I have a DIL whose sister is an avid counted cross stitcher and does beautiful work. We had a conversation about my doing counted cross stitch on my embroidery machine. She said she would be able to tell the difference in something I did by machine or by hand. So that Christmas I made a machine counted cross stitch picture of a snowman family for DIL. I framed it and gave it to her. The sister couldn't take her eyes off it when she saw it, wanted to know how many hours I spent doing that. When I told her about 6 hours, she said that was impossible to do something that ornate in such a short time. I finally confessed that it was done on the machine, and she was simply aghast. She couldn't tell the difference between hand and machine counted cross stitch. So for those of you who think hand work is better, I say it is in what you love to do. My hands don't permit me to do hand work anymore. And my eyes don't permit counted cross stitch or any fine work. The embroidery machine does a beautiful job, and I love the variety of designs available. If this world had everyone with the same thoughts and opinions it would be a very boring world. I love my embroidery machines. There is a talent to finding the right colors and designing on the computer and transferring to the embroidery machine is time consuming, but loads of fun. So I say, try it, you might just find you like it at lot.