The good, the bad and the (temporarily) ugly

This is a post of three parts – though in the reverse order to the title above – so first the (temporarily) ugly.  Yes, that’s Master Benjamin who, although he is feeling much better, is looking extremely odd.  The vet had to shave his face fur around his eyes before his surgery and his eyelids are bristling with stitches that won’t be removed for another week.  He’s out and about again now and here he is earlier this morning …

… enjoying a nice amble through the woods.  I am sure that if he could, he would want to join me in thanking all those lovely people who sent their best wishes for his speedy recovery.  Thank you all, your kind thoughts meant so much to us at a worrying time.

The second part of this post then, is the bad bit.  As I am lucky enough to have customers worldwide, but mostly in the USA, I set all the prices on my website in US dollars.  This in itself is absolutely fine, as PayPal or my other processor 2Checkout, do all the whizzy currency calculations for me and convert to sterling.  The problem is that for the last year the pound has been getting stronger – and that means that my income has been falling.  This time last year I was receiving 66p for every dollar, but now its more like 57p – a drop of 13%.  I’ve been able to absorb this drop up until now, but I simply can’t do so any more.  So I’m afraid that my prices will have to rise next month.

I feel really bad about having to do this so before then, and in honour of “Christmas in July”, here’s the last, and good, bit of this post …..

I’m having a Christmas in July sale with 25% off everything in my store except magazine subscriptions.

This will be the last opportunity to stock up on Bustle & Sew patterns at these prices, so please don’t miss out as the sale is for one week only.  Just pop across to my store now where I’ve opened up my Christmas patterns section too and enter code XMASJULY at checkout.