I want to address a common email I receive from some of my readers not from the US. About 20% of you are from other countries and I have become friends with many of you. It has been one of my biggest thrills to get to know people from places like Russia, Australia, Iran, Israel, Germany, France and many many others.

One thing that stands out loud and clear is that a common interest brings everyone closer together and breaks down artificial barriers that could other wise keep people apart. When we are talking about scrolling no one cares if I'm American or Iranian.

Occasionally I post a pattern that shows American bias. This email from a scroller in the Netherlands expresses frustration that I hear from more than a few of my over seas readers. I'll let you read his concern then reply.



Dear Friends,

This is example number 100000 about a totally USA-oriented patriotic pattern.

I am sorry to say, but I am getting a little bit tired about this implicit amirican patriotism.( while your country is not doing so extreme well).

I think you Have to realize that a part of your friends/scrollers is simply not American.(I am from the Netherlands/Europe).

So……….I have said whot I wanted to say.

Sorry about my bad English. It is not my native language.


I am American. 80% of my readers are American. I don't mean to insult anyone with my patterns but these are the type of patterns that get requested. I try to give my readers what they want. The fact is I get more requests for American patriotic patterns and religious patterns than anything else. If I were receiving large numbers of requests for European themed patterns then I would be happy to do some. I do not get those requests. Obviously I am not as well schooled in European history so they might be more limited by ignorance on my part.

I do not make apologies for being a patriotic American. The fact that some believe America is "not doing so extremely well" does not change my patriotism at all. I also have met hundreds of friends from nearly every country in the world because of my blog. We all have scrolling in common and where in the world we come from makes no difference. I hope they are as patriotic about their country as I am about mine. There is no reason that patriotism means we have to disrespect others.

I am not naive enough to believe everyone should think America is great. Sometimes we piss me off also. I do not post patterns that I think are inappropriate for my readers. I will continue to post some patterns that show an American bias. This is not to disrespect any other country but only to honor the country I love.

I doubt it will be possible for me to do patterns for holidays from many countries just because of time but I will look into doing a few for countries where my reader base is large enough to make sense.

To the writer of the above email let me say I understand your frustration. You come to my site looking for a fun pattern to cut and there is a pattern that is useless to you. At least I hope that's what causes the frustration and not just an anti-American bias. There is a big difference between patriotism and nationalism. Let's wave each others flags high with patriotism and leave the nationalism to our governments who seem to never understand that when left alone we all get along pretty good without their help.

Now stepping down from my soapbox.

America the Beautiful Scroll Saw Pattern.

Show your patriotism this July 4th and every day with this America the Beautiful word art.

The picture above shows a change I have made to the cover sheets of my patterns. With this release I will add the image of the finished pattern to the cover sheet. I have had this request for a while. I am looking into the possibility of changing the cover sheets of the older patterns also.

With the release of Adobe Reader 8.1 Windows has had the ability to show thumbnails of the cover sheet when the directory is opened with explorer. For those of you that use this windows option it makes it very easy to organize and find patterns stored on your hard drive.

Unfortunately this Windows/Adobe features seems to be buggy. It works for some but others will just see the default Adobe Icon. This occurs no mater how the thumbnail option is set in Windows.

Windows will also show the thumbnails of different graphic formats so if I can find out all the facts about the pdf thumbnail issue it will make finding patterns a snap in windows.

I need help investigating this problem from some of you computer geeks. Look at the picture above. Notice how Explorer is showing the four folders then a thumbnail of a .jpg pattern. Next it shows the cover sheet of a .pdf pattern. The rest of the .pdf's are showing the default Adobe icon. All these .pdf files were created the same way but some show the thumbnail and other do not. I have google searched this problem and can not come up with a fix.

Apparently Windows will not natively show the thumbnails. Adobe added this feature to Windows with their release of 8.1. Un-installing and reinstalling Adobe Reader does not seem to always helps. The problem happens on XP, Vista and Windows 7. There are some reports that installing other Adobe software causes the thumbnails to break. I can't verify this so far.

There is one registry hack floating around that looks like it might help but I need something I can tell my casual readers without them having to edit the registry.

If any of you have run into a solution or have any facts about this issue please email me. Thanks for the help. If we can get this working correctly it will solve the problem of cataloging patterns.

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