I'll say at the outset, I'm very conflicted about this review and about the owner of this shop. I have 2 perspectives.
(1) Saira is an extraordinarily talented, creative needlepointer. Her recommendations for stitches and threads are unmatched. She can immediately visualize which cool stitches will maximize the artistic value of your canvas. The 2 canvases she advised me on are easily the best I've created in my decades of stitching.
(2) But I have found it difficult to work with her to the point of now parting ways. I've been going in to Chandail off and on for many years, even before Saira owned the shop. In recent years, my experiences have been gradually worse. Sometimes I go in and she's in a good, helpful mood, and she points me to a fabulous thread that I'd never thought of. Other times, I follow up on a canvas I ordered weeks or months ago (because she never has, not once), and she acts like I'm annoying her with my question. You can only get her to part with stitch ideas if you do it in her inefficient, time-consuming, plan-blowing way. I wait on her more often than I can smoothly work--weeks and MONTHS at a time. Even when I'm of a mood to bow to her insane demands to call back next week, her multiple missed appointments without explanation or apology, her endless interruptions, waiting for threads to appear in my mailbox only to find a week later that she still hasn't shipped them, it is more stressful than fun. What should take 15-30 minutes if she sat and focused takes 3 months of these frustrating experiences. I finally asked her just to do a stitch guide and pay her for her time (while also buying $100 worth of threads) so she put me off for 3 weeks but now can't do a stitch guide EVER b/c of "allergies." If I'd been willing to do it her way--well the result would be different. It doesn't tax her allergies if I sit and wait while she thinks apparently. And no, I don't want to come into your shop for an hour while you're sneezing and coughing which is always. Thanks.
What it comes down to is that her time is far more valuable than mine. As the paying CUSTOMER in the relationship, I can only play that way for so long before I'm so angry and frustrated and over it that I will never bother her with my money again. Guess what...I hit that point today.
I was prepared to help her with her website as she struggled to deal with the pandemic. I wanted her to succeed. I designed a stitch guide template for her b/c I'm surely not the only one who doesn't want to go sit in her PUBLIC shop for an hour to get a few stitches from her when she is constantly sick. I bent over backwards to try to accommodate HER and only asked that she spend 15 minutes focusing on my project whenever she had the time rather than making me sit on the phone for hours over multiple interrupted FaceTime sessions AGAIN and so I can GIVE HER MY MONEY. But that doesn't work for her. That's fine. There are plenty of places I can buy thread that are far cheaper and don't stress me out even a little bit. I even find those shops pleasurable.
Good bye, Saira. Get well soon. read more