Some of you may have noticed that your very own Erich was featured in a couple of articles in the July issue of Stitches magazine. I was greatly honored to be listed among the industry's 20 most creative people, as well as being featured in the "Electric Youth" photo shoot.

Long ago, when I wrote the title for this blog ("On Links and Needles," if you haven't been paying attention) I intended to write a lot more about technology and the Internet and about my work as e-commerce manager at Black Duck. Since I've started this blog, things have changed so fast in the sphere of e-commerce and, more importantly, social media, that I've hardly been able to catch hold of a topic and get writing before my take on it was out of date!

Though I often talk about the sales, marketing and customer service ends of the embroidery business, I have to admit that my mind is never far from my first love in the industry: digitizing. Though I've covered analysis of designs, kerning and how to digitize for dimension, I've never covered any of the basic elements of digitizing. Though many, myself often included, put the most stress on stitch types, their application and their interactions, it's not terribly often that you find someone discussing what may be the most basic and important factor that you have to take into account when digitizing – the garment!

After soliciting my wonderful Twitter followers for a blog topic yesterday, I received a brilliant suggestion from @garment_cat. In her own words: "I have a blog idea...How to solve design conflicts, ie: creative vision vs. technical limitations/budget. The intersection of ‘What I Want,’ ‘What's Possible’ and ‘What Can I Afford?’ Not always easy!"

You may have noticed that "On Links and Needles" has just so recently disappeared for over a week. I've been having some temporal difficulties; now before you accuse my poor temporal lobe of cutting off my language functions, I'm referring to my occasionally poor grasp of time management and my unfortunate capacity for "Productive Procrastination" when faced with more work than I can comfortably complete or tasks that look incredibly difficult. I'd like to help you avoid the same predicaments I've found myself in by sharing what I've learned in this latest spate of deadline dilemmas.

So why have I dragged us through a 12th-century quote, and what does it have to do with embroidery digitizing? If you are struggling with concepts that you know you've seen handled before, it may mean everything.

Not to make too much of my (very) minor Internet stardom gained as a result of writing this blog for the illustrious Stitches magazine, but I have with some regularity been asked how I managed to get here. Mostly people want to know how I won in the Stitch-Off and Golden Needle contests, but they also ask why I have so many customers who believe that my work is different and/or better than the rest.

I've talked about all manner of customer relations issues before, and given tips on how to educate your clients, how to stand together with your company to make things right when faced with a fouled-up order, and even on how to redirect problems with your customer's requests into possibilities for better work.

Thinking over the countless times I've talked to a great many decorators over the years, I noticed a fairly disturbing trend I couldn't remember almost any of their logos. More to the point, I'm almost certain most of them weren't

I'm about to tell you something you don't want to hear. Like the old ostensibly Mongolian saying goes, "A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup," and I am just as prepared for your resistance to this revelation.

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a rut? Do your days and designs run together in your mind until you can't separate one from the next? Has it been months since you changed your default stitch settings on

OK, so you are probably a little puzzled as to why I might be referencing a standing stone in the title of my post. I'm not trying to suggest we revert to the ways of antiquity; it certainly makes embroidery take longer, if nothing else.

I'm not usually one for such a miserly entry, but this is something short, sweet and to the point that every embroiderer should know. From those of you with a simple lettering program up to full-time digitizers, you can all do one simple thing to make any name, monogram or other assorted text element look its best, and it's something I've found I have to correct more often than not when reproducing the work of my peers. You need to learn to kern.

There is a scheduling epidemic among garment decorators this time of year, and I'm here to inoculate you before you suffer the symptoms. You may not know it, but whether you are fresh to the business, a single-head start-up, or a major multi-head, multi-shop player, you are at risk. The sickness I'm speaking of is not the flu, porcine or otherwise. I'm talking about chronic under-delivering – CU for short.

Some of my readers may have recognized my name from this month's Stitches Golden Needle Awards article, or perhaps from awards in Stitches from years past. While I'm not above self-promotion (hence all the blogging, I can almost hear from across the digital divide),

I believe that most digitizers, as a breed, are finicky creatures. We are prone to fits of over-editing and micromanagement. Given time and opportunity, some of us may fiddle and tweak away the better part of an afternoon on a complex design.

Eventually, it must come to pass that a customer will ask you for the impossible. As sure as night follows day, any chain of easily digitized, clean-running, beautiful jobs will break and someone will bring you a design fraught with difficulties, a completely hoop-intolerant garment or a yesterday deadline.

So, you are in the apparel decoration business and you want to survive and thrive. You know that you need to court new customers and make the customers you have as loyal as possible. Let me offer you the following advice: Don't compete on price alone.

Let me start by blowing your mind a little bit. Embroidery is sculpture. I know, it might not seem like it at first blush, but stitches happen in three dimensions. As flat as they might seem sometimes, each embroidered design

As the manager of Web sites that provide direct-to-business apparel, I'm often asked why we decided to pursue the markets we are in, or how we got our foot in the door, so to speak. The answer is that we chose to spend time and effort on customers with potential.

There are a few lessons that I learned during my time at college that have translated particularly well from the world of English composition to the world of business. The most important, hands down, is that one should always consider one's audience.

It might seem strange to start a blog, or truly any venture, by looking backward. That said, any good digitizer knows that laying, or underlaying, a good foundation is the key to creating a design that holds up to close scrutiny.