Love Your Blog Challenge

 

So I decided to try this for April....I have not kept up with my blog lately, just doing the bare minimum...so here goes.....the first challenge to explore....

 'Interactions and community'

I wrote about this a bit on my blog a couple of weeks ago...

I'm going to gear this toward my online communities....My first online community was Crochetville....I found many friends on that site...friends that I am still in touch with and have met in real life....

I've actually stayed with three of these lovely ladies at their houses....one outside of Buffalo, NY, one in Pennsylvania, in the woods, against a mountain, and one up in Massachusetts....

And when there was drama, we actually created our own online community....although I have dropped out of that community...I am still friends with them on Facebook...and on Ravelry...my next big online community....

Ravelry is amazing!  I have met SO many people in real life that I became friends with on that site...mostly through fiber shows....Nerd Wars was my community on that site...now that it is defunct, I've floundered a bit...but am trying new groups...

But through Nerd Wars, I met...domesticangel...who I then met up with in Texas...

and I stayed with Ellen in Wyoming...for some reason, I do not have a picture of us together...

but this is her daughter, checking out my camera....

and I've met so many more.....

Fiber Festival of New England

Rhinebeck.....

Just so many incredible people!  And I have now joined a couple of online groups through Facebook...they are knitting groups....but, seriously...they are my people....

and I also joined Instagram...and have become a bit addicted to it.....I have not done the Twitter thing yet...and while I have Reddit and Tumblr accounts...I rarely go on them....

My online communities have become part of my real-life communiteis and are just as important to me....I've been blogging for almost 8 years...and I have made tons of friends through this too...I can't wait to read updates on what is going on in their lives....and again I have made friends...this is Lori...

she is taking a picture of me, taking a picture of her in Grand Central Station....I think I originally met up with her through blogging....but I feel as if I know her so well now....we have met in real life, we have talked on the phone...and though she has moved across the country, I have an open invitation to visit....and she comes back this way frequently.....

So our lives and our communitities and our interactions have changed so drastically with the internet and smartphones....as a person who wrote to 25 foreign penpals and 6 Americna penpals in the 80's...the world is just fantastic now....so open and so many people to meet....