The Bobbin Buzz & Stitchin' Bits

The Premier Designs section of Artistic ThreadWorks has just completed a renovation project to make browsing easier. I hope you like the new look.

A new set was also added last nite. It's called "Jacobean Splendor" and part of this set is shown here...

What is Nitas Thread Nest? How does it work? What's the price? What about colors? And a dozen other questions... Get all the answers by visiting the http://www.nitasthreadnest.com
and checking out the FAQ's.

Each month Nita will ship the members a special Signature Collection of designs on CD that she has coordinated to work with that month's theme. For example, the first month's theme will be called "Over The Rainbow" and includes designs to feature the primary colors of the rainbow. Included with the design CD is a free selection of Floriani thread that just might make Judy Garland sit up and sing "Over The Rainbow" again!

Following months themes include... "Parrot Island", "Cafe Mocha", "Moonlight In Vermont", "Flamingo Paradise", "Velvet Jazz", "Misty Rain" and many more. There are 22 sets in this series. I'll leave the colors and designs to your imagination for now - but you'll want to be a part of this very special offer.

These designs deserve the very best in threads and that's why each Signature Collection includes a free gift of the 15 colors featured in the collection. The beautiful Floriani thread comes in brilliant, washable polyester in 1100-meter mini-king spools.

In case you're not already familiar with Floriani thread, the Floriani family has been in the embroidery business for 6 generations. They know great thread! They are now selling their thread to the home embroidery market and you won't find better thread anywhere!
This is what one of our members just had to say about the thread she received.

In addition to the Design Club we also sell individual spools of fine Floriani thread, plus stabilizer, bobbins, needles and more. Just click into the STORE section. When going through the checkout process, be sure to enter your membership email address when asked... it's the key to spectacular savings!

I've finished shooting volume 2 of computer skills for embroidery. It's going to be on a special sale until volume 3 comes out which should be pretty quickly. Here's the details about what's on this one...

http://www.artisticthreadworks.com/products/item564.cfm

CSE - Volume 2...
How To Cancel A Paypal Subscription
Control Your Desktop Pictures
3 Ways to Downsize Photos
Exploring HELP
File Move In-Depth
Full-Sized External Drives
Making Disk Labels
A Wish-List Catalog Of Your Own
"My Computer" Tricks!
Renaming A Drive
Safely Stop A USB Drive
TaskBar Controls
The $1,000 Clock That Can't Keep Time
The P-Touch Solution
Tiny Little Drives
Webstyle 4 - Creating Your Own Graphics
Web-Wize: Using Buy-Out Music
Web-Wize: Using Tiny-URL

This year so far Holly and her team have digitized 2,950 designs for the members design library at Artistic ThreadWorks. That's a LOT of digitizing in one year!

Most of them are already in the library and available for download but that number also includes the ones that Robin has scheduled to release through December 31st. There are still a few slots left so we should surpass the 3,000 designs mark for 2007. If you joined the site on January 1st of 2007 ($19.95/quarterly) you would be getting 3,000 designs for $79.80 which works out to 2.6-cents per design just for the new ones. If you add in the archives (previous years designs) then it comes out to $79.80 / 15,000 designs or about a half-a-penny per design.

I don't think you'll find a better (legal) deal than that in the embroidery world.

Have you ever had a project that just went wrong from one step to the next, then again at the next step, then the next one, and so on until you're ready to pull your hair out?

Those projects end up as the "UFO's" in your closet, but in the case of "Computer Skills For Embroidery - Volume 2" I couldn't let it sit in the closet. It's taken me many, many weeks of work to bring this puppy to fruition but it's finally coming home to our warehouse! I won't go into the ugly details but I'm glad to say it should be shipping from our warehouse on Tuesday.

The introductory price will end then on Monday Oct 15th 2007. If you have been waiting to buy then now's the time to order. If you've already ordered and are waiting for the shipment, I apologize for the delay in getting it to you.

We've been at NitasPlace for this last 2 weeks working on projects. I mean literally "at" Nita's place! We're parked in her driveway where her husband C.J. has installed a special 50-amp outlet for our motorhome to plug into.

Holly and Nita have been working on digitizing designs for the upcoming couple of months as well as a special Fuwari project. C.J. has been preparing for the www.nitasthreadnest.com shipments that will be going out next week. I've been working on www.digitizersworld.com and also on a new video that we shot on Friday morning.

I'll tell you a little bit about the video first...

On Friday, Ricky Brooks sat down with me to be interviewed. Many of you know Ricky from the "Hands On Sewing School" that he and his wife Kay started several years ago. They also previously founded and eventually sold "Best Sew" in Knoxville Kentucky which was one of the largest single-store sewing and embroidery machine dealers in the US. And more recently they founded RNK Distributing , the company that brings you all the fine Floriani products that you see in your local dealer's store.

RNK sells their products through an international independent dealer network currently comprising about 1,000 stores. And RNK is growing very fast. It's not often that I get to ask questions of someone that has built several very successful companies within our niche market and it was a great pleasure for me to interview Ricky.

That interview will be packaged onto a DVD and released as soon as I have finished the editing and preparation work. For those of you who are IN the embroidery business, or any business for that matter, this would be a fascinating look into the mind of a genius of our industry.

Part of the interview will also go into the new Fuwari video that I'm also currently working on. This will be the snippet that explains how Fuwari originated and how it came to America. The rest of the Fuwari video will cover the entire story from how it works, what gives the best results with it, and showing the entire process of Fuwari.

The OTHER thing I've been working on for several days now is DigitizersWorld. I've made some very significant changes to DW, basically opening up some of the bottlenecks to joining the site, changing some of the policies and processes, and generally streamlining the operations of the site.

There are TWO things you'll be interested to know about the DW changes right away...

First - The Daily News will change formats with the November 1st issue. It will be going to a much more "graphical" format, with a layout that is based on our photo gallery software. That is to say, there will be a photo gallery showing 4 thumbnail size pictures across each row. You can click the thumbnail size picture to get a closeup view of the details, and if you like what you see, click the closeup picture and you'll land on the digitizer's website!

This makes surfing the Daily News more enjoyable and faster too. From our side, it will require less work by my staff to prepare the Daily News every morning, meaning among other things that I can now let more digitizers into DW!

Second - The other change at DW is something hundreds of people have been asking for now for years -- online digitizing classes! I've purchased a very high-end commercial "distance learning" program from a very reliable manufacturer and we are having it installed as part of the DW site next week.

We will beta-test the installation with Shary Connell from Stitched Impressions being our first teacher using our new system. If all goes as expected then we will quickly release the software for use by the other digitizers that want to teach lessons through DW.

I have set up an info page to tell you more about online classes work, as well as an FAQ FAQ page too. There is now a calendar on DW that will allow you to browse upcoming lessons dates and times too. And I'm currently in the process of setting up a "feedback system" so you can rate the quality of the lessons you take. We'll keep an eye on your comments and let the teachers know how they're doing.

Well that's all the news for this weekend. I hope to see some of you at the Houston Quilt Festival next week as we wander through and enjoy the show.

-- Larry

Stitchin Bits and Bobbin Buzz are merging and there will be a new link to get to the combined newsletter. From the newsletter, you can go to Nita's Place, Nita's Threadnest, Artistic Threadworks and Digitizers World. This is an exiting new endeavor for us and we hope that you will be exited, too.

Visit today and let us know what you think.

http://www.thebobbinbuzz.com

Below are links to the newest designs released this week at ATW and DW, including the weekly freebies we give away. Follow the links and enjoy the new designs!

This last week has been extreeeeemly busy here for all of our team. Holly and Nita have been test-sewing Fuwari design on different machines and finding out all the ins-and-outs of what works BEST. Meanwhile, I've spent a week on revamping http://www.DigitizersWorld.com to make it easier to access all the features, and streamlining the processes there.

I've started working on the http://www.artisticthreadworks.com site now in an effort to make it easier to use for our members. It's a lot harder to do though when you're working with a site that already has thousands of pages of content, tens of thousands of photos, and hundreds of thousands of forum posts. It takes a while to move things around when you have that much content.

Watch for changes to ATW coming up over the next couple weeks and if something you're used to clicking to get into disappears, please let me know and I'll see where it's wandered off to!

Have fun with this week's new designs. Members can download EVERYTHING in the Design Library at ATW. Guests can download the sample designs for one week.

A few days ago one of our customers was having problems getting from Bobbin-Buzz to ATW. I told her to just click the link near the top that says "ATW". She said "What link?" What I found out was that users of Firefox web browser were not able to see the links just under the logo at the top of this site.

Today I got an email from a reader that told me he couldn't read the "Embroidery Tips" using Firefox. And he knew why! He showed me the code I was using that was not working for Firefox readers and how to fix it. A quick check showed that was the same mistake I'd made with the bar at the top that Firefox readers couldn't see either.

So thanks to the sharp reader that caught my mistake and helped me learn a new trick today!

-- Larry

Online Computer Help Class this Saturday!

http://www.digitizersworld.com/public/mgcal.cfm?calID=1&caldate=11/17/2007

Holly just updated her spreadsheet where she tracks designs made for our members. As of this month, we have produced 16,499 designs for our members! A great value for the cost of membership at ATW!

-- Larry

I've improved the "Premier Designs" section of the store at ATW! Prices are at their lowest ever right now so stock up on designs you've been waiting for!

Have you had a chance to check out the Bobbin Buzz and Stitchin Bits Newsletter? This new format will give you a chance to see news from Nita’s Place along with news from ATW.

Visit today and let us know what you think.

http://www.thebobbinbuzz.com

What is Nitas Thread Nest? How does it work? What's the price? What about colors? And a dozen other questions...
Find out the answers by visiting the http://www.nitasthreadnest.com

and checking out the Faq's.

Each month Nita will ship the members a special Signature Collection of designs on CD that she has coordinated to work with that month's theme.

For example, the first month's theme was called "Over The Rainbow" and included designs to feature the primary colors of the rainbow. Included with the design CD is a free selection of Floriani thread that just might make Judy Garland sit up and sing "Over The Rainbow" again! There are 22 sets in this series.

I'll leave the colors and designs to your imagination for now - but you'll want to be a part of this very special offer.

These designs deserve the very best in threads and that's why each Signature Collection includes a free gift of the 15 colors featured in the collection. The beautiful Floriani thread comes in brilliant, washable polyester in 1100-meter mini-king spools.

In case you're not already familiar with Floriani thread, the Floriani family has been in the embroidery business for 6 generations. They know great thread! They are now selling their thread to the home embroidery market and you won't find better thread anywhere!

Get the Best at Nita's Thread Nest!

In addition to the Design Club we also sell individual spools of fine Floriani thread, plus stabilizer, bobbins, needles and more. Just click into the STORE section. When going through the checkout process, be sure to enter your membership email address when asked... it's the key to spectacular savings!

Get more info about Joining The Club Here!
http://www.nitasthreadnest.com/public/10.cfm

I've just added a "comments" feature to Bobbin-Buzz.

On posts added from today forward, you can comment directly on that post and your comments will appear in the Bobbin-Buzz. To add your feedback, just look for the little "comments" link at the bottom of any article. It's shown highlighted in yellow in this snapshot...

When you click the link, you'll be able to leave your comments on the article. The comments are moderated so yours won't appear instantly, but they will show up as soon as one of us gets in to read them and release the comments.

I received several emails after sending this mornings announcement about the changes to how our free designs are downloaded. Here's an example of the questions I received...

Will there be a way to preview the design? This email is only a link for the zip file. After knowing what the designs are I file them into separate folders by design type. Will the designs still be available on-line in case I am gone for more than 7 days and can’t retrieve it before it is no longer valid?

To answer the questions...

If you click the link in the email to www.thebobbinbuzz.com you will see the designs.

They are free to readers of Bobbin-Buzz for 7 days, but they are added to the library of the ATW website permanently. So if you are a member of ATW they are always available to you.

-- Larry

Did you know YOU can have your comments added to any of the articles here?

I've just turned this feature on about a week ago and many of you have already discovered how to use it. For those who hadn't noticed it before though, here's how it works...

At the bottom of each article you'll see a small horizontal line across the screen. Below the line are the words "permalink" and "comments". I'll explain both of these features.

The "permalink" allows webmasters to add a link to their site or blog that takes their readers directly to that article above the horizontal line. If you own a site and would like to tell your readers something that's on this site, just copy the permalink and add it to your page or your email.

The "comments" link allows everyone that is reading an article to comment on it. Just click the "comments" link and read any comments already posted and add yours too if you'd like.

(All comments are held for approval by one of us in order to prevent you seeing the spam that's also left as comments.)

Here's an example of a comment left by a reader...

"The new Christmas design set is very nice. When you say members can download the entire set ...is that free? How much does it cost to join? I have enjoyed your newsletter for a year or more. I have a Viking SE and I do some embroidering, not a lot, but I do enjoy it. I am not extremely computer savvy, but I am willing to learn. I am in my "golden" years and also have other things which take up my time. Can you recommend one of your DVD's which would help me. Thanks."

When I saw Marty's comment a couple hours later, I was able to leave an answer for her and I also emailed my answer to her.

So -- what's your comment?

I hope everyone is enjoying the the Christmas Holiday season. It has been a very hectic month here with all the goings on. My sister, Annette is visiting us for the month of December and has been learning how to run the embroidery machine and getting addicted to it like all the rest of us.

We have also been getting all the Thread Nest shipments of designs and thread out the door. Last week, we took a day off and went to "Dickens on the Strand". That is a weekend in Galveston, Texas where everyone dresses up in Dickinsean style and they have all kinds of parades and events. It was cool to see all the costumes going by...

Then we went to a place called Fishermans Wharf for dinner...

... and our table was a window seat and right outside was the tall ship Ellysia. We watched the crew swarm up to the masts and sails and it was fun to just watch them go. There were lots of vendors on the streets and costumes from other areas as well.

We had quite a nice time watching them.

In a few nights we will go back to Galveston to see the Festival of Lights at the Moody Gardens.
This is where they string hundreds of Christmas lights up all around the gardens and by the Gulf waters. ALL the lights are sea legends and animals all decked out for Christmas.
I hope all of you are enjoying the holiday buzz of getting ready and shopping and so on. And that you all take a minute to remember the "Reason for the Season"

Until next week:
Happy Stitching Trails,
Nita O'Keefe

www.nitasplace.com Home of Fancy That Designs. Nita's Place-It's THE place to be.
www.nitasthreadnest.com Thread with the Best from Nita's Thread Nest.

NitasThreadNest and ME&Thee Inc have negotiated an agreement with a major international distribution company. The ThreadNest Signature Design Collections will be available in 2008 in over 1,000 dealers around the globe.

Because of the terms of our agreement, the ThreadNest design sets will NOT be sold online EXCEPT to our ThreadNest members. Also, the number of memberships available will be strictly limited to remain within the terms of the agreement.

There are still a few membership spots available but we are NEAR capacity now. Once we reach our limit, we will only be able to take on additional members when an opening is created by a departing member.

Current memberships will not be affected by any of these changes! If you are already a member of the the club on December 31st 2007, then your prices will not be changed by this distribution agreement. Membership is currently $44.85 per month (plus shipping) and this price includes both sets of designs. The thread colors (15 spools per month) that the sets are coordinated with will still shipped to our members each month as a FREE BONUS.

Past design sets are now available only to members and only for a limited time. These design sets are slated to retail at MUCH higher prices once they reach the store shelves. If you're not already a member of the the club then and you want to join, please don't wait.

Quite a few people jumped on the opportunity yesterday to join Nita's ThreadNest but there are still openings and it's not too late to join yet.

(In case you missed the article you can click here to read more about this!)

Although the retail price isn't yet carved in stone, it's very likely that these design sets will be selling in stores for VERY close to $100 per set. The members of NTN get BOTH SETS for the price of $44.85 (plus shipping) and as a BONUS get 15 mini-king spools of thread coordinated to the designs for FREE. This top-quality thread normally retails for $6 per spool but it's free as a bonus to members of the club.

Do the math and you'll see why the club is filling up fast! There are still openings for members but that WILL be cut off VERY shortly. Click here for more details!

Here's a picture of 12 of the 35+ designs in "Winter's Lullaby" digitized for the current members of NitasThreadNest by Holly Pike...

The SECOND SET of designs for the ThreadNest members this month is called "Country Winter Morning" digitized by Nita O'Keefe and we will have a picture available for this second set soon.

Both sets AND the BONUS thread will ship around December 5th. Join now if you want to get in on this fun deal!

Holly and Nita are digitizing and working on sample projects this week. All the design sets going into their Signature Collections and their Fuwari Collections will have examples of how the designs can be used on the front cover of their cases. This means a LOT of stitch-outs still need to be completed and photos taken of every project as it is finished.

Having been in business for over 6 years now, we know what work is, but preparing for retail distribution adds a whole new dimension to what we've done in the past. Along with this work, everyone still has their normal stuff to do also. Digitizing, handling customer support, etc. I'm thinking we'll need a vacation when this prep work is done!

I went to JoAnn's a couple days ago to buy a dressmakers form. The clerks always have surprised looks on their faces when I come into one of their stores and shop. Maybe I don't look like the "normal" JoAnns customer! LOL!

I'll post project photos as they are completed so you all can see what they look like.

-- Larry

A new project was given to our members this week. Days of the Week Hot Mats and Ornaments. Members can download them at Nita's Place or at the links below. They come in 4x4 and 5x7 sizes.

4x4 size at http://www.nitasplace.com/members/952.cfm

5x7 size at http://www.nitasplace.com/members/953.cfm

I've made some changes to the discussion forums at ArtisticThreadWorks. The changes improve the access to several of the forums. I've also added a "Strictly Embroidery" forum. As the name says, it's a forum where everything is embroidery talk. But we've kept our original "embroidery and fun" forum too. They're both available, along with severl more forums by clicking on the logo that looks like this on ATW...

We have new "Classified Ads" pages now at ArtisticThreadWorks. Members can post their items for sale for free in our classifieds. Everyone can see the ads, even without being a member of ATW.

To get there easily from the ATW pages - just look for this sign...

Here's something I just have to tell you about. We've created a "Free Trial Membership Offer" at ArtisticThreadWorks! All the details are on this page... Free Trial Membership!

I looked at which sets of designs from our Premier Designs Store were the hottest sellers and bundled them together into a really terrific offer. There's a special offer for people who have never been a member of ATW before, another special offer for people that were members in the past and want to try it out again, and there's a special offer for current members of the site.

So a lot of thought, time, and work went into making this a great way to buy some terrific hot-selling designs at an incredibly low price and include a free trial membership along with it so people can experience the ATW website from the inside.

February 19th Deadline For ThreadNest Membership.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE SITE IS CLOSING!!! It is very much alive and well and will continue to run just as it has been for several months. What it means is that we will no longer be able to accept new members after February 19th.

I have to tell you this...

Membership at the ThreadNest is probably the biggest bargain on the internet for anyone in the embroidery community. Period. The designs are exquisite, top-quality, manually digitized, adult-oriented designs. Members get TWO SETS EACH MONTH with a total retail value as high as $200 but for just a fraction of that price. And they get a spectacular BONUS too!

I'll explain that a bit more to you...

Nita and Holly sat down a year ago and looked at all the colors available from the Floriani threadline. They sorted them out into families of colors and named each assortment for the place or thing that they reminded them of most. Then they set about creating sets of designs that work perfectly with each of those thread collections. The designs are color-coordinated to the thread colors!

While you can substitute colors and get stunning results, Nita and Holly have made it easy for anyone to get perfect results by choosing the colors for the designs. Of course, having the designs and having the colors on hand are often two different things normally. So they've gone the extra mile and provide not only the design sets, but the exact colors you need to go with them as a free bonus when you're a member of the ThreadNest. That makes it a "CAN'T FAIL" deal for you. Yes -- it costs Nita a fortune to give away that much thread, but it's the best way to be sure every member has the exact colors needed to enjoy these designs to their fullest.

The designs are beautiful (view photos here) and they have been PICKED UP FOR INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION beginning in March. As part of the distribution agreement, we must cap the membership at the ThreadNest to only those people who have joined BEFORE the 20th of February 2008.

As I said before -- it's THE bargain of the century for embroidery fans. And it's only available until February 19th OR until we've reached our capacity -- whichever comes first.

Everyone who joins in February will receive the March design sets and the March threadsets. New members will be able to pick up past sets in the private members-only store area of the site as inventory becomes available. Non-Members will NOT be able to buy previous sets except through the retail stores.

We have a few openings now available but the door closes on the 19th of this month. If you want to take advantage of this offer - do it now. The last time we had a few openings was in January and those membership positions sold out in 2 days. We have a few more openings now, but I doubt they will last until February 19th. So IF YOU WANT A MEMBERSHIP in this club -- take it now.

We will be upgrading our server over the next couple days to improve site performance.

Our site has been steadily growing over the last year and we are now seeing some lag in response times that we will address with a new and more powerful server. This may take a few days to complete the changeover. During this time you might find the site unavailable for short periods of time. Typically around 10 minutes but possibly as long as 1 hour at least one time while we make the final cutover to the new server.

This will affect the ArtisticThreadWorks site and may also affect the DigitizersWorld site since it is on the same server. It will NOT affect the NitasPlace or NitasThreadNest or TheBobbinBuzz websites as they are on a different server.

Thank you for your patience during the upgrade process.

-- Larry

UPDATE: 2/9/08 Readers have bought almost HALF the open positions in the 3-1/2 days since I originally announced this on the afternoon of Feb 5th. In case you missed the anouncement - I've repeated it here...

February 19th Deadline For ThreadNest Membership!

THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE SITE IS CLOSING!!! It is very much alive and well and will continue to run just as it has been for several months. What it means is that we will no longer be able to accept new members after February 19th.

I have to tell you this...

Membership at the ThreadNest is probably the biggest bargain on the internet for anyone in the embroidery community. Period. The designs are exquisite, top-quality, manually digitized, adult-oriented designs. Members get TWO SETS EACH MONTH with a total retail value as high as $200 but for just a fraction of that price. And they get a spectacular BONUS too!

I'll explain that a bit more to you...

Nita and Holly sat down a year ago and looked at all the colors available from the Floriani threadline. They sorted them out into families of colors and named each assortment for the place or thing that they reminded them of most. Then they set about creating sets of designs that work perfectly with each of those thread collections. The designs are color-coordinated to the thread colors!

While you can substitute colors and get stunning results, Nita and Holly have made it easy for anyone to get perfect results by choosing the colors for the designs. Of course, having the designs and having the colors on hand are often two different things normally. So they've gone the extra mile and provide not only the design sets, but the exact colors you need to go with them as a free bonus when you're a member of the ThreadNest. That makes it a "CAN'T FAIL" deal for you. Yes -- it costs Nita a fortune to give away that much thread, but it's the best way to be sure every member has the exact colors needed to enjoy these designs to their fullest.

The designs are beautiful (view photos here) and they have been PICKED UP FOR INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION beginning in March. As part of the distribution agreement, we must cap the membership at the ThreadNest to only those people who have joined BEFORE the 20th of February 2008.

As I said before -- it's THE bargain of the century for embroidery fans. And it's only available until February 19th OR until we've reached our capacity -- whichever comes first.

Everyone who joins in February will receive the March design sets and the March threadsets. New members will be able to pick up past sets in the private members-only store area of the site as inventory becomes available. Non-Members will NOT be able to buy previous sets except through the retail stores.

We have a few openings now available but the door closes on the 19th of this month. If you want to take advantage of this offer - do it now. The last time we had a few openings was in January and those membership positions sold out in 2 days. We have a few more openings now, but I doubt they will last until February 19th. So IF YOU WANT A MEMBERSHIP in this club -- take it now.

-- Larry

UPDATE: 2/11/08 Readers have bought OVER HALF the open positions in the 5 days since I originally announced this on February 5th. In case you missed the anouncement - I've repeated it below.

There are still a few openings left but I expect they will all be gone in about 4 more days. After that time, there will be no more openings period. So if you're one of those who have been waiting until the deadline gets closer... It's about as close as it can get.

February 19th Deadline For ThreadNest Membership!

THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE SITE IS CLOSING!!! It is very much alive and well and will continue to run just as it has been for several months. What it means is that we will no longer be able to accept new members after February 19th.

I have to tell you this...

Membership at the ThreadNest is probably the biggest bargain on the internet for anyone in the embroidery community. Period. The designs are exquisite, top-quality, manually digitized, adult-oriented designs. Members get TWO SETS EACH MONTH with a total retail value as high as $200 but for just a fraction of that price. And they get a spectacular BONUS too!

I'll explain that a bit more to you...

Nita and Holly sat down a year ago and looked at all the colors available from the Floriani threadline. They sorted them out into families of colors and named each assortment for the place or thing that they reminded them of most. Then they set about creating sets of designs that work perfectly with each of those thread collections. The designs are color-coordinated to the thread colors!

While you can substitute colors and get stunning results, Nita and Holly have made it easy for anyone to get perfect results by choosing the colors for the designs. Of course, having the designs and having the colors on hand are often two different things normally. So they've gone the extra mile and provide not only the design sets, but the exact colors you need to go with them as a free bonus when you're a member of the ThreadNest. That makes it a "CAN'T FAIL" deal for you. Yes -- it costs Nita a fortune to give away that much thread, but it's the best way to be sure every member has the exact colors needed to enjoy these designs to their fullest.

The designs are beautiful (view photos here) and they have been PICKED UP FOR INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION beginning in March. As part of the distribution agreement, we must cap the membership at the ThreadNest to only those people who have joined BEFORE the 20th of February 2008.

As I said before -- it's THE bargain of the century for embroidery fans. And it's only available until February 19th OR until we've reached our capacity -- whichever comes first.

Everyone who joins in February will receive the March design sets and the March threadsets. New members will be able to pick up past sets in the private members-only store area of the site as inventory becomes available. Non-Members will NOT be able to buy previous sets except through the retail stores.

We have a few openings now available but the door closes on the 19th of this month. If you want to take advantage of this offer - do it now. The last time we had a few openings was in January and those membership positions sold out in 2 days. We have a few more openings now, but I doubt they will last until February 19th. So IF YOU WANT A MEMBERSHIP in this club -- take it now.

-- Larry

I've been editing photos and creating graphics for years in order to provide interesting photos for our websites and to go with the videos we produce. That takes software and there are two challenges with the software...

Challenge #1 is the price! Photo and image editing software seems to come in two price ranges... either under $100 and not very powerful, or over $600 and very powerful. There are a couple pretty good programs in the lower price range but most of them lack the power to do much. Then along came Photoshop Elements! Adobe took their top of the line $600 program called "Photoshop" and provided the a slightly stripped down version of the program for $99 called "Elements". It's very powerful and you'll be amazed at what you can do with it.

Challenge #2 is the learning curve! Every good program for editing photos and graphics has a steep learning curve. To put it bluntly, you'll either need someone to show you how to use the software, or you'll struggle for months or years with figuring out how to do things with it, and probably MISS THE BEST STUFF the program can do.

Today is opening day at the "VDTA" in Las Vegas. (That's the "Vacuum Dealers Trade Association".) At least, that's what it's commonly called but it's really the "VDTA/SDTA" which explains why Holly and Nita are there, because the other half of the show is the "SDTA" or "Sewing Dealers Trade Association" which of course interests all of us!

If you click into the show layout, you'll see Brother, Babylock, Janome, Juki, Husqvarna, Viking, Singer and other companies showing off what's new for 2008. Also there is RNK and they are the distributors for Floriani products, Jenny Haskins products, and now - "ME And Thee Embroidery" products!

We are starting with 46 disks of embroidery and Fuwari designs initially. Dealers will be able to begin ordering them today. Here's one of the disks they'll see at the show Click it for a look at some of the Fuwari sets available...

The preliminary work has been completed for the movement of ArtisticThreadWorks and DigitizersWorld to our new server. Our tech manager has asked when is the best time to move the site to the new server. I told him the day we get the LEAST number of logins is Sunday...

SO...

We have planned to move ATW to it's new server on Sunday Feb 24th.

What this means to our members and guests is that ATW will be unavailable for part of the day on Sunday starting in the morning when we lock the database from accepting new members, posts in the forums, photos into the gallery, etc. Once the site is locked then we will copy the database then upload it to the new server. After it has been uploaded to the new server...

AND TESTED...

Then we will set the website name to point to the new server. At that point the site will then be live again BUT there will be a lag time while various ISP's around the world pick up the new server IP address. So some of you will be able to get into the site again after only a couple hours of downtime. Others will have a longer wait while their ISP updates their pointers to get you to the new server. Those updates sometimes take as long as 72 hours but MOST ISP's update every 4 hours or every 8 hours.

All this ASSUMES that the testing mentioned above goes okay and everything works like it's supposed to. Of course, that doesn't always happen and if it doesn't work, we will switch back to our current server while we resolve any problems on the new server.

The bottom line is that on Sunday Feb 24th the ATW site will be unavailable for a few hours. Then it will become available again in waves around the world as your local ISP updates their location pointers.

We expect the new server to be MUCH faster with response times cut by anywhere from 50% to 90% due to the faster database and additional RAM. More importantly, we expect it to behave more reliably than our current one that is now almost 2 years old.

Isn't technology wonderful? :-)

-- Larry

PS: This move will also affect DigitizersWorld. It will NOT affect NitasPlace, NitasThreadNest, or Bobbin-Buzz as they are on different servers.

Holly and Nita have been invited to come downunder to Australia in the Fall to do several shows. Actually - they were invited to come next month (March) but it wouldn't give them enough time to prepare for the trip and would interfere with some other commitments they've already made. So they said "Yes we'll come do the shows - but we need a bit more time to prepare first."

They hope to meet lots of our Australian members while they are there doing the shows. Tentatively they are scheduled for 3 weeks in the end of October and beginning of November. They'll be doing shows in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sidney.

If you're an Aussie member -- PLEASE plan to attend one or more of these shows and introduce yourself to Holly and Nita. They can't wait to meet you in person!

Readers of the "Daily News" on Digitizer's World will remember the changes we made last Fall when we switched formats from the "In-Line" layout to the "photo-gallery" layout. I received a lot of feedback from readers at that time who felt the in-line layout was easier to read and required no "clicks" to see all the details about the designs being shown off. I also heard from a lot of readers who liked the new format much better.

If you can't recall what these two different styles looked like, you can click here to see the "In-Line" style and click here to see the "photo-gallery" style.

Here's your chance to express your opinion on which YOU like better and why. I've created a survey about the Daily News and would appreciate you taking 5 minutes to answer the questions and let us know which is better for you.

At the same time - you'll be telling dozens of the most popular digitizers on the web what you want in the way of new designs, design sizes, and more.

In the "ATW February Photo Contest" below - I forgot to change the photos that the links take you to. So I was showing pictures from last August by mistake! I've corrected that now and the links will take you to the current photo contest winners!

-- Larry

Hi everyone - just a quick note to let you know there are a lot more posts coming to this site tomorrow. The system I use to put up posts had been down for a while and our hosting company just resolved the problem this morning. :-(

So - enjoy what's here now and check back again on Sunday morning for more including announcements about prize drawings.

-- Larry