UPDATE: Problem solved quickly and efficiently by Lion Brand!

After sitting here all day rushing to the bathroom and not leaving the house and not doing anything that might make my hands be too messy to answer the door, the UPS guy arrived at 6:30 pm. He knocked on the door so loudly it freaked out the cats sleeping in the other room, and all he did was knock and run back to his truck.

But that’s not the really annoying thing!

Naturally, since I have essentially been sitting around waiting for my yarn to arrive, I eagerly carried it into the kitchen and ripped the box open. I knew something was wrong before I even read the label. The yarn in the box is a boucle yarn, and I did not order a boucle yarn. I ordered a standard smooth spun yarn. Then I touched the yarn and knew immediately it was not at all wool. Flipping the bag of skeins over to read the label, it read Nature’s Choice Organic Cotton Yarn and not LB Collection Pure Wool Yarn, which is what I had ordered.

Thinking perhaps I had made a mistake while ordering, even though I would think I would have noticed that one of the thousands of times I checked on the order status while waiting for them to authorize the payment and ship it, I went to the web site and looked again. Nope, I had, in fact, ordered the LB Collection Pure Wool Yarn. I ripped the invoice off the box, and it says I ordered the LB Collection Pure Wool Yarn too. Well … that isn’t what I got, now is it?!

I don’t think I can properly express my complete frustration with Lion Brand. This yarn, while very lovely, is of absolutely no use to me for the project intended. In fact, it’s of no real use to me at all. I have no use whatsoever for a cotton boucle yarn made in the USA from imported fibers. I don’t care how organic, soft, or pretty it is. I don’t especially like working with boucle yarns, cotton yarn is very difficult to dye well, and 515 yards of cotton boucle in the shade of almond white really is … utterly and completely useless to me.

So I guess tomorrow I get to see if Lion Brand’s customer service is any good, as I try to sort out how this situation will be rectified without too much hassle for myself. I don’t hold out high hopes that it isn’t going to end up being a huge hassle for me. For all the kudos I have Lion Brand for coming out with a 100% made in America wool yarn, I haven’t been exactly pleased with my ordering process. I ordered the stuff online on July 7th. On July 13th, the payment still hadn’t been pulled out of my bank account and the order had not been shipped, which prompted me to email them to ask why not. This apparently prompted them to take my money and send me the (wrong) yarn the very next day. It felt like had I not emailed them to complain, it might have sat there much longer before anyone noticed it hadn’t been shipped out. I was already a bit grumpy about that, but not even getting the right yarn? Grumpy doesn’t begin to cover it.

So my project gets pushed back yet again, and who knows when or if I will ever get my hands on any 100% made in America wool yarn. I’m not only frustrated, I am really, really sad about this. Few things suck worse than opening an expected package and finding that what is inside it isn’t what you wanted or expected (or paid for).