That was 2016

What a year! 2016 really was great for this blog and it took me by surprise that this little, rather spontaneously written blog got such attention. Alone the fact that there are some people who crochet the stuff I made up really makes me proud. But this year there actually were quite a few people doing so and this makes me so happy. As it is that time of the year, i want to take some time to look back on 2016 and show you some facts and figures about this blog. I also want to give you a quick idea on what you may look forward to in 2017.

My top 5 Blogposts

It is always hard to talk about successful blogposts, as you have to define success first. But here come five blogposts, which are my top 5, because they get the most traffic, are most often used as patterns or get the most reactions from you in form of comments, shares or emails to me.

1. Photo-Tutorial on how to embroider eyes for crochet dolls. This one really has gone viral in my eyes. It got over 30.000 pins on Pinterest and this definitely shows in the statistics of this blog. I don’t know how many of you have tried to do these eyes, but you seem to like looking at them.
2. Unicorn Keychain: This pattern not only gets a lot of views compared to others, there were also quite a few of you working on it and showing the result to me by sending me a message. I love all of these individual little creatures. One even has sparkling little eyes – absolutely gorgeous.
3. Unicorn (almost without sewing): My favorite unicorn pattern also seems to be one of your favourites. Even though there were not as many as for the keychains, I got quite a few pictures of this one, too. One very special moment for me was, when I discovered that a handmade shop owner from Australia had crocheted one of my unicorns to sell it in her shop. To hear that one of „my“ unicorns had reached the other part of the world just left me speachless.
4. Wig inspired by Ariel the mermaid:  To find that this post made it into the top five of blogpost in English, makes me especially happy, because I took a while to find a new way of presenting a pattern. It is a photo-tutorial of which I also made a video version. It has got more than 3.000 pins on Pinterest and I got a lot of comments on the video.
5. Audrey Hepburn Crochet Doll: I am a huge fan of Audrey Hepburn, so of course I am more than happy that so many of you like my pattern. This one has not only one of the top positions in the 2016 statistics, it was also shared 87 times on Facebook, which is a lot in my eyes. I still love my Audrey Doll and hope that some of you have one of your own by now.

Fluffy’s Youtube Channel

one of the most interesting experiences in my 2016 blog-year was to start a Youtube-channel. In the first place, I didn’t know it would be so much fun to do video tutorials for me. But in fact, I really enjoy doing videos so much, that I started to do little stoptrick-animations with my amigurumi, too. On the other side, I found out that Youtube really has a much more rough atmosphere than I was used to from blogging. From fellow bloggers, I am quite used to being addressed in a way that matches a netiquette in one way or the other. But on Youtube I met my first hater-comments, which really took me by surprise. Thanks to other, nice comments and sincere feedback, I did not give up. So there will be more videos in 2017.

Followers, Followers, Followers

I know that followers are not the only way to get the feeling that your blog is improving and moving on, but it makes me happy indeed to see that my audience is growing. By now I have over 140 followers on Twitter, 135 fans on Facebook, 300 people follow my work on Instagram and there are incredible 780 subscribers on my Youtube channel. Although this blog itself does not have a lot of subscribers on bloglovin or via email, there are around 450 visits on an average day. I did not think this was possible for a small diy-crochet-blog like this, which was started rather spontaneously and without any plan behind it in the first place.

2017

Coming to plans, I want to share some ideas with you, which I want to realize next year. In the first place, I want to give my blog a more personal touch. Until now, I most often just „spit out“ patterns as they come to my mind. I hope to do some more constant things next year. For example I have a series in mind showing how to do a whole ferry world in crochet.

In 2016 I started to do more and more crochet with thin yarn and even micro-crocheting. I am planning to do some posts on that and also trying to keep my patterns a bit more simple in order to make them compatible to these techniques.

On my Youtube channel there still will be two sorts of videos. On the one hand, I will do tutorials of my newest patterns. On the other I want to improve my short amigurumi movies and bring my work to live with it. Don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I have something in mind featuring one of my favourite superheroes…

This year I participated in the Amigurumi Design Contest by amigurumipatterns.net for the first time. I made it to position 128 of 426, which was amazing for me, because I never presented my work in a contest before. Nevertheless, I want to top that next year. Of course this will only be made possible with your support.

This leads me to saying thank you for a great year! I really enjoyed crocheting with you and seeing all your wonderful creations. You are really inspiring!

Do you have any ideas or wishes for this blog in 2017? Just leave me a line in the comments or drop me an email and they may come true!