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A warm welcome to our March 2025 newsletter!

Most manufacturers have been holding back new releases for the upcoming shows in Cologne and Nashville. You can expect to see lots more new charts and kits when these shows have finished.

We also have some bad news for EU customers.


Kits


New from RTO is a cute ballet girl and cat entitled cute and colourful designs by Soda Stitch. These are the original designs but now kitted up with materials included.

Permin has released a some charts of mid size design - all under 200 x 200 stitches but still a challenge!


Supplies

Some better news on the Kreinik front! Finally we had one delivery from Rainbow Gallery with Petite Treasure Braid and Wisper along with some Kreinik braid. Not everything we'd ordered but a start. Let's hope this trend continues.

We now have some pretty little wooden accessories from Kind Fox needle minders, scissors holders, needle holders and floss cutters. We've only chosen a few of a huge range so please ask us if you have any special theme.


European Union (EU)

We have finally conceded defeat in our attempts to offer value for money to customers in the EU.

We have ceased operation in the EU for the foreseeable future (but we're still offering our products to countries outside the bloc, like Switzerland, Norway, etc.)

For the past few years the EU has embarked on a crusade to make life as difficult as possible for non-EU companies servicing EU customers - especially the smaller ones like us. The bureaucracy has introduced new rules and regulations at regular intervals presumably with the intention of protecting its resident businesses against foreign competition. These are tariffs by another name. Reduced competition simply means higher prices for EU citizens as the EU bureaucracy increases costs for EU businesses.

The latest batch of regulations would have required us to provide safety instructions for each of our 20000 products in all EU languages and engage some third party at great expense to pass customer enquiries to us! This is the straw that has broken this camel's back. The net result is that big multinationals will have more of the market to themselves as the economies of scale make the bureaucracy relatively cheaper for them.

We can only apologise to our loyal EU customers and hope that your overlords come to their senses. We'll continue to monitor the situation but we expect it to be years before common sense is once again welcome in the EU hierarchy.


And Finally

Our title this month comes from a Poem called The Winds of March by Patience Strong (English poet and lyricist, 1907-1990)

«Teach the daffodils to dance.
Through your ravings harsh and strong
Thrushes thread a golden song.
Cleanse the air, make fresh the earth
for the season of rebirth.»

So we hope that the sense of rebirth inspires you to start new projects - or re-start old ones - and we wish you a very pleasant and calm March.