Stats: who knew?

My blog is hosted by Blogger.  I've just been so tickled pink to do the basic blogging thing that I haven't ever taken the time to explore other options offered by Blogger. So, it was a delightful experience to discover that Blogger keeps statistics of various kinds on your blog that you can see.  Who knew that statistics options was available??  :-)

For just *today's* (8/23/11) stats, while I see I've mostly had visitors from the USA, I *also* have had visitors from Canada, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Spain, Philippines, and Chile!  Imagine that!!

And for this weeks' stats, visitors came from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, India, Netherlands, Colombia, Spain, and France!  Wowsers!!

*ALL* *OVER* *THE* *WORLD*.   Primarily English-speaking countries don't necessarily surprise me (I'm waving to Canada, the UK, Australia) but all the other countries, where English might be spoken, but not as the primary language ...   UAE?  Europe?? South America?? Southeast Asia??   and that is just *this week*.   I am deeply grateful for all of you readers!

Thank you so much for reading my blog.  I write mainly to document for myself what I'm doing as a digital diary of sorts.  I love to share my knowledge with others and am very, very happy (and pleased!) to see that so many people from all over the world drop by to read what I'm doing.  I'm just astounded by how far blogs reach.

I know (through Google Reader) that there are many blogs written in languages other than English.  I admire all the eye-candy on those blogs without understanding the verbage.  There was one blog from the Netherlands that prompted me to click through to it and leave a comment.  I had no idea if the author spoke English or not, but figured my enthusiasm and compliments would come through (at least the smiley face, if nothing else!).  To my pleasure, the author responded to my comment in English, so I'm happy she actually understood my words.  :-)

So, to all you quilters Out There .... all around the world ... thank you for reading my blog!  Thank you for stopping by.  Thank you for having *your own blogs*!  I love, love, love reading about what everyone is doing.  While many pieces are inspirational to me, I have come to the stage in my life that I realize I can ADMIRE something and not necessarily need to REPLICATE it.  Please continue to post pictures .. *lots* of pictures!  Seeing all the eye-candy is one of the bright spots of my day!  :-)