My Online Community

Good morning stitching friends. I hope your day today is blessed in all you do. I thought I would talk about my online stitching community that I own. Hope you don't mind some advertising. LOL

Back in late 2000 I opened an online stitching community to meet new friends and stitchers from all over the world. When I first opened my little community was called Shelley's Stitching & Stuff. I met so many wonderful people from all over the world as well as some not so nice people. Running an online community has wonderful advantages but there are some downsides to it as well.

My little community grew into a very busy place with so many members. We had programs for exchanges, SALs, Round Robins (RR), charity stitching, reading club, games, contests, chat nights, etc. We had so much fun in the community. As time passed I started to encounter some personal attacks on myself as well as my family. You really can't be sure who you are befriending when you meet online. All we have are words to form our opinions. I try very hard to trust everyone but once that trust has been broken I am not one to give it back so easily. With that being said I decided to clean house within the community and got rid of some 'bad' members. I made the community private (by invitation only) and things improved drastically.

I also moved my community several times to better the forums. My trusty group followed along with me and we are, to this day, still together. Our friendships have grown to the point where I feel like they are my family now. If someone had ever told me that I can become friends with someone on the other side of my computer monitor I would have told them they were crazy. But it is true. My dearest and best friends are all friends I met online. And I have had the pleasure to meet most of them face-to-face. There are all my wonderful friends in the US - Linda W., Ann B. & Shelleen T.; and from Canada - Glynda N., Loretta R., Gloria J., Caroline S., and Vivian K. These women are the most precious women I have ever met and I count my blessings that I have the honor to call them my friends.

It was back in 2004 or 2005 that we decided as a group to rename our community to Needleworkers' Haven. Starting out we had quite a few members but with time things slowed down. We are now a very small group who love to get together to chat or stitch together. Just a group of friends sharing our lives and our love of cross-stitch.

As life so commonly does, it got in the way so that I am not able to devote as much time to the community as I used to. I used to have all the time in the world to stitch but my times are so limited these days. I now have a very full house with both of my children living back home. My daughter is a single mother of a very active one year and my son & DIL are new parents to a three week old son. My son & DIL are saving for a place of their own and should be out soon. I hope in the near future that I will have my house to myself so I can devote more time to my stitching, online community & the Lord.

Well, have I blabbered enough for all of us? LOL I hope that some of my readers will drop in to Needleworkers' Haven to meet all of us. Have a blessed day! Until later.....