Thanks for your info. I was looking in the manual and saw the information about the needles.
I've been playing some more and I tried turning the dial on the speed control down just a little and that seemed to help, so maybe it isn't the thread after all. I'm going to work with it some more tomorrow.
I'm finally getting the hang of following the pattern. I made myself a skill practice piece using a lot of different borders and misc. designs. It's getting a little easier day by day - I didn't think I would ever see that happen.
stitchfancy