Thanks, everyone. I will have to check out these beading suggestions.

I've asked to an embroidery machine for Christmas. Although I"m not sure where I'll put it in my crowded sewing room. My husband told me to go look at them so that's on the to-do list. I can hardly wait to scope out what is available.

Patrice, so exciting.... half of the fun is shopping for one and see all that is out there. But the best half is having one !

Patrice best of luck on your journey!!! Sew fun!!!

A cautionary tale
 

Long story short, I got my first embroidery machine over 20 years ago, and have hundreds, if not thousands of designs. I went to look on one of my USB flash drives for an old design, and it wouldn't open. Found out that the average lifespan of a USB flashdrive is 10 years!! Less if you write over them several times...The lifespan of a CD is 100 years +++.....so...been transferring everything to cd's over the last few days. What a pain. This way, I'll have them, and if I need them I can put them on a flash drive in a matter of seconds..but I'll always have a backup. I found a free program that pulled data off of corrupted cd's and flash drives...it worked on most of my bad flash drives, but I did lose a bunch of designs.
Moral of the story..don't trust your flashdrives!!!!!!!!!!

Most dealers will tell you not to store your designs on flash drives as they can(and will) fail, just like hard drives do. A flash drive is only meant to be a temporary bridge between your computer and your machine. I copy a design from the computer to the flash drive, I never move the original designs to the flash drive. I keep my designs in files on my computer but also have back ups just in case. I also keep the emails from when I buy designs that have the zip files in them. That way if I lose something I can go back and open the original from the email if I have to.

Cari

I do the same thing. I didn't know flash drives had a life span but I guess it's like everything else - built in obsolesence (sp?). I think I will also save them to CDs though. I have a bunch of new ones I need to use.

Thanks for the information on flash drives--I need to get some CDs and start putting designs over to them. One problem I do see is newer computers do not have CD drives so you would need an attachment.

I've not seen this. The newer all in one computers don't have a separate CPU so the dvd/cd drive is in the side of the monitor. I bought one of these computers for my GD a few months ago. I did have a computer years ago that had a small CPU and didn't have the cd/dvd drive so I bought a small outside reader/writer that plugged into the computer. It was only about $30.

Cari

Ah, only about $30? Cool!