Tarting up my sidebar

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you for making it into the body of my post as that is probably the least alluring title in the history of blogging. You must be very bored dedicated, I commend you.

Now, you might have noticed that I've been making some changes to my sidebar:

• Gone is my 'What Brings You Here?' poll:
  
  
  It is very interesting know that 83% of my readers are self-interested and / or mysterious (optimism + curiousity + something else). Apologies to the real-life people I ignore in favour of blogging, and I'm sending a thank you into the ether for the three people who found themselves here through mishap or misadventure (but stopped long enough to tell me). As far as schadenfreude, glad to be of service! In all seriousness... an honest-to-goodness thank you for your votes, I really appreciate it!


• I've added an RSS feeder type thing. Ever wonder what one of these are?
  
  I've seen this button or allusions to RSS over on proper blogs. And then I was over on KitschenSink's blog yesterday and she was posting about it and I thought, 'Hmmm, I'll have me one of those'. I still don't completely understand it (at least not enough to explain it to you without sounding like a numpty), but rest assured, it makes me a proper blogger now. If I understand correctly, you can sign up and your feed will collect my posts so you can read them at your leisure. Or immediately, preferably.


• I've added a storefront for my patterns, right in my blog. Now you never need to leave. This is a new widget through Paypal, it was a total frickin nightmare to install and looks a tiny bit crap, but it took me all day to make so it's staying for now.


• Finally, being narcissistic business-minded, I think everyone should know about my blog. But I'm not too great at the whole 'come over and see what I wrote!' thing so I joined Chic Chick Media, which is a cross-promotional blog button for women bloggers.
  
  
  When you join, you write a brief description of your blog and put it into three categories. Then you display the button on your blog (also choosing three categories) and everyone is cross-promotionally happy! It's still early days, but looking at my Google Analytics about ten percent of my current traffic is coming here through these links. They may not be staying, but they're coming. So it's one to watch perhaps...


• Oh, and I've removed my sleep counter. Don't worry, I don't need a widget to remember.