Discovering America

One year ago, I opened a new blog and tried blogging in English. It took me some courage, because my English has never been trained or even tried in an English speaking country. My foot has never touched the soil of Great Britain nor the USA or Australia, the country where -- as the family epics were sung to me -- my grandfather's brother fled from a woman who followed him, and they got married. I was an avid follower of my father's reports from America where he travelled around for 3 months in 1955 when I was six. His lantern slide show was my television, my first English words were "new" and "whooosh", the sound coming from a just opened can -- on adverts in "Ladies' Home Journal". This is where I got aquainted with Munro Leaf's "Watchbird" stories and pondered over his "Never-put-backer".
My relationship towards the USA changed in the years of adolescence, but I won't dwel on that. At a mature age of 57 I took up a craft I had learnt from my grandmother: Needlepoint. For 30 years, I had a box of brightly colored crewel wool in the attic, and to my amazement, the moths had eaten only a tiny bit of it. And there was an unfinished baby blocks embroidery with a special woven stitch. I finished it, and more projects followed. I showed my embroidery to blog readers in Germany for about half a year and had two followers.

The internet is a blessing. It showed me that the kind of craft I was looking for does exist, I wanted to expose my modest work to the judgement of embroiderers and quilters who did things I admire. On November 17, 2008, I opened my blog towards the west.

Congratulations to all of you who have been following me and who read it now! Without your advice and encouragement, my attempts to start quilting and cloth-printing wouldn't have got very far. Thank you so much, Ladies! I wish you a happy new blogging year in good health and success.