All these Anonymous Comments are So...Anonymous!

I'm flummoxed as to whether the most recent anonymous comment on my last post is a response to my response to the first anonymous comment, or perhaps a different "anonymous" entirely. It's funny to me that there are so many covert knitters, flying under the radar and unwilling to divulge their true identities. It brings outrageous pictures to my mind, pictures of women in trenchcoats with hats pulled down low over their faces knitting in the shadows and skulking along dark alleys with their yarn hidden in briefcases.

For the past two days, my top twenty natural search entry terms for this blog have related to the Yarn Harlot and the recent controversy I referenced in my last post.

This isn't traffic I want, have any use for, or expect to retain. It's more of a social experiment, and one that's yielding depressing results. Only one visitor--or two, depending upon whether we have one anonymous or two--has commented, but dozens of people have gone searching for phrases like "Yarn Harlot controversy". And then, you know, been indignant that I don't have knitting news to offer when they arrive.

Because, of course, everyone who clicks on a link titled: Stephanie Pearl McPhee is Overrated - My Mean Post about the Yarn Harlot" is looking for knitting news. Just read the comments to my last post; you'll see.

For what it's worth, I don't think anyone made a mean post about Stephanie Pearl McPhee. As I mentioned earlier, I know very little about her, and I don't have the slightest interest in knitting. But I do know that she's a best-selling author, and that even before the "controversy" some of her blog posts were getting hundreds of comments a day. I strongly suspect that she's in a position to roundly ignore anyone making mean posts about her, and that her reprimand was in fact intended for someone who wrote a "mean post" about someone else in the knitting community, someone perhaps less well established and more vulnerable. Just a guess, but I suspect that all those "Stephanie Pearl McPhee is overrated" and "Yarn Harlot bad mother" and "mean post about Yarn Harlot" searches aren't going to find you what you're looking for. Just a thought.

I'm looking forward to this traffic dying down. I want to think this kind of thing blows over quickly. I want to think we all have more important things to worry about. If you're really looking for "knitting news", check this out: Real Knitting News.

Stephanie Pearl McPhee is Overrated – My Mean Post about the Yarn Harlot

I hate to disappoint an audience, but I have a few confessions to make.

I have no opinion of Stephanie Pearl McPhee.

I don’t even know what she looks like.

I don’t knit.

And I don’t have anything mean to say—or at least, not anything mean to say about the Yarn Harlot.

So what in the hell is this post about, you may ask?

It’s about some very interesting search traffic that I’ve seen on another blog over the past few days. Google searches and blog searches for phrases like “Yarn Harlot mean post” and “Stephanie Pearl McPhee is Overrated”.

I assume this is all detective work related to the Yarn Harlot's recent post about blogging etiquette. She advanced the apparently controversial view that bloggers shouldn't go around insulting people in public. I don't know to whom she was referring, and I don’t much care. As I said, I’m not a knitter. I probably wouldn't know the guilty blogger if her blog was pointed out to me, nor would I know the person this mystery post apparently insulted.

I’m fascinated, though, by the concerted effort to ferret out that post and get to the bottom of someone else’s business. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the Yarn Harlot essentially pointed out that some things shouldn’t be aired in public—and although I know nothing of the circumstances, her point was absolutely valid in the abstract—and it…um…generated a lot of publicity.

So what search term brought you to this post? And what were you really looking for?

So the thing is...knitting is ruining the world

A year or so ago, my sister took up knitting in earnest. If you're having visions of those "lovely" afghans grandma used to make everyone for Christmas...add a factor of ten. For a long time, she knitted only prayer shawls. Then she taught my daughter to knit. The two of them set to work knitting hats for homeless infants (I swear), which was nice, and when my sister would babysit for me I'd come home to find them both asleep in my living room, cuddling their knitting needles--which was not so nice.

Time passed. The knitting continued, but the fervor died down. And then I got a Christmas letter from an old friend, and he mentioned that his wife--a government lawyer--was running a yarn co-op. I made a conscious decision not to think through what that might be.

But this morning, the line was crossed. I'm a big fan of humor columnist Barb Cooper. I know, I know--she's awfully positive for a girl like me, but what can I say? She's smart and she's a mom, and she has an incredible way of pointing out the humor, the irony, and even the hope in those little moments we tend to gloss right over in life.

Until today.

This morning, I dropped by the So the Thing Is Blog (which, I might add, I was DELIGHTED to see being regularly updated for the first time in...ever), and...

it was about knitting.

Not the whole blog, of course, but there are. Um. Photographs of yarn.

I blame the Yarn Harlot.