The Bad, the Good and the Terrific!

Yesterday started off quite well, I sold a pattern. I also had an email to say that new crochet thread had been despatched!

Thats enough to put anybody in a good mood. Right?

Well I was. For all of 5 minutes. Right up until I went to find the pattern to email out to the customer. It wasn't there. Whats more, another wasn't either.

Major panic. I finally worked out what had happened.

When I finish a pattern, I write it to disc then put it in the "finished Patterns" folder on the desktop. That way I have a copy of it which is easily accessible if I need it. During the reformat, I didn't save the Finished Patterns folder, because they were all backed up on disc, weren't they?

No, they weren't!!!!!!

Both of my Scrapbooking patterns hadn't been written to disc. The thing is, my writer doesn't work and it is such a palava to transfer them over to Marks puter to use his burner. I was going to get around to it eventually!

So, when I came down from off the ceiling, I had a think.

I have both of the patterns in hard copy. That means I can scan them in with OCR which will mean I don't have to type them all up again. However, the pictures are not good enough so I have to remake everything to get new ones

During a visit to CTM we were looking at my Silk Scrapbook and realised that I had use quite a few bits in there. That would save crocheting them.

Also, while I was there I realised that I have pictures on my msn group so there is very little I am actually going to have to make.

When I got home I emailed a couple of customers, explained the situation and asked very nicely if they could help out. A US customer immediately sent me her version of the pattern. And a UK customer has promised to look for it after her weekend away. This means that at least I will have saleable copies of that one, even if I have lost all of my work

The problem with the other one is that I haven't sold any.

When Mark came home and I told him he was very matter of fact (typical) and just said "We will try that program on it."

"That Program" is one he bought when something went wrong during his format and he lost ALL of his files. It found them. It doesn't cost anything to download, install and run. However, if it finds the files you want, you have to pay to register it to be able to save them. It cost him $59.95 but was worth it as some of the files he had lost were programs (including Norton) and their key codes.

So, the good news is that it found a whole load of files which I now need to wade through. I have done some of them and found the publisher versions of the one pattern in both UK and US terms. As this is the one I haven't sold any of, this is the one I most needed to find.

Although I don't think I am going to get all my work back, I will have enough to not have to do any work (apart from converting the publisher files to pdf) to have the patterns available to sell again!

And what has happened to my cutomer in all this?

Well, she has been very understanding. I offered her a refund of a text version on a temporary basis. She opted for the text version. As I managed to get the US version back, I sent her that instead. As soon as I get a UK version sorted out, I will send her that as well.

In the mean time, I am sure I can find something else to send her as a "Thank you."

And some really good news is that one of my Silks at the Florists sold!!!! I was shocked.

I went around to take her another one and pick my cheque up! Too late to bank it today but I will be waiting for them to open Monday morning.