About this site

Every New Year's Day, I walk into Puget Sound and have a little moment breathing and connecting and making some wishes. It's a safe way to do something a little scary. Starting this site as a place to park my writing that isn't owned by right wing schmucks is a little scary too. Also, I just like this picture which was taken by Nick.

Handforged is an independent publication launched in January 2025 by Rachel & Nick. It's mostly a place to park and grow Rachel's writing.

I (Rachel) started writing on this newfangled thing called Facebook 16 years ago as a way to keep in touch with family and friends who were far away.

It turned out to be a more effective way to chronicle our lives than any journal or diary (I've never been good at those).

So now I've got this enormous archive and some folks who enjoy keeping up with our adventures.

But as the perfidy and betrayal of social media sites becomes untenable for many I've had a few folks reach out to let me know that they'd like another pathway for reading up about us.

I'm staying put on social media for now because I'm unwilling to sacrifice the incredible communities I'm lucky to be a part of.

But I also want a place that's just ours, where we make the rules.

So here we are.

Welcome.

From here onwards, nearly everything I post here will also be on Facebook and vice versa.

We're in the process of figuring out how to transport 16 years worth of writing, photos and videos over here.

Once we've done that we're going do our best to figure out how to make that searchable with tags and things like that.

Access all areas

By signing up, you'll get access to the full archive of everything that's been published before and everything that's still to come.

Fresh content, delivered

One of the things I like about Facebook, vs Twitter and Blue Sky is that I can control who is seeing my posts by limiting them to "friends"

I'm doing a similar thing here, by only letting folks who sign up read the posts And if folks I don't know sign up, I can block them.

So there are three ways to access this site and they can be managed by hitting the Account button and managing your email preferences for the Newsletters

"Handforged" If you want to be notified every single time I post something, this is the one for you.
"Weekly Roundup" If I'm being fairly active, getting a ton of emails from me might get pretty annoying, so if you want to stay kind of engaged but not besieged, then this one might be a better option.
You have the keys. You've got the URL now and you're a subscriber, so you can deselect both newsletter buttons and just mosey over here whenever the mood strikes you.

Let's talk Subscription Levels

Right now there are two Tiers. One is Free, which gives you access to everything.

The other is currently titled the "KVG" tier in honor of pal and stalwart beta tester, Kim, who told me she wanted to be able to throw some cash my way on a monthly basis.

As of right now the KVG tier and the Free tier are exactly the same. It's possible that, going forward, if I'm doing new things over here that are not on FB I might change how things are structured. But for now. The KVG tier is for folks who've been wanting to support my writing but haven't had a way to do it.

There is NO OBLIGATION to join the KVG tier. After all, all my stuff is over on FB for free right now.

There is also going to be a Tip option that I haven't figured out yet, so if you want to basically buy me a coffee because you really loved something I wrote, there should be a way to do that. We looked at using the site "Buy Me A Coffee" but they use the same platform that Ghost uses, "Stripe" and charge more money in fees for the privilege. So we're sticking with the "Stripe" Platform that is native to Ghost.

Please Be Patient

I've never made a website/blog before, even though many folks have suggested it over the years. So it's probably going to be a little clunky for a bit until we get our sea legs. If you have questions, comments or invective you can leave a comment on a post or email me at the address I've set up for this site: r.handforged@gmail.com

Start your own thing

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