A group of Kitsap County hotels, resorts and bed-and-breakfast accommodations is offering to pay your ferry fare as an incentive to stay the night.

The offer is good through the slower winter and early spring season through the end of March.

Save your ferry receipt and mention the offer, and the cost of two adult fares plus a vehicle under 20 feet will be deducted from your final bill.

The details are available at www.FreeFerry.com.

No mention of paying the bridge toll, but then getting to Kitsap County via the Narrows Bridge is free. It's just the returning that costs.

For the next few days, as the holidays approach, we’ll be speaking to small retail stores in the South Sound. If you’d like to nominate a retail business for this series, e-mail c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com.

Krazy Kat Fiberhaus

Address: 3013 6th Ave., Suite A, Tacoma

On the phone: Peggy Viney, co-owner with her husband, Joel Viney

Please give me a quick description of what your store sells.

We are a needlework and lacemaking supply shop. We sell a little bit of everything that cross-stitchers, needlepointers and hand embroidery people need. We even have some stuff for smockers and needle felters.

When did your holiday season start?

It starts in July. If you're going to be stitching presents, you're not going to be starting them in December because it does take time depending on what you're making. In the last month I have had a lot of people buying kits and supplies for stockings and ornaments. But for the most part in December it's family members coming in to get gift certificates or to buy that special frame for the needleworker in their family.

How is your holiday season going compared to last year?

We've about tripled our business. Part of it is moving to Sixth Avenue in March. We were in Freighthouse Square for about a year before that. It's a lovely little mall but we found that our demographics showed that most of our customers were coming from this end of town. Being next door to the Bead Factory has been a contributing factor to our success. Crafters don't do just one thing.

What are you hearing from your shoppers about their budgets?

I do notice that people are becoming more conscious of their budget. You can tell the economy is not affecting certain segments of my business. Needlepointers tend to have more discretionary funds than cross-stitchers. A hand-painted 4-inch square canvas for needlepoint can cost $30 to $40. It's painted by hand, by a person, almost stitch by stitch. I have some canvases that are up to $700, and that's not including the threads. Cross-stitch patterns start at $1, and the most expensive patterns I have are $35 and that's because they're Lord of the Rings patterns and Peter Jackson has to make his money – they're trademarked.

Are you having any sales?

We have DMC Medici and Needle Necessity French Wool threads on clearance. We've been giving away some needlepoint and cross-stitch patterns so people only have to buy the threads.

What's your most popular item?

Thread! We focus on threads so we have a lot of thread. Most needlework shops tent to get pattern-focused. Most people love the Weeks Dyeworks and The Gentle Art threads. They are all cotton floss.

Sea-Tac Airport improved its on-time Thanksgiving holiday record this year with more than four out of five flights arriving on time.

New statistics for the holiday period from Portland's Flightstats.com show that 81.82 percent of Sea-Tac flights arrived on time.

That's a 2.12 percentage point increase over 2007's holiday period when 79.7 percent of Sea-Tac flights were on time and a vast improvement over 2006 when just 61.2 percent of flights arrived on-time.

Though Sea-Tac performance improved, its on-time arrival record was mid-pack among 36 U.S. airports FlightStats charted.

The best on-time arrival percentage was Salt Lake City's where 90.94 percent of flights were on time. Oakland, Calif. was next with an 89.22 percent record.

At the bottom of the list was the world's busiest airport, Atlanta, with just 64.18 percent of its flights on time.

Other low scorers were Boston, 71.8 percent; Newark, 75.56 percent, and New York's LaGuardia, 76.52 percent.

Airline schedule reductions and generally good weather for the first half of the holiday period improved overall performance, said FlightStats.

With the uncertainty about its labor situation now back under control for at least the next four years, Boeing is focusing on getting its much-delayed assembly lines up to full speed.

The approval of a new four-year labor agreement Monday night by Boeing engineers and technical workers represented by the Society of Engineering Employees in Aerospace, clears the way for that focus.

Engineers and other professional gave their new agreement a 79 percent favorable vote. Technical workers approved their companion agreement by a 69 percent margin.

Boeing has told its customers to expect at least 10-week delays in delivery of its established repertoire of planes, its 737, 777 and 767, because of a 58-day Machinists Union strike earlier this fall and because of production line parts issues.

Customers waiting for its still-developing 787 Dreamliner and its new technology 747-8 will waiting even longer, up to 24 months beyond the original schedule for the 787 and nine months to a year for the 747-8.

Boeing is still negotiating with engineeers and technical workers at its Wichita plant. Talks are resuming there after a Thanksgiving recess.

A California man has shut down his mirror-image version of Russell Investments' Web site after the Washington attorney general's office alleged he violated the state's anti-phishing law.

Under an agreement with the state, Rommel Balingit of Pinole, Calif., was ordered to pay a $10,000 civil penalty. That penalty, however, was suspended provided he complies with the terms of the agreement, said the attorney general's office.

Russell is a major investment services company with headquarters in Tacoma.

The company had alerted the state of Pinole's look-alike site that mimiced its own site.

According to the attorney general's office, Balingit claimed to have created the site to demonstrate to potential clients his Web design skills. Balingit owned a Web design company.