Finally, whew, my new website is up and running.

A lot of sweat and ‘almost’ tears went into building it, but I think we're finally on the "home stretch." I say ‘we’ because I do not have the technical skills to pull all of this off!

Luckily, I have a wonderful ‘tech’ person. She's my saviour when it comes to all things technical. She teaches me a lot too, so that I have a chance to keep up with writing for, maintaining, and managing my site, now that it's up and running.

Technology is wonderful, but it sure keeps you on your toes; things are constantly changing, and artists and creative professionals just have to keep up, if we want to take advantage of it, rather than being swept up by algorithms and "big tech" companies.

And I certainly do want to take advantage of technology, and owning my own independent little spot on the Internet.

I fear that the pandemic has brought us, perhaps kicking and screaming, into unavoidable relationships with technology. While we've been physically keeping apart, it's been essential to leverage technology to stay connected with our loved ones, communities, and friends. (It's certainly allowed me to keep in close contact with fellow artists as well.)

While we've been physically keeping apart, it's been essential to leverage technology to stay connected with our loved ones, communities, and friends.

Our North Shore Needle Arts group has adopted Zoom meetings as our communal format, and it's brought us all closer together. I've lead our Zoom meetings, and I've invited some select international speakers to speak and make presentations with our community. In my chats with other NSNA members, we all seem to agree that in the future, we'll be taking full advantage of the new video-conferencing skills we've learned; we'll be having notable textile artist speakers from around the world joining us, and our membership has grown further afield since we took our speakers' presentations online.

I hope that you've also experienced some positive outcomes from these difficult times, and I would love to hear about them if possible. We can all learn from this in so many ways.

Please add your thoughts in the comments below!

Stay safe, stay calm, and remember to breathe. 😃

- Anni

PS. Speaking of learning, those of you who've been following me for a long time might have noticed that I've reviewed the many classes I have taken online during the lockdown. I have learned so much this past year, and I can't wait to share more of it with you in the coming months of content here!

So please do stay tuned and let me know if you have any favourite artists or courses that you want to share with me or other readers!