2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2010. That’s about 16 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 64 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 232 posts. There were 116 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 164mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 16th with 43 views. The most popular post that day was Dress Design sketches 1950’s (Desire/Awakening Love era).

 

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were en.wordpress.com, google.com.au, geoffdellow.blogspot.com, en.blog.wordpress.com, and search.conduit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for dress designs, fashion sketches, fashion design sketches, 1949 fashion, and short story on sacrifice.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Dress Design sketches 1950’s (Desire/Awakening Love era) November 2009
3 comments

2

1949 fashion and sketches for Awakening Love trailer video — maybe! February 2009
4 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

3

The Sacrifice — another short story March 2008
1 Like on WordPress.com,

4

More Dress Designs From the 1950’s January 2010

5

Romance— SEX: Desire, Lust, Passion, Love — and Affection? February 2009
Not as many hits as on my Magpies Nest Publishing site but there are almost as many hits on my combined blogspot sites (Writing For Joy, Diary of a Country Lady, Gladys Hobson – Author, Lake District Saga — Checkmate, Ask Gran Hobson) So many visitors for the wordpress dress design posts but nice to know people also come back to read my writing efforts!

Fashion in 1952 — Evening Dress

Forget the handsome guy (he\’s mine) One of my own original designs — two piece shot taffeta and brocade

I have now had well over 5,000 hits on posts that have designs going back to the early fifties. Not huge by some standards but good for Wrinkly Writers.
I came across this photo of me in 1952 (with my husband to be). I am wearing a dress I designed the year before (1951) But then it was long and simple — shot silk taffeta blue/black skirt and boned strapless top of gorgeous top silver and blue brocade. I later cut it short and used that material to make the sleeveless top (that you see here) to wear over the dress. It was a useful little outfit. A perfect fit too. All fastenings invisible.
Nothing wasted in those days. It wasn’t just that money was in short supply but we were brought up to make the most of what we had.
What I like about fashions of that era is the cut of clothes. They enhanced the figure. Good packaging with allure, rather than overt exposure of goods.

visit my other blogs
Writing For Joy
Diary Of An English Lady
Gladys Hobson — Author
Magpies Nest Publishing for my UK books.

Red Boxes — new edition started

What a lark! Yesterday I (that is Magpies Nest Publishing) received an order from Bertrams (many bookshops buy their books through them) for When Phones Were Immobile and Lived in Red Boxes – New Edition. I think I must have mentioned it somewhere that I was thinking of publishing a new edition because it has been out of print for a while and some people wanted to read ‘what happened next’.
I have been busy rewriting Checkmate and I finished it today. (It will need a proof reading but that can wait) So the order came as a timely reminder to get on with what people WANT to read!
So I am back down Memory Lane and truly enjoying the experience. Moving to the Furness area – especially Barrow- was like moving back in time! You still had to go through the operator to make your phone call, and press button A to get your few penniesworth, or B to get your money back. Shops closed at lunchtime – even a cafe closed at one until two pm!

All will be revealed!
See http://hobsonsbooks.blogspot.com/ and Magpies Nest Publishing for info on When Phones were Immobile and Lived In red Boxes

Late 1940’s Factory Life — Training To Be A Designer

This is the third part of the story of my design training and growing up into an adult.
That first day at work was painful on my hands. The cutting shears were huge and my hands fairly small and tender. The pressure on the ball of my thumb caused by the unyielding metal as it sliced through several thicknesses of fabric, was unrelenting. Binding the the thumb and finger grips may have softened things a little but it did not stop blisters forming.
The constant noise of heavy machinery above and below that huge room, as well as in the room itself, was like nothing I had ever before experienced. Noise of tanks going along the road and shaking the house was about the nearest thing but that was just an occasional occurrence, this noise only ceased when the workers stopped for lunch.
The room — almost a whole floor of the huge factory — was dull except next to the dirty windows. Plenty of lighting over work benches though. A smell of oil pervaded everywhere. The floor was worn and shiny from many years of use. Shiny knots and heavy grain in the wood stood out of the floorboards, not enough to trip us up but showing the factory’s age like the wrinkled and gnarled faces of some of the aged workers. Many of those employees had spent the whole of their working lives at that factory.
By the time I arrived home on that first day, I felt incredibly weary. My hands hurt and my feet ached. Everything had been so new to me. All my ideas about dress designing had been completely at odds with what I had experienced that day. I may have been staff, but to start with I was part of the workforce. The girls on the cutting bench were lovely, but I felt alone and gauche when talking to the staff. At lunchtime, the office girl took me down to the canteen to have lunch with her. Morning snack with the work-girls, then all change at lunchtime. I ate my pudding with a spoon. She ate it with a fork and spoon. We had nothing in common to talk about. She talked posh and had a boyfriend about twenty years her senior. I was back with the girls on my own level after lunchtime. Well, not really on my level because they were more sophisticated and knowledgeable about life as well as their jobs. (That is where I found out a lot about sex!) I felt everyone was laughing at me. Since I blushed easily, they had cause to.
It sounds daft now, maybe because my perception of life has radically changed. I was young and vulnerable in those days. I had never been away from home and even the girls at college, during my short time there, seemed above my ‘station’ in life. I had been the only girl at school without a navy gabardine coat (I only had a second-hand pea-green coat), and patches stitched over cracks in the uppers of my shoes had marked me out as a poor child. But I started work in the factory wearing a jumper and skirt I bought with my pay from the six weeks’ job I had before getting the trainee designer position. Even so, I was aware of poverty. Poverty had brought about humiliating experiences and they could not easily be dismissed from my memory.
So the evening of that first day of working in that factory, weary and disillusioned I cried myself to sleep. What had I expected? Bright offices and pleasant workrooms with genteel ladies working on individual garments. My mother wanted to know why I was crying but I could not tell her. I did not really know myself.
Teasing over blushing went on, but I settled in. Eventually I kicked the overseer on the shin because he refused to stop rubbing the knuckle of his thumb down my spine. Okay, so he called me ‘a nasty little bitch’ but he never did it again.
I became friendly with one of the cutters — May, a girl six feet in height and a big welcoming smile.
Joan, a young woman, was head cutter. She also modelled the new designs. A lovely friendly girl, she invited May and me to her twenty-first birthday party. I remember we had a lot to drink, mostly stuff like cherry brandy but also gin and lime. I stayed the night at May’s house. We had more to drink before we went to bed. Her younger brother was still up. He drank too, turned a greenish grey (I had never seen anyone turn that colour before) and threw up in the sink. Us? We ate a few large pickled onions, dropped a few and picked them up — likely with fluff attached — ate them and went to bed. We had a good night’s sleep and I went home the next day, fit and happy.
More of my adventures with May later.