One of my machines is a Kenmore, too, PM. It was a gift from a boyfriend and the only thing I use it for is making buttonholes. I oil it and clean it before using it as I don't haul it out very often. You can indeed knock a machine out of time by hitting a pin, but that's pretty unusual. Generally speaking, sewing machines are amazingly resilient and will suffer untold abuse without breaking down. The number one cause of failure is LACK OF OIL; coupled with accumulated fabric lint (which soaks up the residual oil robbing the moving parts of it) it can be really bad news. After that, the wrong needle is often used in a machine, or it's put in incorrectly (either will result in failure to pick up the bobbin thread, often mistaken for a timing issue). And then there is the often frustrating issue of properly tensioning the machine... which is covered in the manual and only takes some guts and some practice to master. In fact, when faced with a new hire, tension and proper needle installation are the first things I teach. To make sure the lesson is mastered I deliberatly monkey with the tension while the person is in the bathroom, lol. I do not sew over pins. I tend to use only a few anyway, but sewing over them is asking for trouble. You ruin the pins (they bend under the presser foot and are harder to use later), you can break them or your needle, and when broken they often fly away from the machine. Flying bits of broken metal near eyes is a fully avoidable risk, right up there with not putting your fingers directly in front of the needle. ;) "Safen up!". More warnings for black ice this morning. And I instantly thought of V.'s daughter when I saw the cancellations at O'Hare. I always wear my boots, a holdover from living in the "boonies" and driving home in all sorts of weather, often not passing another car for the entire 20 miles. Best to be prepared for a long, cold walk. I have not left the Compound ONCE since last Wednesday, though today may break the run. On my list of things to do this week is buy some greens for the decorations, and some wrapping paper and ribbon. We don't have our lists ready and they won't be long or particularly tough on our wallets. I VERY much want to see the decorations from Monique and Less!! I love varigated Holly and haven't seen it available in my usual haunts. I'm actually toying with the notion of planting a couple of them... what do you think, too flashy or pleasingly sparkley for a dark time of year? Tales of layers of pastry and butter made my mouth water. I could almost feel my hindquarters spreading across the seat of my chair as I read... . Back to watery gruel for me! I have to get a coat/two of pickling on one more piece of wood in preparation for the helpmeet's assault on the stairwell railing. I'd love to hear from ailing Eden about her present project and it's progression. You've crossed my mind periodically as I've plugged away on my own.

yes you have a built in mic somewhere on your system, often times they are on the monitor or the keyboard. Only the older systems required a stand alone mic most newer ones all have a built in mic somewhere. You can look around for it, it is just a very small looking hole.

You guys are the greatest. What a wonderful, helpful community (and frankly, just what I needed after a very tough week of people being difficult, unhelpful and irresponsible). Thanks. I love the tutorials for Audacity - and will probably want to play around with that some. But before I got those responses, I did some more searching and found a very simple program called MP3 Key Changer. It allows you to save up to 3 versions for free - so that will suffice for my daughter's purposes of creating one higher pitched and one lower pitched version. The free version may also save only a portion of the song - but my daughter only needs a few bars, not the whole song. The full software costs $45. So if we want further transposing, I think we'll learn Audacity. In case anyone finds this thread and is interested, this free download trial from CNET can be found here: http://download.cnet.com/MP3-Key-Changer/3000-2139_4-10463799.html My daughter loves singing, though. And I can imagine her learning audacity to change the background tracks so she can sing any song she wants in her own key. Bob - your links were great places to start learning Audacity. And Chugger - your screen shots are worth a thousand words. My daughter is 13 - and not quite at the stage of intuitively figuring her way around software. Thanks everyone. Lynn.

Randy, When I saw the title of your post, I wondered if you can even still get CD recorders, however, you can get DVD recorders pretty cheap now. What about one of those? The only issues I can think of are 1) most need a video signal to record, they won't run without it (but you could experiment) - it could be anything, a feed from a camera or a cheap test pattern generator... The other issue is whether you'd have trouble ripping the audio from the dvd, although there's plenty of software out there to do it, much of it free for download....of course, you could also just digitise it in through your audio inputs, I seem to remember Windows have that provision somewhere.... You can get a DVD recorder for less than $200 and the quality's good, even better than CD depending on your options....and the recording duration can be quite lengthy depending on quality levels ( it affects video, not sure if audio's scaled back too) and if you get a dual-layer recorder, well even longer. Lots of these recorders work with rewritable disks, so there's a saving for you.