Badgering Works!

It always seemed a shame to me as a child that few people appreciated my "feisty" temperament. As a matter of principle, I corrected adults who tried to win my favor and thought it charming to shorten my name to a familiar nickname. Gentle but firm I would look them squarely in the eye and reply, "Please don't call me that. That is not my name. That's my brother's name and my father's name." Most adults would just stare at me like I spit on the baby, but a few told me my feisty attitude would take me places.

Occasionally, it has.

As a child I explained to Santa if I was to become a ballerina/princess/astronomer, I would need a telescope to start the scientific end of my future career. I got one.
As a sixteen year old, I dressed in my best skirt and blouse and walked inside Trump Tower in New York city to ya know, check the place out. It was nice.
New to Los Angeles, as an adult I landed a dream job in jewelry by calmly explaining (unannounced) to the owner why he would be making a mistake if he didn't hire me. He hired me.

Recently, I discovered women and men who share the same love of geeky order, who don't think me (too) weird for organizing yarn by color, who understand my need for the pretty. They appreciate salty personalities and my insistence that if you just badger someone a bit they will come around to your way of thinking. My co-workers, turned friends, believe badgering works because they are feisty too.

In the world of yarn, Recent evidence that badgering works includes the long awaited reprinting of Solveig Hisdal's stunning Poetry In Stitches book. Several calls to Norway using words like "pretty, pretty, please" and "c'mon you know you wanna" by Fearless Leader and staff produced a rumor that is 95% sure to come true.
Yeah I know, ninety-five percent sure? We believe they will reprint it because badgering them to include copies of the pattern in their kits has proved successful. (Norwegians are so totally unprepared for our brand of systematic haranguing.) Their kits are fabulous, the yarn superb, and the book incredible. They have a product that Americans are blessed to get : old-world, timeless knitwear. We committed to 50 copies of the reprinted Poetry In Stitches so if you want a copy that won't cost you your first born on Ebay, pre-order one here. We have the yarn too, but you can always just get the kit you want to knit because they now include the pattern. That is, until they get the new copies of the book out...



Badgering Malabrigo proved successful as well. They are incredibly busy running a farm and yarn company. As we've encountered in the past, if you call them up (you call Florida and then they patch you through) sometimes you catch them during "lambing season" and your order for all your anxious customers just has to wait. Which is fair. I think anyone, man or beast giving birth has the right to say "Uh, sorry I can't give you any wool right now. I'm a little busy having a baby sheep." People of course wouldn't say that. Just substitute wool for spreadsheet and omit the sheep part. Makes more sense now, doesn't it?

While hounding the very sweet Malabrigo-tonians we discovered our automatic ordering system didn't jive well with their system. They only send out their orders after it is complete and we were sending them orders near weekly. They could never fulfill all the orders at once so they kept holding the yarn from going out.
So we learned something new and they sent us our yarn, all eight-thousand dollars worth.




We have new colors as well:

That's hot, huh?
The shipment is so pretty it begs for rolling around in... homina.

So, the moral of this story is: always make a pest of yourself for yarn.
Perhaps that's a bit obnoxious. How about: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Yeah, too trite. Take your pick of one of these quotes then:

Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind. -Bulgarian Proverb

Victory belongs to the most persevering. -Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

By perseverance the snail reached the ark. -Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 - 1892)

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. -Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)