It’s been a great first year, and I’d like to sincerely thank all LaceNews readers for their support. The whole project has been an amazing experience for me. Here’s a little summary of activity on the site:

43,325 hits on the site as of this morning, and 121 active subscribers. The maximum hits for one day is 452 on July 28, 2011, when the Powerhouse Love Lace winners were announced.
307 posts with 89 comments.  Many were revised with new information or corrections (as I have already done to this one).
92 Ebay alerts featuring 721 items
6 Auction announcements
13 specialized collecting articles
4 notices on competitions
5 convention announcements
10 exhibition announcements
3 interviews
Lace events – 109 in England & Ireland, 4 in Europe, 8 in the US & Canada
4 notices of extraordinary lace for sale
1 fiction download
1 music study
3 museum profiles (and one in progress)
2 specialized lace profiles
12 Lace-of-the-Month profiles (well, 11 actually, still working on the June writeup)
1 post in the more scientific ‘Quantitative Analysis’ category
1 Stolen item report

Of all these, the Puncetto Valsesiano post is by far the most popular, with 2,259 hits, followed by Tunisian Chebka Lace at 605.  The Tatting Lace of the Month post is third at 550, followed by Collecting French Santon Lacemakers, 432, and the Californian Poppy exhibition at 393. Then comes Lace for Sale: Stella at 296, Lace for Sale: Youghal Border at 288, Collecting Flemish Pottery Lacemakers at 285, Lace of the Month: Bucks – January 2011 at 252, Collecting Belgian 1000 Frank/200 Belga Banknotes at 233, and the Interview with Maria Niforos, 214.

And then there’s the new LaceNews Channel. After the August update I anticipate the collection will have grown to about 1300 videos in 61 categories. YouTube is completely confused on their Channel View accounting, but I estimate that there have been about 2400 views since it was started on July 14, 2011.

After the whirlwind first year (including the big July forest fire) things are settling down a bit.  Search parameters are more solid, and I look forward to expanding announcements to more events in other countries. Several more interviews are in process, and every time I travel I try to visit at least one new museum. The last big project is the LaceNews Web site, which has been in the works for the past 3 years. It will be up by the end of the year, over 2200 pages (I kid you not) of lace!

Oh, and I’ll also be teaching an intensive class in traditional Alençon lace technique at the 2012 IOLI convention in Minneapolis, just as I was taught at the Atelier National du Point d’Alençon in 1980. As far as I know, I’m still the only American ever allowed to study there. This is the only time I’ll ever teach this class.

My deepest thanks to everyone, and there’s much more coming!
Laurie