what some people have said as you could learn a lot. Asking something to change their rating from a lower star rating to a 5-star rating is just trying to track potential customers that the product it better than it might be.

What is a stitch-along

 For people that do cross stitch there is a term that we use to explain a project that people are going to be working on at the same time and it is called a stitch-along, or as some people call it a start-along. When people are talking about doing one of these, they may refer to it as a SAL.

There are so many different stitch-along and it just depends on what you want to do. 

Mystery stitch-along 

There is mystery stitch-along where you will receive a piece of the pattern at a specific time, and you can work on that section and then have to wait until the next section is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to work on a project and not know what the final piece is going to look like until the final section of the pattern is released. This can be a lot of fun, but you have to be willing to not know what the piece will look like and sometimes these projects will be a 12-month project.

Specific pattern stitch-along

This one is an easy one to understand because you are given a specific pattern to work on and it can be divided into sections, but you know the pattern before you ever start the stitch along. There are designers that will do this, and they will give you the entire pattern all at once and the pattern is divided into sections so you can either stitch it following the sections or you can stitch it your own way it doesn’t matter.

Specific designer stitch-along

This one is you can pick any pattern from a specific designer, and everyone starts their pattern at a specific time, and it is just a way to motivate each other to get work completed on the design. This can be a lot of fun when people are posting which pattern they are working on as well as where they started the piece.

The idea behind a stitch-along is to help motivate you to work on a piece and try and get it done within a specific time people. The reason why some people call it a start-along is because in some cases if you have a lot of projects on the go you will start the stitch-along but you end up working on a bunch of other projects and the stitch-along piece doesn’t get finished in a timely manner.

For me it is interesting to figure out which stitch-alongs that I want to participate in. I have done most of the different stitch-alongs that I have listed, and it has been fun. I have done both the stitch-along and the start-along because things just got in the way of me finishing a project when it was the stitch along. I recently finished a 2019 Mystery Stitch-Along so what started as a stitch-along turned into a start-along but I at least got it finished. 

A stitch-along can be a lot of fun if you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. If you can’t keep up with the project that is fine because cross stitching is supposed to be for enjoyment so why stress about keeping up with something. 

Managing all the demands on your time

For most people there are always a lot of demands on your time, either it’s work, personal life, or a combination of the two things which can get a little overwhelming sometimes and making sure that you know how to manage the demands can make a big difference. Sometimes it may feel like you don’t have a minute to think because someone is always asking for a bit of your time.

Now that a lot of people are working remotely at least some of the time for work that can also impact how people see your time because you aren’t in the office 5 days a week. I know for someone that works remotely all the time there have been times when family figures that we don’t work, and we could just drop everything and help with an issue. Well working remotely means that you still have deadlines and meetings that you must attend. Sure, there are times when you can shift your work schedule a little bit, but it cannot be all the time.

Having a mobile device also means that both work, family and friends figure you are available to response to their questions no matter what time it is. The one good thing about mobile devices is you an put them on silent when you need the time to focus on something and in the evenings, you can put them on “do not disturb” so you don’t get those messages in the middle of the night from someone that just had a great idea that they wanted to share.

Being able to set priorities and manage them can be a challenge because when you are working remotely people don’t understand or see what you are working on which can sometimes be hard. Something that I have found that works well for us is to put things on our calendar and that shows people that we are busy doing something. Sure, you cannot put everything on your calendar but putting blocks of time when you are busy can help quite a bit.

Knowing how to manage the demands on your time is very important to ensure that you can continue to get everything done that you want to do but not feel overwhelmed. For me I know that I have a planner that I put things in, so I know what I need to do, and I also make sure that important items are on the calendar so that they are not forgotten and that there is time set aside to get those items done.

How do you manage the demands on your time, and does it work for you?