MY SMALL WORLD

My day started off hearing from Claire from Oz. Why do they call it OZ?
About 7 years ago, I stumbled across a quilting forum on About.com. On 12/22/2000, a new thread started on the forum called "Karen Stone's - New York Beauties and Beasties".( Happy Anniversary, girls.) It started out with maybe about 16 women that planned to make Karen Stone's New York Beauty quilt. The thread turned out to be much more than that. For our time, we had the most posts of any thread on that forum, over 30,000. For the most part, we didn't talk about the quilt. We talked about things going on in our lives. When I was sick, my son came to them for solice. To date.. I think that only a couple of us have actually MADE a New York Beauty. We have been surpassed by others in the posting on About.com, but, for the most part, we have not lost contact with each other.
A couple of years ago I started a private yahoo group for those of us who have always kept in touch. We needed a place to talk that wasn't so open to the scrutiny of everyone in the world. We can talk about the more private aspects of our lives in the Yahoo forum. We have picked up a few new friends along the way. Ladies that we met in the NYB thread. We have been through a lot through the years. Illness, deaths, marriages, new grandchildren, graduations, you name it.. we have been there in cyberspace with each other all the way. We have made many comfort quilts, for each other, and at least 3 for family members or ill people that meant something to one of our group.
Anyway, there is a point to all of this. Claire from Oz made me think about all of the great quilters that I have "met "on the internet. I have actually managed to meet some of them in real life. Then something happened yesterday that made me think of how weird and wonderful it is to have the internet, and the world that it opens up for us.
I have a good friend that has family in Washington state. Their name was the same but spelled different than one of my NYB pals that also lives in Washington. My friend moved her family to Washington last fall because her husband got a new job out there. I got a card from her with her new address, and not only does she live in the same town as my NYB friend Kathie, she lives less than a mile from her! I think it is wonderful that I might finally have a sort of physical link to someone that I have known for so many years. Hopefully, they will meet sometime.
So to all of my old and new quilting friends. I want you to know that I enjoy talking to all of you. And even we may never meet, I want you to know that you have touched my life in so many ways.
Which is just one of the many ways that quilting can bring together women from all over the world. We all come from so many different places, but we can take this one thing, and find out that we are all alike. And without knowing Maree, my other quilting friend from OZ, I might never have heard of " Yabbies in the Dam".