WOYWW 156! Happy THREE YEARS!

30/05/2012 by UKMA 30 Comments

It’s the big one.  Three whole years of WOYWW.  Amazing. What a community we have built.  The storms we have weathered, the friendships forged.   It always amazes me the online outpouring of support from virtual friends who are virtual strangers.  Julia’s recent posts regarding her dad and his health issue on holiday prove the point – am I right that it was a WOYWW participant who hooked her up with a translator?  I think I am.  How wonderful – the world of WOYWW is a small one, really.  200 or so like-minded people who gather once a week to share their work, the mess on their desk, and sometimes little snippets of real life, outside of crafting.  Beautiful gardens, scary weather, the loss of a friend, a parent, a pet.  It’s all laid bare for us.  And we commiserate, sympathize, laugh and gasp at the text, the photos, the snapshot of a life not our own.  Such weekly riches.

And Julia, bless her, who made the place for us all to gather.  What dedication!  FOR THREE YEARS, every Wednesday, without fail (ok so maybe the occasional timing glitch but I don’t know we have actually ever missed a day in al that time) she posts, she visits, she comments in a way that makes you know she actually read your post attentively, considered it, and commented on point.  I’ve never made it to every single desk and yet she often does.

Funnily enough it was a mistake, me meeting Julia in real life.  You see I had sent an email to her, at some point, probably pointing her in the direction of something I thought might interest her.  That got me in her address book and thru the magic of “predictive text” she mistakenly sent me an email aimed at another MARY about her crop in Ludgershall.  As it wasn’t a million miles from me I asked that although I expected I got it in error would it be OK if I come along.  and now, once a month, I get to hang out with the best bunch of ladies you could ever hope to meet.  The serendipitous power of WOYWW. Magic.

My desk, you ask?  Well just a few things this week – You will see some of mt ATC play, using the ink-soaked paper towel – and I stress none of these are the actual WOYWW ATC, just a few random experiments I was playing with as I finalized my real one.  And a sort of configuration box, covered with other paper towels, and a few Alice stamps, coloured and cut, for a bit of a book/song mash-up that I have had in my head for a few years.  I hope the close up shows a bit of the texture.

The “eyes only” stamp is from work, many years ago, in my previous life as a classified documents librarian and researcher.  I wish I still had the one that said “need to know only.” And eyes were a recurring theme of all my ATC play.

Isn’t the paper towel base fab on the box?

So there we go.  Not as momentous a WOYWW as I planned, but a series of events have eaten in to my time, a bit.  This, for one – DH is entering a chilli cook-off this weekend and needs some stall decor.  His batch, named Roswell’s Secret, needed green, aliens, and chillies so a quick couple of foam stamps were the order of the day.

I’m off for a round of Drs. appts. for DD then it’ll be me, all stamping, all sewing, and all ironing for the day.  I’ll be late getting started but dare I hope this is the week I make it to every desk?  Who knows.  Maybe it will be.

Happy 3 WOYWW!