Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Online knitting stuff fascinates me

I've become fixated on all things knitting online. Just ask my husband. I use up precious hours he when he could be on this computer playing Kill the Creepy Aliens from Planet Doom! instead playing with this blog, looking at the yarns of hand dyers and spinners, doing stuff for my upcoming website, and then there's Ravelry....

One of the things that fascinates me most is how people get to this blog. In case you don't look at what cookies you're accepting, I have SiteMeter on this blog. From this I get information about how often people visit, and how they get here. Don't worry, I don't actually know who anyone is or much about you except that you've visited my blog. Most websites these days do have service like this. I don't really use it for anything but entertainment, but it sure is entertaining to me. I hope this doesn't creep you out too much. Maybe you can learn something about what the websites you visit learn about you.

For example, I know that I get about 30 hits a day. Give or take. I know that most of my hits are still from the Chicago area so my knitting buddies there are still reading. (I get a certain warm and fuzzy feeling that I'm not forgotten.) I know that people in the cities where all four of my sisters live are reading this blog. Most recently, I'm getting hits generated from Ravelry. I find it all very cool.

Aside from people I know tere are a significant number of people who stumble on this blog every day through Google. Those are the visits that really crack me up. Sitemeter tells me what keyword they used in their searches. For example, last month people came looking for the following information:

About 30 people visited looking for my sister Peggy Gentleman
About 10 came looking for information about Mass Ave Knitting shop in Indianapolis
3 people wanted to know something about throwing haggis
3 people wanted to know how to make hobbit feet
One person searched here for information on shatnez socks

The list is not exhaustive, but you get the picture.

On another note, did you know that the Spring Knitty came out today. Tzurriz IM'ed me rather excitedly to give me the news. Go look. I'll wait.... This is a great issue. Several very cool sock and sweater patterns. Actually, the sock patterns look really cool. For example, linen stitch on the sole of a foot? Cool. And how about Posey. Really. Take a look there. I can't wait to make that sock in my very own colorways.

2 comments:

Kate Linnea Welsh said...

Oh, fun - you prompted me to look at my sitemeter stats for the first time in a while. Always interesting. Thanks for your comment on my challah - I tried to respond, but the e-mail address bounced. Perhaps a typo?

Anonymous said...

The only way this could be more useful to know is if I could spoof some google search results to get me here... I would use terms like "boss with a bad wig" and "success through micromanagement".