My sister in violets (yet again)

Remember how I mentioned in the post with my Little Black Dress that I took photos of my sister's outfit and they did not turn out right?

Today, I took about 80 photos of my sister and none of them turned out quite the way we needed. (Photographing people is definitely one of the things I am not going to make my living by.) We needed a good, publishable photo of her in her kathak costume, preferrably in a kathak pose, too. And that's where the problems came in - either the clothes did not look good in the photo, or the pose was not right, or the light was not right. Or all of them.

But we did manage to take a rather good photo of her in the outfit she had worn back then.

The shawl, the skirt and the bangles come from a shop with Indian clothes. The bag is of uncertain origins. The shoes are mine, and I made the blouse/T-shirt for her.
She wears her shawls draped over her shoulders this way very often - something she picked from Indian women, along with the dance (although she learned kathak in Latvia :-).

For her birthday, I'm going to make her a blouse to wear with her planned new kathak costume, according to her specific needs and likes. (Namely, she wants a white blouse with longer sleeves that reaches below her waist - something more modest than a choli.) It's good to be able to do that.


(Although I was not very successful on the photographing front today, I scored at the local library. But that's a topic for another post.)

What leads people to your blog?

My blog, specifically?

I was a bit shocked to look at my all time statistics and find out a post with no comments made it to the top ten posts. It must be the magic word "giveaway". I wonder, would it work the same way if I wrote, say, "dead giveaway"? Because that's what the title of that post is, in relation to its "popularity".
The most viewed posts are not necessarily those with the most comments. Comments come from regular readers, or readers with a deep interest; post hits come mostly from people who are just skimming the internet.

But "popularity" of posts is not what I'm really interested in. The various ways people stream to my blog on an everyday basis are much more fun to watch.

Here are some of my favourite search keywords from my statistics (also known as "random facts about myself and the users of internet"):

"grizzly king," - Yes, including the coma. It's good to know I'm not the only one who occasionally adds unwanted characters into her searches.

"nape crochet" - OK, so this is more of the "whatever were they thinking?" kind. And whatever was Google/whatever-else-searching-engine-they-used - whatever was that "thinking" that my blog was hit 7 times with this search?

"Gambrinus statue" - I think this pleases my secret sense of absurdity. With an ecclectic blog like mine, you can hit a Dress Diaries while searching for a highly hypothetical god of beer (or mythical king). Especially funny with a person who much prefers her Riesling over her Gambrinus. (I actually don't recall ever having that. And the first beer I ever tasted was actually a Švyturys. Take that, stereotypers.)


"my braid long hair art" - This holds promises. How do I get my braid long? How do I create long hair art? What on earth am I supposed to imagine under "hair art"?!

"who is the most famous czech artist" - "Some people think that Google answers questions," my father said. This is a proof that no, it does not. Not in a straightaway manner, anyway, more like a roundabout way.

Father actually made that comment about this:
"what are the name of the clothes that church women cover their legs when they wear a dress to church" - 3 hits! I don't know about other "church women", but I usually wear over the knee stockings... Sometimes tights. In summer, when it's hot, and when I am most likely to wear a dress or a skirt, I don't cover my legs. And yes, on Sundays I go to church dressed like that. There, you perpetrator(s) of those three hits. You have your answer.


Then there are those very well-behaved hits. Like "edwardian dress" - that's a perennial favourite; people who like Edwardian dresses keep hitting the blog of a person who generally does not; also proven by the fact my most popular post is one about an Edwardian dress. Another perennial favourite is "civil wedding dress" - the Grace Kelly book is to blame; again, a very popular post. And "kacabajka", which is something I've encountered myself: when I tried to find out more about this type of jacket online, I only found out I can't because the only relevant hits are from my own blog. (Although things have changed a bit since my last try and now Czech Google also gives me results concerned with folk costume. But the image search still gives you my blog on the first page.)

And then there's "marmota-b blogspot". That's encouraging. May I suggest simply typing that into the command line of your browser, with a dot where the break is right now, instead of googling it? That's what that little space above in your browser is for, you know?

Now you know I'm using Firefox (for blogging, that is) and that I read Advanced Style. Ah, the great reveal!

Wait a minute, I wrote "some of my favourite keywords" up there, didn't I? That's not true. My favourites are really searches such as these: "vintage wooden bead red necklace"; "bobbin lace flower", "crochet hooks made of bone". Those are hits coming from creative people, fellow crafters, or fellow people interested in crafts (which is not the same thing, although I guess most of the time they overlap). They probably do not lead to comments, or followers, or anything like that, but they give me a hope that my blog does give back to the crafting community, in some small way.

Although it seems most everyday hits come from blogs that link up to me, one way or another - so, thank you very much! I hope you're getting some hits from me, too, if I have you linked up. (And sorry if I don't -.I try to keep that space not too cluttered, so an ommission does not mean that I deem your blog unworthy; I just probably discovered it too late, or kinda forgot about it momentarily at the right time.)

If you have a blog, do you ever look at the statistics? What was your funniest search hit? Any surprises in the popular posts department?