Anywho, I digress …

Whoa! Just look at my traffic!

As soon as I saw the Knitmare picture, I thought of Boing Boing.  I thought that they would be interested enough to post it.  Oh boy, was I right!

I was hoping for a decent traffic spike.

On a typical day, I get less than 50 hits – my best day ever only resulted in 180 hits.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I got wasn’t it.  Knitmare got picked up by all sorts of unexpected blogs and forums – apparently, knitting unusual balaclavas appeals to people who cruise porn sites.  Who knew?

Anywho, I digress …

I posted Knitmare on AnywhoIdigress at 8.24am and submitted it to Boing Boing’s Submitterator at 9.34am.  BB gets about 60 or so submissions every day.  I wasn’t expecting a quick response.  I got posted in 10 minutes!!

I confess that I spent Wednesday morning just looking at my site traffic spike 😀  And spike it did.

On Wednesday I got 5890 hits.  Woot!  I’d call that a spike.  Thursday was 3632, Friday 1102 and Saturday 380.  Not too shabby.

It wasn’t just Knitmare that was popular, although it took the lion’s share of the hits.  5 people actually read the entire blog – every single post.

The spread of referring sites surprised me.  I plotted four days in the charts below. My excel-fu is not strong.  Apologies.

Interesting things to note:

• Knitmare was almost immediately cross-posted on a knitting forum – ravelry.com.  I am a member there, so I followed the discussion.  It turns out that the designer of the balaclavas is also a member. A much loved member.  Most folks saw it for what it was – a creepy picture.  Others not so much, causing a moderator to call a time out to admonish posters for criticizing another members work.  As the originator, I offer the designer nothing but my respect.  Rosa commented that perhaps the designer took inspiration from knitted masks from Bolivia and Peru.  I would say yes.
• The top referrers transitioned over four days from BB to Ravelry to Lankarkiv.  Lankarkiv is new to me.
• I made it to #1 in the WordPress Growing Blog of the Day on August 5th.  I came in at #52 and #93 in the Top Post of the day on August 6th and 7th.
• I am not on facebook or twitter. That should be the subject of a future post.
• As I mentioned above, one of the referrers was a porn site.   The site is all porn pics (well, I didn’t check them all!) and one knitting pattern.  Very, very odd.  Perhaps knitting is getting it’s sexy back?

Lisa.

PS   Too much time on my hands?  Hey, it was the weekend!

Total hits 5890

Total hits 3632

Total hits 1102

Total hits 380