I try to pick my fights, one can’t take *them* all on, so I try to only fight the ones worth fighting and that I have a chance of winning.

But first (are you surprised?) I want to show you the Flag Bargello I just finished. It is not blocked yet but I did steam press it.

This is another Bargello Kit I will be selling on NewNeedlepoint.com.

I love this background stitch. I found it in Margaret Boyle’s book, Bargello, an Explosion in Color.

The stitch does not have a name. It is a basic expanded Jacquard bargello stitch, reversed against itself every other row, to make diamond shapes. Inside each diamond there are 2 colors. A light blue and a pale green. These with the white “grid” represent the sky.

This was not a difficult stitch, once you get it.

The Ripple Stitch flag is very easy. The only important factor is keeping the row counts the exact size they should be. The number of stripes, the sequence and their relationship to the rest of the flag is fixed. This can’t be *fudged* to make it fit.

The Flag Bargello is 12 X 12 inches. I stitched it on 14 mesh beige Zweigart mono canvas. The Bargello Kit canvas would be the same mesh but white canvas, not beige.

I added a sun several times and took it out again each time until the last time. The other designs were too big or too complex, they were “too much”.

This simple diamond shape sun in 3 shades of yellow works. The shape mirrors the background and the size is good, not too big or too small.

Ok, on to my question. As some of you may know, the process of building my web store, NewNeedlepoint.com has taken a long time, 16 months so far.

I created my own web site for my first web store. It was called Needlepoint Chromatics. I did a pretty god job for a total newbie. The site looked good but technically it was a dud. It did not work, in terms of internet commerce.

So, I hired a company in Redmond Washington called Visible.net/Captures.com.

There were many things discussed and I had hopes for a wonderful site.

I was shocked and very upset when I finally saw the design and format they propsoed for NewNeedlepoint.com.

It was generic and boring with no style. I felt style was important, that no one would expect to find a beautiful needlepoint canvas or kit on an ugly web site.

They kept presenting me with the same layout, it looked like a paper catalog, pasted on the screen. I went and looked at the other web sites they showcased as examples, at my same price point.

They all looked exactly the same. Only the colors and the actual text varied. I realized that I had, unwittingly, bought a template web site with no original design or creative content.

The other huge fight was over the picture size. They presented me with these miniscule *thumbnail* pictures for each listing.

They looked like nothing, like a blurry small dot. I protested you could not see what was there.

They countered that customers would open the listing to see what it was.

I insisted that no one would open these listings, you could not see anything that would interest or attract anyone in the thumbnail.

We went around and around on the design and the picture size. I finally asked for my money back, I clearly could not get the web site of my dreams from this web design and hosting company.

The boss called me, he LISTENED to me (a first). He looked at the thumbnails and saw what I meant. He asked me to give them one more week.

He assigned a talented designer to my account and together we made what you see now as NewNeedlepoint.com.

I am very proud of it and grateful to Zak Lotz, the designer. The technical team also came up with a way I could not only have good size pictures for every listing but I could add additional pictures to the content of each listing, as many as I wanted.

Adding the additional pictures is a clunky, time consuming process but I think it is more then worth it.

One of the things I specified, from the beginning, was I did not want customers to have to *register* and open an *account* to buy something in my web store. I made then remove the “log In’ Button from the home page. I was under the impression that the entire “register & password” process has been removed, as well.

Now, some more background (sorry to be so long at this).

I am a big web shopper. I live in a tiny town where you can buy groceries, liquor, or a hamburger. You can have a manicure (7 salons) but you can’t buy anything that they don’t sell at a CVS drugstore or a supermarket etc.

The local supermarket don’t sell fresh bagels, even. The only bagels in Apollo Beach are in the freezer section of the Publix Supermarket (or Winn Dixie or SweetBay).

One guy has a huge BBQ drum on wheels, on weekends he sells BBQ by the side of the main road through the middle of town. It is pretty good BBQ, the brisket is fatty but tender.

I buy almost everything I buy on the internet. I am a sucker for free shipping. Even though I know it is built into the price…still…I love free shipping.

I hate being asked to register and open an *account* to buy something at a web site. It is one thing to register at amazon.com where you can buy so many things but when one is forced to register at a web site to buy socks or a rubber stamp with one’s return address on it or a sauce pan or a bottle of special shampoo or or or.

I have lost count of the number of pages I have for these accounts & passwords. There are many more than I can ever remember. It is like all those stores that want you to carry their discount swipe card.

If I carried them all, I could not lift my purse.

NewNeedlepoint.com was open about 4 months before I realized you HAD to register and create an account to buy anything on my web site.

I found this out by accident, trying to show someone how to buy something on the net, I used my own site as an example.

I have been trying to be OK with it but I am not. I am pretty upset. I am reluctant to make trouble about this but I suspect it does matter. Maybe it matters a lot.

It is not as if NewNeedlepoint.co was the kind of web site you come to every 2/3 weeks and buy something.

These are NEEDLEPOINT canvases, books, kits, etc. If someone bought something on my site once a year or maybe every other year. This would be a loyal customer.

Now, here is my real issue. I know, if I am doing checkout to buy something on-line and I encounter required registration and password creating. I often will ditch the purchase and leave the web site. Go buy it somewhere else.

I do this more often then I will go through with the required registration.

Could this be a factor, could this be one reason why my web site sales are so slow? Why I have so very few sales even after NewNeedlepoint has been open 9 months.

So, I am furious. What right have they got to make this automatic and decide this, for me? To place this restriction on my web store?

This will be a big fight, and I can’t expect much help from my good friend and web tech, Zac. He does, after all, work for Visible.net/Captures.com.

So, what do you all think of having to register, create a password account to purchase something from a internet retail store?

Do you mind? Does it infuriate you? Annoy you? Do you just leave, Like I do?

Or do you think it is a good thing? Does it help you, in anyway?

Now, keep in mind we are not talking about a web site you would use weekly or even monthly.

This is a Needlepoint Web Store.

So, please send me your thoughts. You should even feel free to tell me I am an idiot and to get over it. Should I fight this or should I stick my head back under it’s nice cozy rock?

I need input from people who are (mostly) saner then I am.