6.22.2009

Numbers Don't Lie

Last week when I posted about "popular" knits I was just going from my impression of popularity - the knits I most often see blogged and ravelled (I wrote the post and just grabbed and added stats for the items in my list by searching them on Ravelry - I never looked at the larger list. When Anonymous "C" commented that she never saw any of those knits walking around in real life I suddenly realized neither had I!

Now I don't have anyone in my day to day life that's a knitter so on the face of it its not that surprising but a DKC meeting can have well over a hundred knitters in attendance, the DKC Frolic many more times that number and still - how interesting I've never seen a one of those walking around!

The comment got me thinking about what really are the most popular knits on Ravelry so I checked it out and I was surprised to see my impressions didn't come close to accurately reflecting the top patterns...
The only one I got right was Monkey Socks!

Beyond that - I found within the first 60 most popular - I had, in fact knit 5...




















So I think I should probably drop the idea that I'm just not into the trends and maybe also offer a few thoughts of thanks to the knitting gods for giving us Knitty! What would we all be knitting without it?

Thanks "C" for holding the mirror up for me!



BTW I've mentioned this before but I want to reiterate - I try to personally respond to all comments that I can - but many comments come in with a "no-reply" address. If you've selected that, you probably aren't surprised when I don't reply but if you haven't chosen that and you don't hear from me its because I'm blocked by doing so by that "no reply" setting :(

6 comments:

Anna said...

In the top 60 on Ravelry I have knit 4 and have 12 in my list to knit one day (whether they will actually get knit who knows?!?). The Monkey socks are on the needles at the moment, just cast on for the second one last night (finally!).

I'm not a bandwagon jumper, if it's something I like it's something I like whether or not 350000 other people like it too. I also tend to take longer to get around to knitting things as 1. I have too many things on the go as it is. 2. I sub yarn constantly so have to find something that will work and 3. I'm cheap so the subbed yarn has to be a great deal!

Hope you find something that excites you soon, I finally got my mojo back and it's been great, knitting was a bit of a slog for a while but now I really want to get things made and make progress and I have tons more things I want to cast on for (which isn't actually good considering my WIP list!).

Brenda said...

Interesting eh, that of the top listed knits, none are sweaters.

Michele said...

That cute little turtle is on my list of things to do this summer. I never thought of looking at the most popular knits on Ravelry. What an interesting thing to do one day while I'm watching Lawrence Welk ;-)

Stephanie said...

How do you reply without a no-reply? I just use my Google address/Blogger account now. I doubt it e-mails you as having an e-mail address, but I don't know how else to set it. At least I think I put my address in my Blogger profile.

Now, in your defense, I'm not sure you would really notice if someone was wearing Jaywalkers to a DKC Frolic. Unless you pull up their pant legs to see what socks they're wearing. But you really wouldn't do that to everyone.

Or the Ball Band Dishcloths. You wouldn't notice those either. And most people knit more than one of those. Yes, I still don't think you're entirely wrong with your idea of what's popular, but it's interesting to see the numbers, too.

@Brenda: Because a lot of people have knit more than one of the popular projects, but not many knit more than one of a sweater, I'd say.

Acorn to Oak said...

I've knit the Monkey Socks and I am in the middle of a hybernating pair of Pomotomus socks (which I'm not enjoying!) and have only a couple of the other top 60 in my faves. Hedera is one of the patterns I'd like to make one day. The Clepotis scarf is in a LYS and several people have made it or are making it but I'm not interested in that...especially, since I've seen so many of them.

Lisa R-R said...

I was surprised how many of the top 20 patterns I had in fact knit myself - Hedera, Monkey, Calorimetry, Baby Surprise, Turn a Square hat, Lace Ribbon etc. I have queued the Noro scarf and bought the yarn ...
I agree that the small items are more likely to be finished and reported, and also that we are lucky to be offered such good free patterns in Knitty. Some people have had trouble with missing errata in Knitty, but the designers seem open to discussion by email.
I have small goals for the summer: try to make myself a cardigan for the fall; finish some gift items; make socks here and there.
Enjoy the summer!