2010 in review January 2, 2011

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 22,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 17 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 123 posts. There were 102 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 15mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was July 17th with 264 views. The most popular post that day was The tapestries of Jan, Annabert, and Marianne Yoors.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were hurdle.co.uk, en.wordpress.com, en.forums.wordpress.com, lifeloomslarge.blogspot.com, and evasweaving.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for liza lou, sheila hicks, liza lou trailer, yinka shonibare, and ikat.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

The tapestries of Jan, Annabert, and Marianne Yoors July 2010
33 comments

2

Gallery September 2008

3

Liza Lou April 2009
3 comments

4

Sheila Hicks: New work @ Restaurant SD26 January 2010
14 comments

5

2009 Weave of the week #37: Wattle September 2009
6 comments

Marigolds and sheep wool May 28, 2010

If my plans work out,  I will spend the Memorial Day weekend with zinnias and snapdragons,  pansies and alyssum — i.e. I will be planting windowboxes.  My windowboxes are always colorful and chaotic, like the one shown above,  and they always have lots of marigolds to add cheery gold and orange accents.

Last summer,  I read this interesting tip in Plants & Gardens News, published by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (link here):  “Container-grown pot marigold . . . showed increased yields when sheep wool waste was added to the growing medium;  average yields more than doubled when 1.33 percent wool (by weight) was added.”  Sheep raisers and wool spinners may have known this for generations,  but I was glad to learn that composting is getting serious attention from agricultural scientists these days too.

I haven’t had any sheep wool waste lately,  but if you have tried using it,  please share (the information,  that is).  I’d love to know if it works,  although marigolds are such prolific bloomers that it may be hard to tell.  Oh,  the article says that it also works with container-grown valerian.

Have a lovely Memorial Day weekend.

Happy (belated) Tartan Day! April 10, 2010

Designed by Vivienne Westwood for her "Anglomania" Collection, 1993. Photo: Irving Solero

Had I known that April 6th was National Tartan Day,  and that there was going to be a parade with bagpipes and drums  in NYC today, I would have prepared something special.  Instead,  here’s an impromptu post about tartans,  consisting mostly of what I think are interesting links.

British designer Vivienne Westwood designed the ensemble above for her 1993 Anglomania Collection.  The outfit was shown at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC in the Arbiters of Style exhibition, 2008, and there’s a good short video about it here,  narrated by Colleen Hill,  Assistant Curator of Accessories.  Vivienne Westwood’s current work can be seen on her website here.

And,  finally, here is a link to my post about tartans.

So it might be fun to surf the web and enjoy a wee dram of single malt Scotch whisky.  Deoch slainte!