OOooohhhhh....RAIN!!

It started raining last night. It hasn't stopped! Isn't it wonderful?? Those of us in the south east know how desperately we need the rain! It isn't pouring hard, just a steady rain. I slept with the windows open. It is still relatively warm here in SC, and so much of the year we can't sleep with windows open because of heat and humidity. This felt great! I woke up to sound of cars driving down the rain washed streets....*lazy stretchies* just Nice.

I removed a couple of posts from my blog this morning. I feel like the angst has gone on long enough. I'm tired of the whole mess. Those of you who have been following me for a while know of which mess I speak. I want it over. NOW. I need to move on, this isn't the kind of quilter I want to be. This isn't the kind of woman I want to be. It seems to have brought out the worst in me, along with those who chose to send me anonymous derogatory comments about my reaction to the violation of my pattern copyright. (No way to reply to those...pretty cowardly to send anonymous no name/no return address comments) Of course they were only protecting their own friend. And maybe I would have done the same.....but I still would hope that I could look at the the situation with a discerning mind and be able to see truth for truth. Friend or not..when the facts are straight out in front of you.....what stands as true? Maybe that truth varies from person to person depending on what side they chose to be on and how loyalty influences how they see the facts. At any rate, I feel like I am at an impasse.

If I keep letting this eat at me, is it going to turn me into a better person? I don't think so. Expecting apologies from those who have lifted my designs is an unrealistic expectation. I know that. That's the only justice I want. I don't want to fight with lawyers, and I am sure they don't either, and who has the time/money/stamina to deal with that kind of fight anyway? In the long run.....what is that going to prove? Does anyone really WIN? And it isn't about winning.

Anonymous posters have called me hateful and selfish and unprofessional for posting things the way I did. I tried a phone call, but it went nowhere. No admittance to infringement...no offer to remove the patterns, tho the fact that another version was made to alter the pattern "sufficiently" pretty much proves that she realized she HAD to do something. The facts that my copyrights pre-dated hers meant nothing to her. The only answer I got was that everything was already at the distributors and couldn't be recalled.

Those who have supported me.....it means more to me than you will ever know. My life has really been thrown into a whammy in the past few months, a lot of which I haven't talked about, and you lift me up. Thank you.

Those who have condemned me.....you don't know me very well. I'm not out to make money on my designs at ALL.

I have to say that hurt, no matter what shape it comes in, or how it manifests itself, makes us all react differently. You rallied around YOUR friend, and that is understandable. But you attacked me because I wasn't close at hand to defend myself. I am not the ogre you made me out to be in your nasty posts.

I want my designs used for charities, for gifts, for teaching classes, for spreading the love of quilting the way it used to be. Quilting is about sharing. Quilting binds women's lives together. I haven't made a DIME ever with all the work I do in providing a website with patterns to encourage quilters in the love of quilting for the sake of quilting. All expenses incurred by providing this resource are my own. And to me it IS worth it. Because the good far outweighs the bad.

I apologize if I have been petty. I hope you will understand why. Imagine yourself in the same situation. How many of us would have been a "saint" considering the circumstances?

My last thought to Out on a Limb is this....if I were in your own quilt guild...lived local to you...would you still have done this? Would your friends still have rallied around you? I really don't think so.