Is My Blog a Secret?

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Kathy, over at Grumperina's knitting blog, tagged her readers yesterday with the following meme:

"How about you? Who knows about your knitting and your knitting blog, and what are your reasons for revealing (or not) its existence to these folks? Don’t just leave me a comment – rather consider this a meme and answer on your own blog ;)."

I've accepted the challenge and will document my response below.

Who knows about my knitting blog? Let's see.... My SIL Jenny knows. She taught me how to knit, and I started this blog so that I would not be harassing her 20 times a day with knitting-related emails and phone calls. (I still harass her, but only 5 times a day now). As a busy mom of three, she doesn't have time to read it regularly, but on occasion I'll forward a post to her if the content is such that I'd like her feedback. I don't think anyone else in my family knows about the blog, (or if they do, they forgot or don't really care), basically because I don't think anyone else is really all that interested in knitting or in reading what I have to say about knitting.

I know my dad probably isn't all that interested, although he might like to read my post about his mother, my Grandmére. I didn't forward that to him because his Christmas gift is also documented on this blog. I may spill the beans after Christmas, but I don't expect him to be a regular reader.

My mom is not a knitter and is not computer literate and never will be, so there's no point in her knowing. I'm not sure she'd remember what "blog" means, anyway.

My sister Anne learned how to knit as a kid, and even taught her daughter -- my niece Rosemarie -- recently, but Anne doesn't knit as an adult. She's too busy to read a knitting blog and frankly isn't particularly computer savvy.

My sister Terry also learned how to knit as a kid but doesn't knit as an adult. Santa is going to give Terry's youngest daughter Leah a knitting kit for Christmas, and so Terry says she'll probably re-learn as she helps Leah learn. Here's hoping she gets hooked -- I would love another addict in the family! If she becomes passionate about knitting, I'll tell her about the blog, and she may end up reading it on occasion.

My sister Julie doesn't knit and I doubt would be interested.

My brothers? Ha! They're men. 'Nuf said.

Basically, everyone in my family is either not interested and/or too busy to read a blog about knitting (or any other subject, for that matter), so there's really no point in shoving it in their face.

I've given a couple friends the link to my blog, and I know at least one has read part of it. They don't knit much or at all, and are very busy folks, so I know it's not of much interest to them either.

I'm guessing some of my friends/family might read it semi-regularly if they had an email subscription, but as far as I can tell, blogger doesn't have that type of functionality except for blog owners. I haven't researched to see if there are any hacks available to set up email subscriptions for readers, but as my readership is quite small, I don't have a need for it, currently. Most knitting blog readers are knitting bloggers themselves who tend to read their blogroll via Bloglines or some other service, rather than wanting to read them via email.

In summary, my blog is not a secret, per se, but I'm not pushing family & friends to read it, either, because I don't know that many (or any) are interested, and frankly, they just might think I'm a little pathetic (if they don't already).

I also have a gardening blog which I don't maintain very regularly because I've not maintained the garden regularly, at least not this year. I'm going to try and be a better gardener and garden blogger next year -- a New Year's resolution! The garden blog is also not a secret and has been mentioned to others on occasion, but there's not a lot of interest from them, and therefore not much traffic.

Was this as boring for you to read as I think it was? If so, my apologies!