This is the first blog article I’ve written in a while, as I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of the past two months travelling and meeting Stitch members from all over the world.
My travels kicked off with a visit to the Stitch Community in Hobart, which I visited during the midwinter “Dark Mofo” festival.
I then flew directly from Hobart to Dublin, to take part in the Big Stitch Trip in Ireland, which had me travelling the Emerald Isle with over 40 members from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. This was closely followed by the amazing Stitch Together 2026 Conference in Bath, where I spent a monumental 3 days with another 80 Stitch members.
The three events together made for an incredible trip for so many reasons, and many of the members I met contributed ideas that will help us set the direction for Stitch in the year ahead.
Our plan is to turn some of the sessions from the Bath conference into videos and presentations that all members can access, so look out for announcements about them in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, however, I really wanted to share some of the joy I got to experience with all the wonderful members on the Ireland trip, as well as give you a tiny taste of what our wonderful Hobart community is like.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t normally enjoy hearing about other people’s holidays, as it usually just makes me sad I missed out.
But I think this trip is an exception, because what made the experience so special isn’t really just about travel at all.
It is about the Stitch community itself. The journey captured so much of what makes Stitch special, and in particular how a group of strangers can enrich each other’s lives in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
It made me feel proud to be a Stitch member. If you read on, I hope you feel the same.
Before we begin: Hobart in Midwinter
Hobart is one of my favourite cities, and it’s been amazing to see how the community there has grown over the last two years.
A couple of years ago, Stitch only saw 6 local events happen in Hobart over an entire year.
The community only started going when one of the local members joined the Stitch Pioneer Program, and things took off from there. Our Hobart members have embraced the idea of Stitch as much as any small city we’ve seen: it went from 6 events to over 400 activities in the last 12 months!
Around 60 local members came out to meet me for an evening event. Unfortunately the venue was much louder than I expected, as it had been taken over by the Dark Mofo festival and turned into a DJ-pumping nightclub, so it made it very difficult to hear!
But everyone was gracious enough to persist through the noise, and we still had a great time (and even a little bit of a dance at the end).
A few of the local members were generous enough to share their Stitch story with me on video, which you can see above.
You can find even more interviews with Stitch members not just from Hobart but from all over the world on the Stitch YouTube channel.
And if you’d like to share your own Stitch story, either via an article, photos, or a video, please let me know!
Forty strangers arrive in Dublin
How do you think you’d feel arriving in a foreign country to meet 40-plus people you’ve never met before for the first time? Particularly knowing you’re going to be spending the next ten days travelling with them?
My guess is you’d be feeling a little nervous.
Some of our members had met each other on a previous Stitch trip, and others were travelling with other Stitchers from their local communities, but most were coming on their own.
A couple of the group mentioned to me that this was their very first trip outside the United States, and that this was a huge step for them — but it was being part of the Stitch Community that gave them the confidence to take the leap.
It was a real treat for me to see how the values of the community — being kind, being welcoming, looking after each other — made the start of the trip in Dublin feel so easy.
It helped that on our first night, before the trip officially started, members of the just-getting-started Dublin Stitch community came to welcome us and take us to a night of traditional music at an Irish pub!
From nervous ... to dancing
Beyond the usual nerves that come from meeting a group of strangers, some travellers had additional reason to be nervous.
Corinna from Washington, for example, is legally blind. She was naturally worried about how she’d get on, but very quickly discovered she was surrounded by people who wanted to treat her like family. Corinna was just one of the members who agreed to appear on camera to talk about her experiences on the trip:
Another member told me stories of feeling dejected and lonely before she found Stitch, which had gradually brought her out of her shell: first through the discussion forums, then in-person activities, and now for a trip she could have never previously dreamt of doing.
Before the trip was over, she was leading the singing on the bus!
After a few days of the trip, we started seeing people singing and dancing at pretty much every stop on the journey.
I watched one of our male members get up and dance in front of a crowd of strangers, and asked him if he’s normally such a livewire.
He laughed and said, “No, I’ve never done anything like this before. But being around a group like this makes everything more fun.”
The most social trip
Within a very short space of time, the Stitch values simply took over.
People started connecting and looking after each other — rotating around on the bus, always chatting, never letting anyone sit alone.
The team from Trafalgar, our travel partner, told us it was the most social trip they’d ever seen.
In fact, people were so busy getting to know each other that the poor guides sometimes struggled to explain the day’s logistics over all the chatter. We were simply having too much fun.
What it's really about
The Stitch team put together a short montage of the trip — people dancing, raising a glass, laughing on windswept clifftops. I’ve watched it several times now, and every single time it makes me smile.
There are so many more photos, videos and stories I’d love to share. But if you take one thing away, let it be this.
A trip like this is exactly what we’re aiming for with the community itself: giving people the chance to bring joy to each other’s lives.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or who you are. It’s about having fun together, and encouraging each other to do a little more of it.
Come and experience it yourself
I really do hope you get to feel the joy yourself one day, whether that’s on a trip, or simply by being part of your local Stitch community.
You don’t have to travel across the world to find it. The same warmth is waiting at a Stitch event just down the road, and every one of our trips is built on the same spirit.
So keep an eye on what’s coming up, and come along. Just by showing up, you’ll brighten someone else’s day.
Until next time!
How amazing Andrew! I’m sorry I missed you at Dark Mofo this year as it looked like it was a great success. Our group of stitchies had a ball in Thailand though. Ireland looked like it was a ball of fun. See you in 2027 Dark Mofo.
Great to hear the Thailand trip was such a success, Angela! I might not be able to make it to Dark Mofo next year because a friend of mine is planning a holiday away their 60th birthday at that time, but I’m working on a plan to visit Hobart before then … stay tuned!