What's New @ Needle In A Haystack

Interesting NPR story on 30,000 year old flax fibers

A friend forwarded a link to me for an NPR story from this week. Archeologists found some very old textiles recently - flax fibers dating back 30,000 years. We knew that the linens in our stash would age well...

Back Issues of Piecework's Annual Knitting Issue Available

In cleaning up our magazine area today we found we still have a handful of the 2nd and 3rd annual Knitting issues from Piecework. We understand the issue sold out from Interweave so if you're looking for one or both of these come get them while we still have them.

Update - 10/1/09 - we only have one copy left of the Jan/Feb 2009 issue. Please call us to order it or see if it's been sold.

Finishing Deadlines for Christmas 2008

If you're planning to have items turned into stockings, pillows, ornaments, etc. by our local finisher here are the deadlines you need to know for 2008:

• September 15 - Stocking, pillows or any larger items
• October 15 - Ornaments

That means these items need to be to use before that date so we can ensure they are at the finisher's by the deadline. Anything after those dates will not be guaranteed in time for Christmas 2008.

DMC France vs. DMC USA

Over the past few days there's been a flurry of postings about DMC France filing for bankruptcy. This is only for 2 divisions of the parent company and does not affect the portion of the company responsible for thread and fabric for the craft markets. You can find a press release here regarding the filing and sorting out some of the information. So don't panic - DMC thread will continue to be made and supplies are not impacted by this action in France.

Fun at shop on Halloween

We had a lot of trick-or-treaters at the shop on Halloween - our business district hosts a party for kids under 12 in the afternoon and they visit most of the shops during that time. We had so many we ran out of candy about 4:30 (they come between noon and 5pm). We wanted you to have some vicarious fun with us so we put together a little video clip of 3 of our visitors and of a great Halloween house in the neighborhood nearby. Hope you too had a fun a Halloween!

Download Halloween_at_NIAH.wmv

Needle Necessities Has Closed

We'd been having difficulty getting thread from Needle Necessities since the beginning of the year and I thought this was a likely precursor to them going out of business by year end if they didn't get their act together. Unfortunately that turned out to be the case and Needle Necessities closed the business some time in September. We have never officially been notified by them they are closed but it has been reported by a number of reputable people, the website is now gone and no one answers the phone. So I think it's a safe bet that even though they did not inform their customer they were closing, that they in fact have!

We have limited supplies of their threads so order soon if you need something. The on-line catalog pages are not up-to-date with what we actually have as we've been selling a lot every day. If you place an order we'll send what we can but as it's moving so quickly, we are not doing stock checks without an order being placed. At the moment we only about 30% of the floss colors and they will likely be gone within a week or so.

There are rumors of a company doing a replacement thread but before I consider doing business with anyone making such a claim I would want confirmation they have the rights to the color formulas from Needle Necessities. So if you hear these rumors, just know we're waiting to see what the legitimacy of it is.

Elaine Warner, who founded NN and passed away a few years ago, would be sad to see the end of a company she worked so hard to build into such a great source of threads. But it was a great run while she had the company and it's too bad the present owners couldn't keep it going.

2007 Finishing Deadlines

For those who will be taking advantage of our finishing services the deadlines for 2007 Christmas items are as follows:

October 1  - Pillows
October 15 - Stockings
November 15 - Ornaments

If you have an item to be finished after the deadline we can check with the finisher to see if a late item can be accepted. It's best to have items in by the deadlines to avoid disappointment.

Wichelt Imports Suffers from rain related flood

One of our main distributors, Wichelt Imports, has suffered a serious flood in the warehouse. They are in a part of Wisconsin that received way too much rain in a short period of time and the warehouse flooded as a result. We suspect they won't know the extent of the damage for several more days but it's not going to be pretty. Fortunately no one was hurt.

Wichelt is the sole source for Mill Hill beads and treasures and Wichelt fabric. So our ability to get those items we don't have in stock will be affected by this. A guess at this point is that it will be 2-4 weeks before they will be able to do any kind of shipments since likely they'll have to move parts of the warehouse to temporary quarters. We'll post more details when we have them. Just know that for certain items the lead time is going to be significantly longer than it normally would be.

USPS Rate Changes - May 14th

As you probably know postal rates are going up on May 14th. What you might not know is that instead of there being one class of First Class mail there are now 3 classes based on both size and weight. Since First Class letter is restricted to items of a certain size, thickness (1/4") and weight (3.5oz) most of our mail order packages will need to be sent First Class Parcel. As a result our minimum shipping charge will go from $.90 to $1.60. Our Priority Mail Flat Rate charge will go to $5.00 and Priority Mail Flat Rate Box will be $9.50.

Global Priority Mail has been renamed to Priority Mail International and it appears that the small flat rate envelope will be gone. Only the large flat rate envelope shows up in the new rates and goes up about 20%. First Class International (AirMail) is still based on weight vs. size and also has gone up.

We will be changing our online catalog to reflect the new rates once we have it all sorted out. Anything shipped after May 12th will reflect the new postal rates. Our UPS and FedEx rates have not changed.

Stitching Has Its Rewards!

We are pleased to announce a new rewards program for our customers - Stitching Has Its Rewards!. Over the years many of you have asked why we did not do punch cards or something similar and the main reason was that I could never figure out how to make that work for those of you who are mail order customers as well as our in-store customers.

Technology has changed that. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Gift Cards and Loyalty Cards that many national stores use these days. Gift Cards hold the equivalent of dollars and Loyalty Cards accumulate points (or rewards). We found a vendor of these type of cards who could combine both those functions into one card. So it's kind of a left-brain, right brain card :-). You can use it either as a Gift Card, a Rewards Card or both.

When you shop in-person with us you present your Stitching Has Its Rewards! card and if you shop on-line, via e-mail, phone or fax, you provide us with the unique 19 digit number on the back of the card. We then add points to your card for your eligible purchases. Points can be redeemed on future purchases.

If you wish to use the Gift Card portion you can order it with a specific dollar value and as the card is re-loadable, you can add dollar value to it later. Or have your family and friends do that for you! You can register your card and if you do so your gift giving friends can simply let us know you have a Gift Card and we can look up the number.

We hope our new Stitching Has Its Rewards! program will make shopping with us even more fun!

For  Stitching Has Its Rewards! program rules visit our Rewards Program page or visit our Gift Card page to purchase or add value to a Gift Card.