October 2 - Blog's First Birthday

My first ever blog post took place on October 2, 2011.  The main motivation behind starting a blog was to use it to record photos of the projects I completed in a way that will allow me to find them.  Simply adding a folder in my electronic photo storage device was not good enough because it was hard to search.  I didn't label the photos very well and didn't link whatever pattern I used to the photo.  In addition I thought in some small way the blog might be a record of me.  Since this is a public space perhaps someday my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren might enjoy remembering me through my writing.  Maybe?  Were these goals too lofty, perhaps, but I don't regret for a moment having started down this path.

Excluding this post there have been a total 133 posts with 5,894 pageviews as of October 1, 2012.  The most popular post is "The Dachshund" with 594 pageviews (Really it is because people are searching for badger).  Then "U900's Rabbit U" with 64 pageviews (Quite a drop!  This is due to the fact there's a band named U900, I'm sure).  The month with the most pageviews was September 2012 with 789 (because after the incident I sent people the link to figure out what I did), followed by January 2012 with 785 (beats me), May with 679 and July 582.

A wide variety of search engines have brought people to this blog, and as I reviewed the sources I have found new engines to use myself, like Stumbleupon and Pinterest.

Google Analytics tells me people from all over the world have checked into this little blog.  Here's a table with the top 10 countries.

• Canada -- 2,404 (all pageviews) Way to go Oh Canada~~or is that too ostentatious?
• United States -- 1,996
• Brazil -- 499
• Russia -- 479
• United Kingdom -- 133
• Germany, Latvia, Australia, Malaysia and Spain all less than 100

So to celebrate this first anniversary I've changed up the look of the blog (again). There's a simple knitted background, a crisper black, white and red-orange (or is it orange-red) colour theme.  I like that the archives, followers and blogs I'm following are all available on demand as it were, on the right side of the screen along with the search function for the blog.  I think this more sleek and classic look is likely to be one I can stick with for more than a handful of months.

Additionally I've added a couple of new pages including my own personal WIPs with photos of how the designers expect the finish products to look.  There will be a few WIPs I won't share because they are gifts, so rest assured the WIPs list will never be all inclusive.   Then I've added the list of over 45 knitting and crochet books/booklets/pamphlets I own.  This list is more for me than you; hopefully I'll avoid duplicating books I already own.   I'm satisfied still after a year that this is another right venue for me to create in addition to the knitting I do.  Thanks for looking in and for your continued support.