This month’s theme question is “What online stitching communities do you enjoy?”
Well, I do belong to a number of online communities and some of them are stitching-related.
I am still enrolled in the Cross Stitch Crazy forumhttp://crossstitchcrazy.yuku.com, a closed group which is now more active in private Facebook group. I am active on the Facebook page, not in the Yuku forum any more. Having been a member of this group since the days when it was tTHE most active group on the late lamented iVillage, I feel that I know most of the people in it and feel most comfortable there.
I am enrolled in, but inactive in, The Stitcher’s Village. I receive the newsletter and read it through but rarely participate in the forums and do not post in the galleries. I used to but as the format changed over the years, keeping up with it became more trouble than it was worth to me.
I am enrolled in six needlework groups on Stitching’ Fingers. I receive occasional notifications, usually from the crash quilting group, but again, rarely post. It also went though a “reformatting” a few years ago and I find it hard to follow threads the way they are formatting, have found and even harder to participate for that reason. (The last I heard from Stitching Fingers was in September and the moderator/sponsor was bowing out and saying the site might close by December if no-one else came forward.)
I am also a member of Craft Bubble 2, a successor to Craft Bubble which went under some years ago. It covers all sorts of crafting but does have a needlework section in the current version. Again, the change in format has pretty much put me off and I rarely visit.
I know that I am still considered enrolled in a few others but since I never go there, I can’t remember the forum names, and in the event I get an email notification, I can’t remember my user names or my passwords so I can’t get in without a big hassle.
I am no longer active in the Quilt Journal Project or the Bead Journal Project (which has also moved to a closed Facebook group). I decided to opt out of their challenges this past year to recharge and rethink my interest in these needlecrafts. Primarily, however, they were just a place to post progress on the yearly challenges and not really a community, per se, in the way that Cross Stitch Crazy was/is.
I do subscribe to a large number of newsletters, thanks in part to having been a member on the now defunct iVillage.com, where I was a community leader on a cross-stitch forum. Most are from online and redbrick shops and that is how I keep up with what is new in the field.
And I subscribe to a number of blogs written by other stitchers as well. While I don’t always comment, it feels to me like more of a “community” feel on a blog these days than on forums. Guess I have evolved form the days when I preferred forums to blogs! ;-)
Basically, I find that online stitchery communities have less to do with stitching and more to do with a) public galleries of one’s work and/or b) small talk about all things going on in the lives of people I do not know. Simply said: a lot of time for little return on the investment, in my opinion. And based on the lack of recent activity on some of these forums, I think others must feel the same way.
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Last WIPocalypse, I was:
- planning to have the birth sampler framed and sent off to my niece = DONE. She received it and liked it
- hoping to start on a wedding sampler for a different niece = Started but it’s embarrassing. I haven’t stitched enough to blog in October. I just seem to dislike this WIP so much. But I shall persevere!
- hoping to maybe get out “save the Stitches” and make some progress there = NOT done. The stitching mojo needs some real work!
Here is where the wedding sampler, “Love Is…”, now stands. Not quite halfway…
This coming month, I will continue to plug away as the wedding sampler but I make no promises!
