You may have heard me comment on before that it seems as though with each passing day (or least month) there are fewer and fewer of us actively trading and collecting patches online any more. Whereas once this hobby was alive and buzzing across the net, these days it seems that more many more sites devoted to patch collecting come down than go up.
As such, I feel that when I get wind of a new site or blog devoted in some capacity to Girl Guide and/or Girl Scout patch trading and collecting, it's all I can do not to jump for joy! I love knowing that people are still taking up (or renewing an interest in) this rewarding, fun-filled hobby, and believe that those of us in the GG/GS patch trading community should do our best to help support these fledgling collectors.
A few days ago I received a lovely email from a woman named Ashley "Stormy" Martin in which she informed me of her brand new site, called "Stormy's WAGGGS Patch Trading Blog", that's devoted to her interest in GSUSA patch collecting.
I'm sure many of can remember when we first started building up our collections and how fantastic it felt when veteran traders were able to help us out by swapping patches and sharing their years of knowledge with us. I will always be indebted to a few kind souls who assisted me in this way (especially my good friend Louise St. Germain).
I definitely remember how I felt when I started collecting patches online, openly encourage any and all fellow patch collectors who are reading this post to bop on over to Stormy's great new blog to say "hello" and see if there's something on her dupes list (which includes some of the beautiful new GSUSA 100th anniversary items) that you'd like to trade for.
If this terrific hobby of ours is going to continue to thieve as we head into the second decade of the twenty-first century, we really need to foster and support new patch traders as much as possible, and I for one am absolutely thrilled to see sites like Stormy's blog emerging again.
