Meet Sara - My Etsy Friend - Woolies

Being an immigrant in America is not easy. Never was and never will be. Just read some novels. I had read plenty of them before I moved to the US in 1996. I knew what I was getting myself into. Why, oh why, did I do this? Like many immigrants before me, I was getting depressed after living here for a few months.

I think anyone, who has moved to a new place, understands this feeling of being cut off from your family, friends, and home. But when you are an immigrant, the pain is multiplied by being cut off from your culture and language.

I traded the big city lights of Berlin for the not so well-lit streets of small town America. Every Christmas I’d run off to Germany and say to my husband: “I hate it here. I want to go back to Germany.” I had a hard time making friends. I felt the looks of people saying:”Here she comes, the oddball German with her accent and strange view of the world.” I felt terribly isolated.

I believe, it was in the spring of 2008, when I first stumbled upon a thread in the etsy forum. In this thread I met Sara – or Woolies. My husband thought it was crazy when I told him one evening that I had to go online to “talk” to my etsy friends. What do you mean by etsy friends? Who are these people? You have never met them. - Yes, I have!

It’s a funny thing about the internet. You may never see, hear the voice, smell, or touch a person – yet you can meet them and feel close to them just the same. You may even get to know them better than your next door neighbor…
On that memorable thread I met Sara – or Woolies – as the team members all lovingly refer to her. She has two esty shops. My favorite is of course: http://www.woolies.etsy.com/ .When you are having a bad day, you may want to take a look at her creations: Knitted, stuffed, warm, and fuzzy animals.
Sara has always been the person I could turn to when I was having a rough day – comforting - like a stuffed animal friend to a child. Does that sound weird? It's even better to have someone you can talk to about your troubles (on and off-line) who will talk back to you! Thanks so much for being there, Sara!
I learned a lot of things about Sara. I know she lives in Arizona and loves horses. Hence I added pictures of her real and knitted horses to this post. I know that she loves her family very much, and works in advertising. I know of her daily struggles and worries about money and the kids future. We have even visited on the phone. Since she has never been able to come over for dinner, I asked her what her favorite food was: She said ice cream.

I hope someday we can go out for an ice cream together…

Please, check out her two lovely shops on etsy. And don't forget to stop by her blog and leave a comment!

http://woolies-woolies.blogspot.com/