Blogging About Blogging

Recently Kyria wrote a meta-post about blogging that caught my eye, and then Stephany was inspired to copy her, and here I am, on the bandwagon!

When did you start blogging and why? In August of 2006--the dark ages! I was getting more and more into knitting, and was inspired by the blogs I was reading.

What was your first blog post about? I wanted a place to talk about knitting and yarn, and show my cats, and talk about whatever was on my mind. In that first post, I mentioned being inspired by Crazy Aunt Purl--Laurie doesn't blog anymore, though I follow her on Instagram--and the Yarn Harlot, who practically doesn't blog anymore either. So many good blogs have come and gone! I actually delved more into the why of it in the second post.

What is your most used label and why? I don't know! I used to use them more, and then I wasn't using them for a long time, and now I'm trying to remember to use them. But I don't see anywhere they are listed in Blogger for me to get that info. If anyone can tell me where to find that, I'd be glad to update.

What is your most viewed post? And why do you think this is the case? Ummm...tough question! (I dug out my password for Statcounter, since I vaguely remembered using that, but it doesn't seem like helpful info. Or complete, for that matter.) Poking into Blogger some more, it looks like my most popular post is still the one I did in June 2007 where I detailed how I crochet dish scrubbies out of nylon netting, which shows as having 4.9K eyeballs on it (not eyeballs really, I suppose they mean views, how boring). That got linked on some sort of crafters site and was my first what-just-happened blog moment. It has since calmed down, but still gets visits, apparently. Huh.

I don't know how much to trust this data, though, since the second item on the list is a random post about email spam that got no comments, and I don't know why it would have received 19.5K views!

Do you answer comments on your blog? If so, what method do you use (email, post on blog)? I used to reply by email, assuming the commenter had given an email address, but last year I enabled the reply-to-comments feature and now I mostly reply within the comments section. This will probably mess with my page views and comment counts, but then, I don't closely track either of those things, so oh well.

Do you go back to see if a blog post that you commented on got replies? If so, how do you keep track? I have it set up so that comments are emailed to me. I keep the emails in a folder in case I want to refer to something.

What blog that you still read now have you read the longest? The Yarn Harlot still blogs, technically, but not very often. Goodness, it's depressing to look through Feedly and see all these defunct blogs! I wonder how long I've been reading Love & Hisses? Many years, anyway, and it's good for some great kitten and cat content. And I've read Alison's knitting blog, SpinDyeKnit, for many years as well. From the Cool Bloggers group, probably NGS? Maybe? 

Do you post on other forms of social media regularly? If so, where? I post a lot of photos on Instagram, mainly of the cat and yarn/knitting, but also more general pictures. Some of them go on Facebook too, where I also write on other topics sometimes (not at length; that's what the blog is for!). I am trying to move from Twitter to Bluesky, but although I do like the latter, most of the "hockey people" I follow for NHL news have not moved there, so I still scroll the twits for that. Sigh. I want to not support the musk-baby at all, but I want my hockey news!

If you talk about people in your real life, do you use their real names? Not usually, unless they are similarly online themselves. Mostly I use describers (my friend) or initials (my friend V) instead.

If you could get paid to blog no matter what you are writing about, what would your focus/theme be? I can't think of anything I would want to write about that would be marketable! I enjoy my blog-whatever-crosses-my-mind style.

Any other questions?