Miscellaneous Updates

I've been awfully quiet lately, haven't I?  Well, here's what I've been up to:

Upcoming Seminars I am beyond excited about the seminar in mid-April at the Knit Knack Shop.  She has Susan Guagliami, Marcia Hauser, and me, coming to teach!  It's a 2-day seminar, and I can't wait to see Charlene's famous (and fabulous, I'm sure) shop. 

I am also teaching at Triangle Knitters in North Carolina (Raleigh area) at the end of April.  That's a 2-day seminar, just me, and a wonderful small-group type setting. 

Yes, both seminars have room, at this point.  If you want to go, email me at diana_knits "at" sbcglobal "dot" net and I'll put you in touch with the organizers.  I know they're both doing a wonderful job because they have been very organized and businesslike, and besides, they are experienced. 

I have the lessons and handouts written and am very pleased with them.  I worked in plenty of new material, and tried to enhance the variety.  We have figured out seminar logistics like travel, and my wonderful friend Barbara is coming along and helping me so I can focus completely on the knitters and not the practical stuff.

Diana's Little Knitting Business:  I caught up months and months of bookkeeping in a single week.  My excuse is, I am an accountant at work and don't really want to do more accounting when I come home.  What a rotten excuse...the shoemaker has no shoes and the plumber has leaking pipes, or so they say.  John was out of town on a business trip, and I always attack projects when he's gone.  I needed the bookkeeping done so I could do our taxes, and gosh, the only knitting bookkeeping I did last year was enough to send in sales taxes. 

I bought a new QuickBooks and discovered that it has changed a LOT since I was in public accounting a number of years ago.  It does all sorts of fancy things, but what I wanted was to import transactions from my bank and from PayPal.  After a while, I think I cracked the code.  The secret is to go in and clean up the export files the bank or PayPal creates and get the data to actually go into the right accounts instead of having to fix transactions one at a time after a half-baked import.  When John got home, I was still finishing the job, but at least it's done now.  You'd think I had a mountain of transactions, but no, the problem wasn't volume, it was that I imported data that had to be fixed line by line.

John has been packing my orders, and lately, he's taken on other things so I can do "creative work."  He's actually made a few mistakes, which shocked me - my hubby is a very detailed programmer (we are, after all, the nerd family), and I'm not used to him missing details.  I am used to ME missing details.   He switched two orders, and when I showed him the email from a customer, he joked about me firing him.  Ain't gonna happen; he's handsome, I love him, and he works for free!  Who would ever give up help like that?  So we're taking care of the customers and rethinking our routine.  Sorry, folks, but we're fixing it.  They are US customers so the correct items should get where they need to go quickly.

The knitting videos were John's idea in the first place, and he thinks everything about my teaching knitting is terrific.  He's always helping.

I anticipate hitting that million-video-views mark on YouTube about Friday!  Whoo-hoo!