You pretty well know mine: I figure skate, I dig ponds, I keep a reef, I look up ancestors, I look up other things, I follow physics and archaeology and dabble in languages, I draw, I photograph, I travel, I like code, crossword, and jigsaw puzzles, particularly the electronic sort.
Among things on hold, I love camping, riding, swimming, but haven’t done it in years; I used to love fishing, but I’ve nursed too many aquarium fish by now. I’m only happy if I don’t get a bite. I like model building—we’ve got some lovely wooden ship models that have been languishing for 3 years, awaiting spare time.
Things I’d rather go to the dentist than do: go shopping, hike on bare, flat ground, go to a nightclub, a tanning salon, a spa, a manicure, or a beauty parlor.
I’m like you, Miss Cherry, I have a need for water. Hard to believe that that this land-locked native Okie is so hooked on the sea, eh? I’d love to live close enough to the beach that we could load our 3 black Labs up and spend the day chasing the waves. I also love to fly and it would fun to take flying lessons. Daddy was a flying instructor when I was little so I spent many a happy hour in the plane going places with him.
CJ, I also like to dabble with genealogy. I have been interested since I was in High School. My Dad’s father did his side of the family and started on my Mother’s side. I have entered what he had done into FTM. I am also trying to flesh out the siblings, which he did not do.
I am also working on my ex-husband’s family, since my kid’s would like to have that side done.
I have transcribed a number of letter’s from my Mother’s greatgrandfather to his wife when he was looking for land in Texas. He later was moving his belongings to Texas in the southeastern Walker County area, when he died in Angelina County on the way to Texas from Alabama in 1852.
These letters and working on genealogy make history come alive.
I also read and reread. I have read most of CJ Cherryh’s books and many other sci fi authors. I must have started my love of SciFi when I was in my teens. I had a book which had been given to my Dad, an anthology of Science Fiction, which had Slan by Van Vogt. I also enjoy mysteries, esp. Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs. I have also read all of the Hornblower series of books by CS Forester.
I also like to put model cars, planes, etc. together. I started enjoying Legos when I helped my grandson put a Lego or MegaBloc model together.
Some of my other hobbies are collecting stamps (on the back burner), baseball cards (also on the back burner), and traveling. One of my projects I have planned since I retired is scanning old family photographs. I have scanned some, but not all.
Slan! One of my favourites from way back when. I just picked it up for my Kindle.
When it’s not time, it’s something else. I want to have a horse again (I had to put my boy down last year and miss him still), I want to have the space to set up my leatherworking tools again, I would love to have the time and discipline to practice music regularly. (I’m a lapsed oboist – you cannot be an occasional oboe player). I don’t have enough time to read, I _make_ the time to write, I try and keep up with the garden, I cycle whenever I can (short trips right now, but growing), I take my camera for long walks, I dabble in 3D art (having finally decided that I will NEVER be any good in traditional media), I love to travel, I regularly visit the library to keep up with academic reserach…
Why am I surprised that I don’t have enough time for anything else?
Photography (with an emphasis on digital), belly dancing, photographing dancers, flowers, the cats and major local events. Crafts include crochet, knitting, weaving on a rigid heddle loom. (My method of warping the loom has other
weavers shaking their heads, but it’s the way the instructions said to do it.) Collecting yarn for future projects. Trying to create inexpensive, possible costume ideas for plus-size, belly dancers on tight budgets who want the fantasy. Gardening when the spirit moves me. Yard sale and thrift store shopping. Avoiding cleaning the house. Archeological digs in the house. The layers of strata can be quite interesting. Reading a variety of books. (Dare I admit I’ve discovered two comedy, paranormal romance series? Me, who hates romance novels?)
I think if I had the time, I’d like to try some of the more complex weaving patterns that require four harness looms. Setting up the loom is a bear, but following a weaving pattern is easier than crocheted lace patterns. When my hand finally quits hurting, I want to get more crocheting and knitting done. I adapted an adult Juliet’s cap for American Girls dolls. No, I didn’t reduce the thread size to 20 and use 11/0 beads.
Just got back from taking The Canadian (train) from Toronto to Vancouver, with a few days enjoying the cities at both ends. 4 nights on the train. So, a first avocation: train travel, when I have the time and money. Books (libraries don’t require that money thing). Museums, live theater and music, art. I’ve always had at least one cat. Travel of all sorts, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Spending time with family–large extended family, 3 children, 5 grandchildren, ranging from college age down to 10. And, oddly, work. I’m theoretically retired, but help out with a variety of research projects, which are generally fascinating (I politely decline opportunities for less-fascinating ones). Try to stay below 20 hours a week, but this winter will probably be full-time as a couple of studies overlap. Of course, I spend a certain amount of time idling around on the computer, just now I was reading what everyone likes to do and decided to join in. (I was hoping to find an update from Younger Dryas, one of my absolute favorite screen names ever; what do you think someone who chose that name would like to do?)
I’m not sure ‘reading’ qualifies as a hobby, because it is far more serious than that. I would have to say that reading is an addiction. If I have nothing to read, I find myself browsing the soup can labels. I have withdrawal symptoms without text available. I keep maybe a third or fewer of the books I buy (thank goodness there is a decent used bookstore in town) and the last time I counted them, I had just over 8000 books downstairs on the shelves. I didn’t count the ones upstairs. There are fewer upstairs. Maybe only two thousand.
Hobbies, though – let’s see. I like to take photographs but just casually. I like to hike, as long as it isn’t too strenuous – my knees are going. As a teen, I rode horses as often as I could, and we had a pony for several years. I didn’t like going very fast but I did really enjoy hurdles.
I am a bit of a packrat in general, so we might as well say I collect things. I actually do collect certain things on purpose: bells. mineral samples (I am a geologist and I work mainly with very dull and boring fine grained carbonaceous limestones and mudstones, so pretty minerals are a bit of a relief). Savings banks – I have a nice collection of savings banks.
Gardening – oh, very casually! I have a couple of dozen houseplants, including six orchids (two are blooming just now). We grow vegetables too.
I like to read cookbooks, and I like to try recipes that look interesting. I don’t cook often though, maybe two to four times a month (usually Friday night).
I like to sing. I have a lot of a capella experience in groups but am shy to sing alone in public, so don’t do as well as I could. I know I’m not actually very good – not much range and I wander off pitch too easily.
I like to take walks, visiting a nice coffee shop, and visiting historical/interesting places.
We’ve always had a dog, once in a while a cat, fish for several years, and caged birds – finches. The fish and the birds were for the children, who took care of them very well. The dogs and the cats were, and are, mine.
blast it, grammar errors. Is there a way to edit posts? I apologize.
What I would like to do:
a) have a greenhouse to extend the growing season for vegetables
b) resume overnight camping
c) perhaps take up fishing again
d) take dancing lessons
(children and their activities consumed much of my ‘free time’ for many years, but now they are beginning to leave for college, and I am reminded of activities I used to enjoy, and might like to try again)
It’s never too late.
And I wish I could find a way for you to edit: I can, and if ever a thing is too egregious, I do: so if you really need it (like you accidentally posted something you’d really rather fix) let me know.
But I took up figure skating at 61, so there’s hope for everybody.
Younger Dryas studies climate, surely – or possibly anthropology.
Me, I like to build models. Not so much the kind that you find in a store, but conceptual ones of my own design. Specifically spacecraft — landing boats much like the kind you see described in many of Jerry Pournelle’s books. I use sheet plastic and do a plank on frame construction. It’s tedious, but fun.
I don’t have the energy and time that I used to. My eyesight is failing and I end up cutting my fingers more than I do the plastic with the ol’ X-acto knife.
What I’d really love to do once I can get my mind in the proper framework is to write.
The one thing that I really hate to do is play bingo. Don’t ask me why, but I find it to be torture beyond imagination 🙂
I read, mostly old favorites and certain new works, mostly non-fiction, and give much thought thereto; I walk and hike with my Canine-American companion, and worked hard to live in a place that drives you out into the natural world; I spend a great deal of time on the Net, reading, studying, writing, participating.
Through circumstance and choice I’ve been able to follow some hobbies through a monkish obsession and out into a new career. My animated film work involves writing, design, illustration, model and puppet construction, lighting, engineering, photography and digital effect work.
(Hmmm…what about a movie miniature of A.S. Norway and its fighters?…hmmm…)
(Hmmm…what about a movie miniature of A.S. Norway and its fighters?…hmmm…)
I was thinking about that very same thing 🙂
Joining in a bit late, I know, but would like to share my love for my new hobby, water colour painting – it makes me so happy! I started in January, was pretty poor at it but have practised and practised and practised – and have recently gained anough confidence to start doing paintings for friends and family. Last week I went on a one day painting workshop taught by Terry Harrison, well-known here in the UK – it was a blast and now I’ve booked on to a 4 day residential course with him in March.
Aside from painting, I also love to read (of course!) and collect stamps, listen to music and play with my two kittens, Ollie and Isaac. I would like to study astronomy but that will have to wait until I retire when I have more time. Star-gazing here in London is almost impossible thanks to the street lighting etc. We can see very bright stars and constellations such as Orion, and planets Jupiter, Saturn and Venus, but no child growing up in London will ever see the awesome night skies in all their glory, which is a very great shame.
Cute kittehs! And brave person, to tackle water paintings—the one-mistake-and-start-over medium. Sort of like raku pottery. I took it for a number of years, when I was quite young, and only scratched the surface of what there is to learn about that medium!
Another late comment. I just logged in a few days ago and am now catching up. Great site! Hobbies, what isn’t. In many ways my work is my hobby. I am a potter/sculptor. I garden, especially flowers. Knit, crochet on winter evenings. Music, early music, trying to sing early music. Would enjoy relearning classic guitar. Reading is so much a part of me that I don’t think of it as a hobby, more like breathing. (Of course I breathe/read, how else can I stay alive?). I love taking fatuous sayings and skewing them in illustrations. ( Think about the possibilities for ‘Catch the Bluebird of Happiness’.)
I grew up within three blocks of the Atlantic and seem to have a need to have the ocean in my background and live in the woods.
Cooking, inventing variations on old recipes. Baking bread is a passion. Have just begun to use a food processor for all but the final knead. Cannot imagine using a bread machine, not tactile enough.
Future desires include learning to blow glass and work with precious metal clays.
Are the animals a hobby or an addiction? Three young cats. One a little older is the definite Queen looks down from infinite superiority at the two who are barely out of kittenhood. Animal behavior is fascinating, establishing hierarchies etc.
This could go on and on. I think my biggest hobby is curiosity.
I LOVE hot fresh-baked bread—way too much! 😉
while hubby is not into either swimming or hanging out on the beach, if i can just get some time around water – watching/listening to the ocean, being at a lake, hearing the gurgle of a stream – i’m happy. of course, if i have a camera in hand, there’s apt to be a ton or 3 of photos taken of the water in various moods 😉 as for eating fish, LOVE trout, like salmon, the rest i’m not partial to. now crustaceans are a different story 😉
horses – yes, small input = large output from them. i however would rather clean stalls than clean my house! they can be incredibly smart and incredibly stupid, and absolutely fabulous to watch and hang out with….
Keep fish, and cats, and a lone corn snake. Hoping to get a beehive next summer. Play boardgames- we’ve got a couple of hundred. Very space intensive! Bit of RPGs. I do a lot of walking, to work, on the hills and just around the countryside, and some kayaking on the canal at the end of the garden. I’m coaching Son through maths resits at the moment so am spending a lot of time getting to grips with stuff I haven’t used for years. The Novel is pretty much finished and I’m tinkering in a vague putting off the next stage way, because it’s unpublishable and yet I am for some reason required to actually try. But mostly (and I am prepared to be shunned for this- I should probably find a more socially acceptable hobby like exposing myself in public) I write very dark slash fanfic for amusement.