It’s an unusual post this week! I’m hoping that the power of the internet and social media can help me out.
At the end of January, at Wool-in Garden City in Welwyn Garden City, I was approached by a chap (Simon) who asked me if I took commissions. I’ll be honest, initially I thought this might be a design commission.
Anyway, it turned out that Simon had bought 2 balls of Herdwick wool a while previously, and wanted them knitted into a pair of mittens and a hat. After hesitating a while as this isn’t the sort of thing I usually say yes to, I agreed. He went home (he lives 10 minutes walk away from the shopping centre in Welwyn Garden City) to get the wool and measure his hands and head and returned promptly. I took the wool and Simon’s hand and head measurements, he took my business card, paid me our agreed fee and I emailed him a receipt through Zettle.
Now, I hadn’t used Zettle a lot by that point. I made an assumption. I assumed that there would be a record of the emailed receipt in my system. There wasn’t. I couldn’t find anything anywhere. So in mid-February, I rang Zettle’s helpline, thinking they would be able to assist. No. They don’t keep a record of the emailed receipts either. This meant I had no way of contacting Simon about his mittens and hat.
What to do? Well, he had said that if he hadn’t heard from me by September he would get in touch. So, I got a simple mitten pattern that I thought should work with the yarn and made the mittens – the gauge was off, so I needed to rejig which size I was making and start again, but one successful pair of mittens was created.
Along with a lot of ‘bits’ of wool – short lengths that were no use for much (apart from maybe saving for darning any future holes). It turned out that something had made itself at home in the balls of wool and had chewed its way through one or two of the plies of the wool in several places! This made part of one ball unusable – and also made me very twitchy. It was almost a relief to find a very dead/long empty case for whichever creature had been living there in the one ball. The other ball was fine. Nevertheless, it went into an airtight ziplock bag after that!
I hadn’t been sure if there would be enough yarn for a hat as well, but Simon had said if possible he wanted a simple skull-cap type hat, and that is what I have made. Being Herdwick, it’s quite firm and not what you’d call soft, but it will keep out the wind and rain!
So, the mittens and hat are completed, but I still can’t contact Simon, who lives 10 minutes walk away from the shopping centre in Welwyn Garden City. I thought I’d found him on Linked In and sent a message, but there was no reply.
If you know a Simon who lives in Welwyn Garden City and commissioned the knitting of a pair of mittens and a hat in Herdwick wool from me in January, please ask him to get in touch. He’s quite tall, white and bald/very closely cropped. The mittens and hat would like to be with the person who paid for them!