By September Brown
Diamond Threadworks
www.diamondthreadworks.com

Basics

Welcome to the world of machine embroidery!  Now that you’ve got your machine and your computer, there’s a few basic things that will help you combine them. 

Most “newbies” learn quickly that there are lots of internet embroidery groups you can join.  The large majority of them are run by Yahoo (more about them later).  When you join a Yahoo group, or any other email group, you will become part of a big “family” of embroiderers.  Whenever one person writes a letter, everyone in the group gets a copy of it, and whenever you answer it, everyone gets a copy of your letter.  The letters come into your regular email.  If you join a small group, you may not get much mail, but you also may not learn very much either.  If you join a large group, you may get a hundred letters a day.  There’s almost always someone who can answer your questions, but it’s easy to become quickly overwhelmed by the volume of mail.  Don’t worry, there are ways to handle that.  You can choose your Yahoo group settings to “digest”, and they will only send you one digest every time there’s twenty-five letters, or at the end of the day, whichever comes first.  You can also set up email folders, and have your individual emails sorted into them as they arrive in your mailbox.  Instructions to do that are below, in another section. 

When you join the email groups, you’ll find there are a lot of embroidery site owners who advertise their new designs.  Many times, they will offer free sample designs.  They do this to get you to come visit their website, and hopefully to buy some of their designs.  There are two things you should do when you download designs.  First, please take a moment to say “Thank you” to the website owner.  They took a long time to create the designs that they give you, and it can be discouraging to not get positive feedback.  The more positive feedback a website owner receives, the happier they are, and the more likely they are to keep on creating free sample designs.  (Don’t ever complain about free designs.)  The second thing you should do is sort your designs as you download them.  You may not think this is important at first, but it won’t be long, and you’ll have so many designs, you can’t find what you’re looking for when it’s time to use one of them, and you’ll wish you had sorted them.  It will take more time to look at each one and sort them later, so do yourself a huge favor and start out right by sorting them as you go.  Instructions are given below.

Once you’ve downloaded the designs, you’ll need to be able to look at them so you can see what you’ve got and choose something to embroider.  Before you can do that, you’ll see that many of them are zipped.  These designs have names that end in .zip, which means that there are several files zipped up together.  You will need to unzip them before you can look at anything inside.  Instructions are given below. 

Now that your designs are unzipped, you can see everything inside.  Unfortunately, many of the designs will not be in the correct format for your particular embroidery machine.  Fortunately, almost all of them can be converted to your format.  You will need to get a software program to convert them to your format.  Please don’t ask website owners to convert their free designs for you.  They already spent hours of work to digitizing them, and it’s your own responsibility to convert it.  It’s perfectly okay to ask them to convert purchased designs, though. 

In order to see the designs, you will need a catalog program or a viewer.  A catalog program lets you view many designs on one page, in “thumbnails”, which means small sized pictures, and you can also print them out to make your own printed catalog.  Most catalog programs also convert designs from one format to another.  Some catalog programs include Buzz Tools, Buzz Explore (advanced version of Buzz Tools), Embird, and Embird Studio (advanced version of Embird). 

Getting the design from your computer to your machine will be a different process for each brand of machine.  Follow the instructions you got from your dealer or manufacturer. 

When you have problems or questions, join the email groups, and ask for help.  When you find helpful information on websites, print it out and save the pages in a notebook.  Keep the notebook near your embroidery machine, so you can refer to it whenever you need to. 

Back up your computer files and designs on a regular basis.  Every computer file degrades over time, no matter which brand, no matter if it’s Mac or Windows or Linux, they all break down from the sun’s radiation, bit by bit, and byte by byte.  Computer viruses can destroy files.  Over time, installing and uninstalling programs, downloading files, and other daily activities can cause files to become lost, fragmented, or otherwise messed up.  Eventually, either your files will become corrupted, or your computer will crash.  Plan ahead for a crash, and insure yourself by making backups.  More about that later.

Protect your computer and your files from hackers.  Most hackers are teenage boys or young adult males who are bored and enjoy the challenge of seeing if they can create a virus.  Most viruses are created from previous viruses, but occasionally, they’re able to figure out ways to make new viruses from scratch.  These kids spend hours and hours trying to see if they can create havoc and get away with it, and they talk with each other, and share tips.  It's a big game and a challenge to them, and they're coming up with new things every day.   Install an antivirus program to protect from viruses, then get another program to protect you from trojans, spyware, spyware cookies, and keystroke loggers.  See the info below for more information about anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.   

Why would you want to do that?  Because when the icons are on your desktop, any time you have a window open, you can't see the icons, so if you want to click on one, the window is in the way.  One good example is with the notepad.  If you put the notepad on your toolbar, then while you're surfing, if you come across something that you want to make a note about for later, you can easily click on your notepad, make a note, and save it without having to dig around for the notepad icon.  

This method works with Windows 98, but not with some later versions of Windows.  You'll have to experiment with your version.  If you find a way, let me know, and I'll post the "how to" here.  

Close all your windows, so all you can see is your desktop.  

First, you'll need to put a shortcut on your desktop for any programs you want to move to your toolbar.  

Put your cursor over the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, near the top edge of the line, until a double-headed arrow appears.  Hold down your left-click button, and drag the cursor up, until the toolbar becomes two toolbars stacked on top of each other.  Release the left-click button.  

Highlight one of the programs on your desktop, and hold down your right-click button.  Continue holding it down, and drag the icon onto the top line of the toolbar.  A tiny window will open.  Choose "Move here", and let go of the right-click button.  The shortcut will move to the toolbar.  Do this for all of your shortcuts, arranging them in the order you want to on your toolbar.  

Whenever you're surfing or opening documents or programs, the little markers will show up on the bottom half of the toolbar, and they won't be in the way of your icons.  If you didn't pull up the toolbar to make it two lines tall, then they'd get in the way of each other.   

Note:  Don't place the icons in the far right portion of your toolbar.  The icons shown there are the programs that open when you start your computer, and that are running all the time, whether actively or in the background.  They're taking up resources all the time.  When you place icons on the bottom toolbar, but not on the far right, it won't activate the programs or use up resources unless you actually click on them to open up the programs.  

How to cut and paste parts of text from a letter, when you want to reply to someone.

This is especially useful if you are on digest version of an email group, and wish to reply to a letter, otherwise, you'll send the whole digest with your reply, and that makes it hard for people to find the beginning of the next new letter when you read the NEXT digest.

I'll assume you don't even know the basics, so please bear with me if this is oversimplified.  What you do is click on "reply" like you usually do, then go down and highlight the parts of the letter you want to get rid of, and click on "delete" on your keyboard.  If you don't know how to highlight, here's how.  Put your mouse cursor at either the beginning or the end of the section you want to highlight.  Hold down your left click while you drag your mouse to the other end of the part you want to highlight, then let go of your left mouse button.  When you let go, that part should be highlighted.  Now, click on the delete key.  Next, you just type your reply.

Another way to do this is to highlight the part you want to KEEP.  Place your mouse over the highlighted part, and right-click.  A small window will pop up.  Select "cut".  What that does is cut that part out of the letter, and put it onto your invisible clipboard.  Only one thing can be on your clipboard at a time, so if you do it again, it replaces whatever was on there before.  (You could also select "copy", and it would copy it to your clipboard without cutting it away from the original text.)  Now, go to the top toolbar and select "edit", then select "select all".  That will highlight the whole page.  Now select "delete" on your keyboard, and it will clear the whole page.  Now, put your mouse cursor on the empty page, right-click, a small window pops up, and select "paste" to paste the contents of your clipboard onto the blank page.

Whenever you reply to an email, you may get one of these symbols before each line in the original letter.  < or : or I

<<<When someone else forwards a message, and the next person forwards
<<<it, and yet another person forwards it to you, then each person's letter
<<<will add one more symbol at the beginning of each line, and there will 
<<<eventually be a whole bunch of symbols wasting space and making the
<<<letter difficult to read and "messy".  

If you want to prevent the symbols from appearing (or new ones being added) when YOU forward a letter, go to Outlook Express, and click on tools, options, send, then select either HTML settings or plain text settings, and uncheck the box at the bottom of the small window.

If you just want to remove the marks from one email, then download an email cleaner program, and let the software do the cleaning for you.  It will save tons of time.  This is especially great if you like to save jokes or recipes that someone else has sent you, so you can clean them up before you save them.  To clean up an email, select "forward", and a new letter will open.  Highlight the info, "cut" it out, and "paste" it into the cleaner software.  Hit the "clean" button, then "cut" it from that page, and "paste" it back into the email.  It's much faster than trying to manually clean each line one at a time.  

Here's a free cleaning program that the author has given permission to share.     clean102.zip  

When you forward emails by clicking on the "forward" button, you automatically include everything in the email, including the email addresses of everyone it was sent to.  If your friend sent a joke to 20 people, and you were one of them, then when you forward it, all 20 addresses will be included in the header information at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, some people still don't use anti-virus protection, or they don't keep it up to date, and some viruses harvest email addresses, and send themselves to those addresses.  Spammers can use trojans to harvest email addresses from emails and documents, and send it back to them to add to their list of emails to send spam to.  (Spam is junk email, usually ads, that are sent to millions of people at a time, and usually the email addresses they are from are faked, so you can't write back to them.  They have software to change their from address and subject lines every time, to keep people from being able to set up email rules which would block them.)  If everyone does their part, and removes the extra email addresses before forwarding emails, it would go a long way towards helping to protect everyone.  Do you want your email address being forwarded to hundreds of people you don't know?  Neither do your friends.  Do them a favor, and take their name off emails before you forward them.  

A better way than forwarding email, is to develop a habit of always starting a new email instead of forwarding an old email.  Open a new letter, then highlight the part of the letter you want to share, then right-click and choose "copy".  Go to the window with the new letter, right-click on the empty page, and choose "paste".  Then, your letter is ready to send.  

How to download designs from an email and save them in your computer

If you are using Outlook Express for your email program, here's how to download designs you get in your email.  Your computer screen is probably divided into three parts, with a list of folders on the left, the subject lines of the letters in the top right, and the letter itself in the bottom right.  Whenever someone sends you designs or other attachments, you'll see an icon with a little paper clip.  Don't open attachments you're not expecting, even if it's from a friend, unless you're absolutely certain your antivirus software is up to date, because viruses often disguise themselves by using your friend's "from" address. 

Double click on the subject line of the letter, to open the letter in a new screen.  When you do this, there's two possible ways you'll get the attachment. 

1) If you see a paper clip icon in the top right corner of the letter, click that, and you'll see a drop down menu that lists the attachments, and underneath them, it will say "save attachments".  If you want to save them all together in the same place, click on "save attachments", and another screen will open that gives you the option of where you want to save them.  If there's more than one attachment and you want to save each one in a different folder, then click on the name of the first attachment, and a window will open that lets you save it to the folder of your choice.  Do this for each attachment. 

2) Sometimes, you won't see a paper clip icon after you've opened the letter up into a new screen.  When this happens, it usually means someone's forwarded a letter from someone else.  Sometimes, they've forwarded a letter that was forwarded to them, and maybe it was forwarded six or seven times even.  It's kind of like people sending a letter, and putting it in another envelope every time, and you have to peel off all the envelopes.  They should have taken it out and started fresh, but they didn't.  What you do is click on the subject line of the new letter that opens, and another window will open.

Just keep clicking on the subject lines as many times as you need to until you find your way to the first letter that started it all.

How to protect your computer from viruses, trojans, spyware, and other nasty things.

Buy, install, and update the following programs:

Anti-spyware program, such as Ad-Aware www.lavasoftusa.com, or Pest Patrol www.pestpatrol.com 

Anti-virus program such as Sophos from www.sophos.com 

Update them regularly.  This can't be stressed enough.  Keep your anti-virus program updated at all times.  

Firewall:  If you have DSL, your router creates a physical firewall.  You can also download Zone Alarm software, which is a virtual firewall, for a free trial, and you can purchase it for a low price.  www.zonealarm.com

Set some Email message rules to help filter out junk mail.  In Outlook Express, go to tools, message rules, mail, then new.  In the next little window that opens, choose a person or subject, and type in your selection(s).  In the next section, choose "delete it".  If you choose "do not download from server" or "delete from server", your rule may not work with some servers, so your email rule may not work at all.  If you choose "delete it", then the junk emails just automatically go to your trash box, and you can choose to look at them or just leave them there.  

Change your email preferences from "HTML" to "plain text" for some additional protection.  Some spammers use programming in their pictures or that's invisible on the page.  They program the email to let them know whether or not anyone read it, how many times, how long, whether or not you opened a different window while their letter was open, whether or not you clicked on a link in their email, whether or not you forwarded it to someone else, who you forwarded it to, and then it tracks all the same information about the person you forwarded it to.  They use this info to try to find better ways to get you to read their spam, and to get you to part with your money.  If you change your email to read and send mail in plain text, it won't remove you from any spam lists, but it will stop their ability to track your, and this may, in turn, keep them from selling your name to another list.  Furthermore, some viruses have been known to be spread in pictures, so if you receive email in plain text, then pictures won't automatically open when you click on an email, and viruses won't automatically be downloaded.  In addition to all that, if you do get a virus, it can't attach itself to your emails if you're only set up to send in plain text.  

How to put designs onto a floppy disk

Go to the folder where your designs are stored.  If you want the designs to use in your embroidery machine, then you'll need to unzip the designs before you put them on the floppy disk.  If you're just wanting to store them for backup, then you don't need to unzip them. 

Highlight the design or group of designs you want to put on your disk. 

To highlight a design, put your cursor over it, and lightly single click on it. 

To highlight a group of designs, if they are all together, you can highlight the first one, then hold down the shift key and highlight the last one, and all the ones in between will be selected. 

To highlight a group of scattered designs, highlight the first one, then hold down the ctrl key, and highlight each additional one.  If you want to un-highlight one, lightly single click on it again, still holding down the ctrl key, and it will take away just that one. 

To put them on a disk, let go of the ctrl key, and right-click on any one of the highlighted designs.  A little window will open.  Choose "send to" and another window will open. 

Choose "3 1/2 Floppy A".

There, you did it!

How to set up Outlook Express so that it doesn’t send out letters as soon as you click the “send” button. 

Ever send a letter, only to realize two seconds later that you accidentally sent it to the wrong person, or you said something you didn’t mean to say?  Ever wish you had another minute or two to go back and stop the letter from going out, so you could fix the problem?  Well, you can!  Here’s what you do.

In Outlook Express, go to tools, then options.  Under the "general" tab, in the center section, uncheck the square to "send and receive mail at startup" (in case you shut down with something in your outbox that you don't really want to send).  Check the box for "check for new messages every __ minutes", and put in a number that's at least 2 minutes or longer.  That gives you enough time to pull a letter out of your outbox if you accidentally hit "send" too soon.  

Next, click on the "send" tab at the top of that little window, and uncheck the box to "send messages immediately".  Now you'll only send messages on your next regularly scheduled two-minute interval (or whatever time period you set it for). 

How to set up Outlook Express to sort email automatically as it arrives, or to sort email letters manually by topic

Would you like to have your email from your embroidery groups go into separate folders, so it’s not mixed up with your personal email?  This is better than going to digest version of your group emails for several reasons.  One reason is that individual emails are just a whole lot easier to read.  Another is that you can manually sort the individual letters if you want to save them in another email folder by topic, such as tips, projects, websites, or embroidery retreat info. 

Here’s how to set it up. 

First you have to make folders and sub folders, then you have to make email rules to tell Outlook Express how you want your mail sorted into those folders.  

Open Outlook Express, and select "Inbox".  At the top of the page, click on file, then new, then folder.  Make a new folder, and give it a name.  Continue making folders and subfolders, as many as you like.  Here's one suggestion for how you can set it up:

Inbox
     Banking, Bills, and Business
     Embroidery and sewing
          Embroidery Groups
               Embroidery Group 1
               Embroidery Group 2 
          Embroidery project ideas
          Embroidery tips and tricks
          Quilting and Sewing stuff
          Sources for blanks and supplies
     Friends and Family
     Jokes and Stories
     Other Interests
     Shopping and Sales notices

Don't worry if you accidentally make the subfolders in the wrong folders, you can drag and drop them to another location any time you want to.  Initially, all of your email will automatically come into your inbox, so continue to use that folder for your main "unsorted" email folder.  Make email rules for your chat groups, and have the email from those groups automatically go into one of the folders.  Make a separate folder for each chat group.  Yahoo groups use the sender's name as the "from" address, so you'll have to make the message rule according to the subject line instead of the sender.  To make message rules, go to tools, message rules, mail, then new.  In the middle section of the window that opens, be sure to choose "MOVE message to the specified folder", and don't choose "COPY message to the specified folder", or else whenever you download an email with that rule, you'll get two copies, one in your inbox, and the other in the folder you select.  Continue making rules for each chat group.  You can also make rules for your friends and family members, so that whenever they write you, their letters will go into a special folder.  

Drawbacks:  
Takes awhile to set up, but you only have to do it once.

Benefits:  
You don't have to read the digest version (25 email batches) of the chat groups.  Individual letters are easier to read, especially if someone else forgets to trim off the excess parts of a letter they're replying to.  

You can drag and drop individual emails to other folders, which you can't do with digests.  For example, if you get a letter with a project idea, you can drag it to the project folder.  Later, when you're looking for ideas, you can find all your projects in one handy place.  

You can find all your group emails grouped together, which makes it easier to follow conversations and find answers to questions.  

How to create and use signatures lines in your emails

Signatures are a preset set of lines that you create, then insert in an email as a batch.  A signature can be as long or as short as you want, and they don't have to be at the end of an email.  Besides being used in the usual way, as your signature line at the end of an email, they can also be used as "stock letters" for instances in which you need to give the same reply to several people.  For example, if you were sick, and 150 people on your embroidery group wrote you to send their expressions of caring and prayers, you could answer them individually, but before long, you'd run out of ways to say basically the same answer to all of them, and you'd get tired of typing, especially if you weren't feeling well.  With a signature, you could type your letter and save it as a signature.  Then you could type Dear Jane Doe, (insert "thank you" signature, then insert "standard" signature).  That's it, you're done, just hit the send key.  You can save as many signatures as you want.  

In Outlook Express, go to tools, options, signatures, new.  Type or paste your message in the text box.  Select "apply" to save.  Check the box if you want the signature automatically added to all outgoing messages.  Otherwise, each time you send a message, you can go to the toolbar and choose to add any signature you like.  

For a little fun, try adding some ascii pictures to your signature.  Ascii pictures are made with characters from the keyboard.  Go to www.google.com and do a search for ascii, and look around for some designs you like.  If you want something specific, such as a heart, type in a search for ascii heart, and you'll get links to lots of sites with ascii hearts.  Many font styles will distort the way ascii pictures look, so it's best to choose small pictures that are just two, three, or four lines tall, and not very wide.  Try pasting them into letters, and sending them to yourself.  Forward the letter to yourself after you get it, and see if the design changes after it's been mailed two, three, or four times.  That will give you an idea of how other people may see it.   

How to sort designs as you download them

If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to create a folder to store your designs in.  Inside this folder, you’ll need to make hundreds of other folders, but don’t worry, you don’t need to create them all at once.  As you start downloading free sample designs, you’ll quickly get so many, it will become difficult to sort through them all and find the ones you need when you need it, and it will become very time-consuming.  When you get to the point where it becomes unmanageable to view them all, it will be even more time-consuming to sort them all into folders.  The best way to manage your designs is to sort them as you download them, and make new folders as you go.  The best way to make folders is like they taught us to organize essay topics in English class (remember that?), as in the following example: 

I. Main Topic 1 (such as Animals)
     A) subtopic A (such as Cats)
          1)      sub subtopic 1 (such as housecats)
          2)      sub subtopic 2 (such as wild cats)
     B) subtopic B (such as Dogs)

When you click on a design or a link to a design, it will begin to download.  Some computers will download with a left-click, and others will use a right-click.  If your computer uses a left-click, a little window will open.  You can navigate to the folder you want to save them in.  If you want to make a new folder, there’s an icon at the top of the little window that looks like a folder.  Click on it, and it will make a new folder, named “new folder”, and the words “new folder” will be highlighted green, so you can change the name.  Type in the new name.  If you want to put another subfolder inside that one, then open that folder, and it will take you inside, then you can make another new folder like you did before.  Once you’re inside the folder you want to save your design in, click on the “save” button in the little window, and the design will be placed in that folder. 

If your computer uses a right-click to save designs, you’ll get a little window with several options.  Choose “save target as”, then another window will open.  Continue to save, using the instructions for “left-click” users. 

How to zip and unzip a zipped file using a winzip

WinZip is available from www.winzip.com

To zip a file, right click on the design, and a little window will pop up.

Choose "add to (it'll say the file name)".  A WinZip window will open.

Choose "I agree".  That's it, you're done!

If you have several files to zip up together, you can do it one of two ways.

1) Either drag all the rest of the designs into the one you just made, and select "I agree" again when the WinZip window opens again, or 2) you can highlight them all at once, and right-click on any of them.  A little pop-up window will open.  Choose "zip".  Whenever WinZip opens, select "agree".

Another window will open.  Choose "New".  Another window will open, and you need to type the name you want to name your zipped file.  Choose "OK" or "enter" and it will go back to the last window.  This time, choose "add"

instead of "new".  It will zip them all up.  When the little dot at the bottom of the WinZip window turns green, then they're all zipped, and you can close that window.

To unzip a zipped file, double-click on it, and select "I agree" when the WinZip window opens.  When the next window opens, you can see a list of whatever's zipped up inside.  Select "extract" to unzip everything.  When you do this, you will be getting an unzipped copy of everything, plus you'll still have the originals within the zipped file.  In the next window that opens, you'll be asked where you want your unzipped designs to go.  If you've just turned on your computer, it'll probably show the folder you're in now, but if you've already unzipped something else, it may show the last folder you were in, so pay attention to what's written there, or you'll put your designs somewhere you don't want them to be and not be able to find them later.  If you know the full filepath name, just type it in the little box in the upper left corner.  If you don't know, then you can search for the folder by clicking on the choices in the larger area in the middle of that window.  Once you've found the folder you want to unzip the designs to, select "extract".  You'll be taken back to the previous window.  When the little red button on the bottom turns green, then it's finished, and you can close that WinZip window.

WinAce is another program that will unzip files, and is also a very good program.  It's available at www.winace.com for a small fee, and has a free 30 day demo you can download and try out.

There are several different ways you can do this.  You can save it as an HTML page, as a Word document, or send it to yourself in an email, with clickable links for each one.  

Open Internet Explorer, and go to file, import and export.  Use the wizard to export your favorites.  You can put them on a floppy disk or CD and take it with you, or you can put them in a backup folder you create on your computer.  

Go to the folder you saved them in, and you'll find it saved as an HTML document.  When you click on it, you'll see a list of the descriptions for each site.  The listings will be clickable links to your favorite websites.  

If you copy/paste the HTML page into a Word document or other HTML supported document, the links will still be clickable.  

If your email is set to send and receive in plain text, then change it to send and receive in HTML format.  You can do this in Outlook Express by going to tools, options.  Under the read tab, uncheck the "read all messages in plain text" box.  Under the send tab, change your mail sending format to HTML.  (If you're only going to SEND one letter in HTML format, you can change your send preferences in the toolbar of the window for the new letter, then you won't have to bother with changing your main email settings back to plain text.  If you only want to READ one letter in HTML, after it arrives, you can click on the paperclip in the top right corner of the letter, then open the attachment.  Your plain text letter will open in HTML format).  

Go the the "Favorites" HTML page that you saved when you exported your favorites to a folder.  Copy/paste the entire page into an email, send it to an email address that you won't use until you get out of town, then download the
email from the server when you get there.  The links will remain clickable to the correct URLs.  

Using Yahoo groups

Go to http://www.groups.yahoo.com to find the Yahoo groups.  Joining the groups is a two-step process.  First, you need to join Yahoo, then you need to join the individual groups.  Follow the instructions to get your Yahoo account.  After you set up your account, be sure to edit your account preferences, or Yahoo will sell your email address to a million other people, and you'll get lots of spam email.  

To find the embroidery groups, type embroidery in the search box, and you'll find hundreds of embroidery groups you can join.  The more people that are in a group, the more active it will be, and the more email you will get.  Some people find it overwhelming, but if you set up message rules in your email, then it's easy to manage.  The more people in a group, the more likely you'll get answers to your questions.  

Common Sense Netiquette for Embroidery Groups, Design Surfing, and Other Stuff

The group moderator is the boss.  You are not the moderator, therefore you are not the boss.  If someone posts something you don't like, don't write the group and ask "Where's the moderator?  Why aren't they doing something to stop this?"  The rest of the group does not know.  Don't write the group and tell the moderator how they ought to handle the situation.  It makes people see what a bossy person you are, then they won't like you as much.  If you don't like the way the moderator runs things, then write the moderator privately.  If you say things publicly, then you should expect a public reply, and it may not be one you would like to hear.

Please take the time to read the group rules.  Each group has slightly different rules, and just because one moderator allows something, doesn't mean that another one will.  Find out what's allowed and what's not.  Some groups are strictly on topic, and others are not.

Some allow advertising, some don't, some require participation if you advertise, some require you to post tips, some don't want tips with ads.  Before you go advertising, posting a joke or asking for prayers, find out if it's okay with your group.  If you're not sure, always ask the moderator privately. 

You can lurk a little, but not every day.  You should speak up every now and then and offer some conversation to the group.  Group members want your input, and want to get to know who you are.

When you write to the group, don't use all capitals, and don't use all lower case.  Type like you were taught to write in school, with capitals and punctuation.  WHEN YOU USE ALL CAPITALS, IT IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING, AND IS RUDE.  using all lower case is lazy and is difficult to read its hard to figure out where one sentence ends and another one begins  Some sentences have two different meanings, based on their punctuation. 

We went to the fabric store with lots of money.

We went to the fabric store, with lots of money. 

What did you mean?  Who had the money, us or the fabric store?  You don’t have to be perfect at spelling and punctuation, but at least read what you write before you send it, and try to make sure people are going to understand what you’re trying to say. 

If you want to know something, then stick around to read the answer.  Don't ask for advice then say "Please answer me privately because I don't always have time to read the list."  If your time is too valuable to look for the answer to your own question, then why should we waste our time to answer it?  Is your time more valuable than ours?  If you're going to be like that, then most people will ignore you and let you go look up your own answer.

The same thing goes with people on digest.  Please don't say "email me privately because I'm on digest."  Does that mean that you don't read your digests?  You're the one who chose to go on digest, so please don't ask the rest of the list to make special concessions for you if you're not on individual email.  If you don't like all the group mail in your main inbox, then learn to set up folders and make message rules to automatically sort your incoming mail into those folders.  If everyone does that, it would stop the problem of having whole digests attached to your digests.  If they don't, then the digest is only attached to one of your letters, and it will be at the end of that letter, so you don't have to sort through it at all. 

For whatever reason, there will always be someone who is on digest anyway, and it is common courtesy to trim your emails before you send them.  Please trim off all the extra letters you're not replying to, then just leave enough of the first letter, so everyone else can get an idea of what you're talking about in your reply. 

If you ask a question, please don't ask someone to answer you privately "so we don't clog the list".  Excuse me, but that's what a list is all about!  Chances are, if you want to know something, then there's probably someone else who may want to know, too.  We all learn from each other, and we want the list to have conversations and be interesting.  Please don't ask people to take the interesting stuff and tell it privately.

If someone asks where to find a design, DON'T just send it to them, even if it was a freebie!  Maybe you're trying to do them a favor, but not everyone wants you to send them designs.  The digitizers ask you to not do this, and you are violating their copyright when you do that.  Some people don't like email attachments and don't want you to send them things anyway.  Instead, tell them where to go buy it or download it for themselves.

If someone asks for a design, and you have one of those for sale on your website, it's okay to tell them you have it for sale.  However, if the only time you speak up is when you're trying to sell something, then please go away and don't come back.  We're here to help each other, and if you only offer help when it benefits yourself, then you're just taking advantage of the group.  We aren't your free advertising board, so if you don't plan to actually participate in other ways, then don't pimp your wares here.

Don't pimp for your friends, either.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when someone is always advertising for their friends.  If you keep it up, we'll be turned off and we won't want to go see what your friend has to sell.  It's okay once in a while, but if the only time you ever speak up is to mention the same websites over and over, we're going to notice, and we won't believe you anymore when you say how wonderful their designs are. 

Did you embroider something today?  Then please, tell us about it.  Show us pictures.  We want ideas for gifts and projects, and someone may really like to see what you did. 

When you download a design, take the time to write the digitizer privately and tell them thanks.  Digitizers frequently complain of getting 2,000 visitors to download a new design, and only 2-3 people ever write to say "thank you".  Many digitizers have stopped giving away free samples or sharply cut back because 1) people don't say anything about them at all, or 2) people have come to EXPECT free samples and actually get upset that they have to waste their valuable time looking at "for sale" designs, only to not be able to find the freebie.  Digitizers don't have to give you samples, but they do it to get you to come into their websites to look at their "for sale" stuff.  Please don't forget to say thanks.  It won't take nearly as much time or effort as the digitizer spent making that free design you just downloaded.

If you downloaded a free design, then don't write the digitizer to complain that it wasn't in the right format or the right size.  Don't ask them to convert it to your format, go get the software and convert it yourself.  Don't send it to your friend and ask them to convert it, because that's sharing designs, which is a copyright violation.  Conversion software is free, and some better software is very inexpensive.  Go get it, install it, and use it.

Don't expect a free design at every website.  Do you expect free food samples every time you go to a grocery store?  How about free clothing samples when you go to a department store?  Digitizers are getting tired of hearing more complaints than kudos, and frankly, when there's so many freebies to choose from, people quit buying from them, and they're slowly getting out of the habit of offering free samples.  Thank them when they do offer a sample, and please don't complain when they don't. 

Please don't write a website owner and tell them everything that they did wrong on their website.  If a link doesn't work, then that's okay to tell them, but if you don't like their content, or if you don't like their color scheme, or if you think they should have included something on every page and they left it off some pages, then keep it to yourself and don't criticize them.  Most embroidery sites are made by women who have learned how to digitize, embroider, sew, and build a website, just so they could offer you their designs, and they've probably learned a few other kinds of software to put it all together.  They've likely spent thousands of dollars and hours to make it all happen. 

Did you embroider something you downloaded?  Please write the digitizer and let them know.  If you send them a picture, most of them would be proud to post it on their website.

Don't join a group just so you can download all the freebies in the files.  If you unsubscribe, don't be surprised if you're banned and can't rejoin the group later. 

If you go on vacation, don't unsubscribe.  Instead, change your status to "no mail" until you get back.  If you unsubscribe, don't be surprised if you're banned when you try to rejoin the group later.  The moderator may think you only joined to get the freebies.

If you want to unsubscribe or change your status, don't write the group and demand that the moderator do it for you.  Go do it yourself at the group website.  If you can figure out how to join the group, then you're smart enough to figure out how to unsubscribe or change your settings.  It takes Yahoo anywhere from 24 hours to a week for your setting changes to take place.  The moderator can't do anything about it, so please don't get mad at them if you're still getting mail for the first day or week.  Writing the group won't change anything at all. 

If you have an idea for a project, or if you figured out a trick, please share your ideas and tips with us.  We want to know!

Don't write a website owner and ask them to send you their freebies.  Go download them yourself.  They already spent a lot of time on them, just to give it away.  Please don't ask them to work harder to give you something.  They don't owe it to you.  If they post a message about a design, and you can't find it, keep looking.  They want you to look at their website.  Don't look on a couple of pages, then give up and write them and whine that you couldn't find it. 

On most of the lists, it's okay to ask for prayers, but please don't ask for charity or donations.  Everyone has a sad story or knows someone with a sad story, and while tragedies do occur, and people do indeed need help, this is not the place to ask for it.  If your fellow list members get requests to donate, they'll feel guilty if they don't, and they'll feel pressured whether or not they decide to give.  We don't want that kind of atmosphere here.  If there is a true need, then you are welcome to post a brief description, such as "my brother had a fire, and they have three kids and lost everything", and then give a URL or an email address so that if someone is interested in offering to help, they can go there to find out more.  Please don't ask for donations on the list, though. 

If you're advertising your designs or products, don't mention the prices.  Have them go to your website for prices and details.  It's okay to say you have a sale, or a special going on, but it's poor manners to list a bunch of prices, and it turns people off.  Those who want to know, will go to your site to see your designs first anyway, so please only post your prices on your website, not the chat groups. 

Play nice, and don't call names or start arguments.  If you don't like someone, keep your opinions private.  No flaming other people or websites.  If someone does something wrong that others need to know about, like cheating you on an order, then only state facts that you can back up, but don't state any opinions.  Don't mention things that don't have anything to do with your embroidery order, such as someone's son is in jail, and you can prove it by looking up the online jail records.  That doesn't help anyone in our group, but it's hurtful for the person you're talking about.   

However, if someone here cheated you out of your money, and there's a reasonable risk that they'd cheat another person in this group, then you may mention facts that will let others make their own informed decisions about whether or not they want to do business with that person or not.  Before you take anything to the group, make at least three efforts to clear the problem up privately.  If you still can't get any satisfaction, then go warn your friends, but do it with a jury in mind.  Here's an example.  If you think it took too long to get your designs, then don't go to the public chat group and write to the chat list owner to ask where your designs are.  Go to the website owner, they're the only one who can answer that.  Don't go to the public group and say "Don't buy designs from so-and-so, they won't send your designs."  Instead of stating opinions, always give facts.  Instead of  saying "took too long", say "it took two days".  ("Too long" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone).  Instead of saying "cheated me out of my money", say exactly what happened.  Instead of saying "she shared my designs", say "my designs were posted on a newsgroup, and the encoding matches the set that I sold to (name of customer)".  Be very careful of what you say and how you say it.  Facts can stand up in court, opinions don't.  If you're trying to hurt someone or get back at them, then don't tell the group, keep it to yourself.  Only tell things that will help protect other group members, and only give facts.  If you're not sure if you should say it or not, then don't.

Before you go griping about a bad response time, check out the facts.  Do you feel like your design or merchandise took too long to get sent to you?  Well, did you check to see how long they said it would take?  Did the website owner post a message saying they were going to be on vacation or that designs would be sent within 48 hours?  Did you really give them reasonable time, or did you get mad after only two hours had gone by?  Digitizers and website owners are people, not automated order machines, and they have families and jobs, and they need to sleep and eat.  Some people are in different time zones, or work nights, so be sure to give them sufficient time to email your designs before you complain. 

Find out the facts before you make accusations.  If you see a design that you think is in violation of copyright, check out the facts to see if it is before you post accusations to the lists.  There are many instances where the same artwork was digitized by several different people, and they're all perfectly legitimate.  If you see Disney designs or other "obvious" copyrighted designs, it would be highly unlikely for home-based digitizers to be able to afford the licensing for designs from Disney or the other big name companies.  

At this time, only the larger commercial embroidery houses have the licenses for the popular copyrighted cartoon and movie characters.  It's very expensive and difficult to obtain the license to digitize and sell copyrighted characters and logos.  

If you see a website or eBay auction that is selling illegal copyrighted designs, please don't post the link to the groups, or you will only tempt people to go look, and drive traffic to those sites.  You may inadvertently encourage people to start doing something that's illegal, because the temptation is great to download designs when they're available, whether they're legal or not.  Some moderators will ban you from their lists if you post sites like that, and others will moderate all of your messages for awhile. 

If you see a website selling clothes or other items with designs embroidered on them, and you know for a fact that the designs were digitized by someone else, don't go telling all the lists that the first website is violating the copyrights of the second website.  Many digitizers allow other people to sell items with their designs embroidered on them, and it would be a shame to ruin someone's reputation because you didn't know whether or not the digitizer allowed them to do that or not.  If you have a concern, then write the digitizer privately and let them know that their designs are being stitched and sold on another website, and leave it up to them to decide if they want to do something about it or not. 

Three things are hot topics on the embroidery lists, and nearly always cause tempers to flare.  These topics are copyrights, religion, and politics.  In most groups, it's a no-no to discuss your OPINION on any of these topics, but it's okay to ask questions about copyright law.  If you're not sure about the rules in your group, then please find out before you post any messages. 

Don't be annoying with your greetings, and don't try to hen peck your way to a superior position in the group.  You are not the most important person here, so don't demand respect or pump yourself up.  You are not the queen bee, top banana, head honcho, or the "world renowned instructor" you believe yourself to be, so please don't refer to yourself that way.  Don't talk about yourself in the third person, as if you were someone else talking about you.  Don't demand my attention by starting every letter with "Listen up, it's me here".  Excuse me, but I knew who you were by looking at the "from" line on my email before I clicked on your letter, so don't insult my intelligence, because I'll just quit reading anything you have to say, and I'll quit going to your website.  Also don't do things to put others down, such as calling them "Sweetie" or "Dearie", as if you are their mother.  When you do that, it tells people that they are someone who needs to be taken care of, or that they are incapable of taking care of themselves, or of figuring out how to do something without your guidance.  You don't know me well enough to call me sweetie or give me hugs.  Not everyone wants to be smothered in sugar from a virtual stranger, and it's not sincere for you to pretend to care so much for people you haven't met or hardly know.  We're all equals here, except for the moderator who is the boss (and will treat you like an equal except for letting you run the group), and if you don't like it, then you are always free to go start your own group.  

As long as you are not rude, don't discuss the three hot topics, and don't break any copyright laws, you'll be fine.  On most groups, it's fine to ask for embroidery help, ask where to find designs, ask for computer help, talk about what you're working on, ask about thread and stabilizer, or mention anything else that's embroidery related.   Some groups don't allow posting the links to any websites that aren't the moderator's website, so be sure you know the rules for your particular groups before you post requests for design sites, or the other members may not be allowed to answer you.  

I hope you've enjoyed these tips, and found them helpful.  Thank you for visiting my website.

Click here to join our Yahoo group mailing list.  No chat, just updates. 

Home    Website Contents    Contact Us

Copyright Info and Terms     Links

My friend, who is a fellow embroiderer, is featured in this cookbook. 
Your purchase helps support Jewish charities.