What's yer hobby?

Hang gliding, baseball, skateboarding, white water kayaking, playing piano and ukulele, sailing, movies, camping. I roller blade and skateboard with my dog on a skateboard that pivots in the middle so I can go uphill.
John S
PDX OR

It's so much fun reading about all your hobbies!

Here are mine: reading, gardening, target shooting, my pets (guinea pigs and hamsters), learning about new things, movies, swimming. I am also a mediumistic energy healer in my spare time.

I'm glad you had a comma between shooting and my pets, Monica.
John S
PDX OR

John Saltveit wrote:I'm glad you had a comma between shooting and my pets, Monica.
John S
PDX OR

😀

Play in an Irish band with the GF ( she plays the sort of flute Bryan makes ) I play cittern
I also teach Irish dancing

David

I spend most of my free time mentoring a FIRST FRC Robotics team. Each year the kids have 6 weeks to design and build a 150 pound robot. Every year is a different different game. http://www.team2342.org/ I also work with a group of women firearm instructors who teach women firearm safety and how to shoot. We run shooting events once a month and we have a blast. Every once in a while I find time to do some sewing and/or jewelry making.

I love the diversity of hobbies everyone is listing!

I like many of the hobbies listed here. I crochet and cross stitch, I pickle and garden. I metalsmith and do native beading. And I make CHAINMAILLE. We have long cold winters, have to keep busy doing something for me, not just running around after my kids.

Tyler Ludens wrote:I love the diversity of hobbies everyone is listing!

So do I! This is fun! Excellent topic starter!! Thank you!!

https://soundcloud.com/m-r-j-smith

My main hobby is recording music. I do all the writing, recording, performing, mixing etc myself. It may be interesting to note that it is the whole process, not just being able to play a song or write a song clicks for me.

Kate Muller wrote: I spend most of my free time mentoring a FIRST FRC Robotics team. Each year the kids have 6 weeks to design and build a 150 pound robot.  Every year  is a different different game.  http://www.team2342.org/ I also work with a group of women firearm instructors who teach women firearm safety and how to shoot. We run shooting events once a month and we have a blast.  Every once in a while I find time to do some sewing and/or jewelry making.  

I am a FIRST FRC alum from before they called it FRC, that was a huge influence on my life, so thank you for volunteering with students.  It made a huge difference in my life.

My hobbies are reading (year-round), woodworking and firewood processing (fall/winter indoor activities), and gardening and building (spring/summer outdoors activities).  I really like making spoons out of firewood blocks, but have only done it on a bench indoors.  I guess I need to learn to make them outdoors with a hatchet a la Dick Proenneke.

Fun topic! I have lots of hobbies that change with the seasons and the direction of the wind. For some years I've been really into collecting herbs and making tinctures, oils, and tea blends (generally a spring and summer time hobby) and I love to crochet so I've recently started spinning yarn and look forward to using natural dyes to do that part of the process too (my fall and winter hobby). I also organize volunteers to do work parties in the area and for our local co-op. Camping and hiking are some year round hobbies, always into learning more from nature. I've recently started practicing with a bow and arrow, hope to get into hunting when I'm better at it. I also love to write songs, sing, play drums, ukulele, and learn the banjo. Building with cob, making hugel beds, swimming in creeks, collecting rocks, writing a blog, and watching the fireflies and stars at night...

Jackson Vasey wrote:

I am a FIRST FRC alum from before they called it FRC, that was a huge influence on my life, so thank you for volunteering with students.  It made a huge difference in my life.

It is a lot of fun.  We have seen it make a huge difference in the kids.  Our team is set up to really make the kids run the team and develop leadership skills, project management, and systems thinking along with designing and building robots.  

Several of the kids from the team have also help us with our earthworks when we first started developing our homestead.  Several others have started gardens and one student did his junior year research project on permaculture.  He designed an urban garden for his yard. For his senior project he wants to work on native plants to our area.  

Oh man.....There's so many!
I coach/ump/everystuff formy  son's various baseball endeavors
Music: love metal and old school traditional country. I play guitar badly.
Going to pro wrestling shows
Reading
Camping
Pretty much all the major sports
Picking and digging at yard sales, flea markets exct
Selling said stuff
Fishing
I like to do or build things that make people ask questions
I'm always doing something. I am proud to say I'm NEVER bord.

hey good bump =)

i am like many responders, the line between hobby and job is blurry, i do make some small income from my art and craftwork, where i can.
and i find it very stressful and difficult to market and sell....i usually am able to talk myself into it, be my own boss, and basically force myself to do the selling.
maybe we need to encourage some more folks to get into representing/marketing and selling for lots of small scale artisans?

cause i too really wish i could just focus on making things, and it would just magically turn into money once i finish it =).

so my hobbies/sort of job (s) are --->

Batik (wax resist dyeing), sewing, papermaking and book binding, either repair or creating journals and other books, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry work, bead work, and i make lots of stuff with feathers, which is a fun medium.

well similarly with all things gardening related- sometimes i make some money with these, do work trades and have worked on many small---> large farms for pay $$$ or trade. but sometimes gardening is like theraputic/hobby style..and sometimes its more of an important buffer between me and potential starvation...so idk that i should call it a hobby.

my other art/craft skills --->

drawing and painting, watercolor, oil painting is my fave...."junk" sculptures/found object sculptures, collage, other visual art and even some performance art....and writing, mostly poetry and prose.

and drumming, singing, dance --- and sooooo rusty but for a long time my favorite real hobby was fire dancing, staff spinning, fire staff, and also fans,
and have dabbled in some other circus skills as a hobby, acrobatics, aerial stuff, etc...although even more rusty with such as i am definitely not in the shape i used to be...but back then - loved doing circus stuffs =)

also i practice astrology, doing readings a bit here and there. i can do a pretty good read and i had a lot of people who want me to read for them, but i dont like doing it for $$$ its just...ahhhh...idk what exactly...and i dont want to do it too much. but for a while...one of my hobbies was doing astrology readings for people.

i dabble in, but am not even at an intermediate level with -->
metal smithing, welding, glassblowing, basket weaving and probably  dozen more i am forgetting....

*edited to add a fun pic of me fire dancing, back when i was doing it a lot --->

Most recently it’s been cooking that gets me all excited, but I guess my little gouache paintings I like to sketch on notecards would count as a hobby.

This is of an old Dutch snow scene painting in process. Sometimes I leave them as a grisaille like this, and sometimes I’ll go over them with a velatura of color.

My show rabbits are my "guilty pleasure" hobby that isn't extremely sustainable, but helps to sustain me. But, I do try to utilize any waste or excess product from that hobby in my permaculture design and techniques.

Since the genetics are my favorite part of the rabbit hobby, I oftentimes also have a section of the barn dedicated to my little genetics projects, where I'm selectively breeding for traits and recessives which may not make an ideal show rabbit, but still outlines purposes & goals I've outlined in my own Standard or Perfection for the project.
Currently I'm trying to build a project around the lutino gene (which is pretty rare in the gene pool here in the US), as well as a "landrace breed" project manipulating coat types & textures in an effort to produce something similar to a sheep's fleece. Still have a ways to go with both, though.  

My other hobby, which is still fairly new to me, is ornamental plant breeding; particularly with roses. For me, plant breeding has been much more difficult with selective breeding for specific attributes, compared to animal breeding.
With the roses, I spent almost 2 years just collecting hips and getting decent germination rates. Now, I've spent a few years learning to purposefully pollinate in hopes of isolating desired genes and suppressing/eliminating the undesirable traits.
Like with the rabbits, nothing goes to waste; despite my heavy-handed culling. Anything that is produced & not needed/wanted is appreciated for their brief lives and given back to our mother nature.

Bonsai is another gardening hobby I've practiced; but those familiar with that art know it's essentially a lot of "hurry up and wait," while the trees grow. Since most of my project trees have been in training for 10 years, or less, I just consider them "project trees" that I practice techniques on, and won't likely consider them actual bonsai for a while longer.

I love to garden, paint, sew, cook, read, watch movies, I love music, crochet, do crafts, and up-cycle old furniture. Not necessarily in that order.

My hobby is collecting hobbies. No, really. I'm like a sponge...

Carla Burke wrote:My hobby is collecting hobbies. No, really. I'm like a sponge...

I was going to say that!

Carla Burke wrote:My hobby is collecting hobbies. No, really. I'm like a sponge...

Hey, me too! For years I was all over the map with my hobbies.


That's part of what I love about PEP. I get to dabble, but the dabbling isn't idle.

Carve a spoon? Yep.
Make a solar-powered-water-pump? Yep.
Darn your socks? Yep.
Make a mason bee hut? Yep.
Make pickles? Yep.

Ash Jackson wrote:
Hey, me too! For years I was all over the map with my hobbies.


That's part of what I love about PEP. I get to dabble, but the dabbling isn't idle.

Carve a spoon? Yep.
Make a solar-powered-water-pump? Yep.
Darn your socks? Yep.
Make a mason bee hut? Yep.
Make pickles? Yep.

I see it as broadening my horizons, learning new skills, gaining understanding of how things work. And, sometimes, burning up our kids' inheritances, lol.

I would have to include the broad area of homesteading as my hobby. I am also into astronomy and have a small collection of telescopes (4). The largest has a 14 inch mirror.

Tyler Ludens wrote:What is your hobby besides permaculture?

I have two main hobbies which are related; Embroidery, and Ernest Thesiger.

My embroidery: http://imagination-heart.deviantart.com/gallery/33561114/mixed-media

My Ernest Thesiger website: http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Home.html

What's yours?  The more obscure and bizarre the better!

GOREGEOUS embroidery! I especially love that little hedgehog...

Besides Permaculture, which has really sunk its teeth into me, I've started to make many different liqueurs: I hate wasting fruit, and it is just hubby and me, so we get too many fruit and I have to do something with them. [If you have more ideas , let me know.]
Galliano [from Agastache Hyssop],
Peppermint Schnapps,
Apple hard cider/ schnapps
Elderberry syrup [but I want it to keep a long time, so I add honey and Vodka :-) ].
Also, after tasting black currants fresh from the bush, I decided I didn't care for them. but now, I have the bushes, so what to do? Well a great blackcurrant liqueur! Mom used to make a jam out of her black currants, but that was so long ago I forgot even if I liked it. I'm sure it was sweet, so I most likely liked it.
Also, I make Kirsch from the wild cherries we have around here. I don't know what they are: they are not the tart cherry but sweet cherries can't survive our winters in zone 4, so it is not a sweet cherry either. It is sweet enough to eat out of hand but does have a large stone relative to the flesh. The whole fruit is the size of an overgrown snap peas.
It seems to be a "prunus serotina": The timeline for flowering and fruiting seem to mesh. The immature bark looks like that too. However, in the liquor I make, I ground the flesh and the pits and the seeds inside them, and everything goes in the Vodka to make an extract. The Wiki says that the seeds are poisonous, just like the pits of apricots & peaches, but I assure you that liquor is pretty darn good and has not even given me the slightest tommy ache. Perhaps it is the Vodka in which it macerates for 3 weeks that kills the poisonous effect? I'm not sure.
Another thing that does not quite mesh with the Wiki: These trees are quick to fruit, like 3-4 years, abundantly from the get go [some trees look red/black from the house] and the mature bark doesn't look as furrowed as the photo they have here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_serotina
Next year, I'm hoping to try the same treatment on mulberries, as I expect to have quite a few, red/black and whites.

What a wonderful thread. Some truly talented people here!
Writing is my main hobby, as well as an income source. I've learned all aspects of indie publishing, so I do everything that's needed for my own books myself, apart from editing and proofreading.
My next time-use is reading, planning, and daydreaming for my future piece of land I'm in the process of purchasing, a weed-filled acre with an old house and a stream at the bottom of the garden. Reading "Invasive Plant Medicine" in preparation.
I also sew, paint, and do a little woodworking, all badly but I have fun so that's the main thing.  Oh, and fermenting. I'm just getting back into it again and making some interesting (and sometimes explosive!) edibles.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
Also, I make Kirsch from the wild cherries we have around here. I don't know what they are: they are not the tart cherry but sweet cherries can't survive our winters in zone 4, so it is not a sweet cherry either. It is sweet enough to eat out of hand but does have a large stone relative to the flesh. The whole fruit is the size of an overgrown snap peas.
It seems to be a "prunus serotina": The timeline for flowering and fruiting seem to mesh. The immature bark looks like that too. However, in the liquor I make, I ground the flesh and the pits and the seeds inside them, and everything goes in the Vodka to make an extract. The Wiki says that the seeds are poisonous, just like the pits of apricots & peaches, but I assure you that liquor is pretty darn good and has not even given me the slightest tommy ache. Perhaps it is the Vodka in which it macerates for 3 weeks that kills the poisonous effect? I'm not sure.
Another thing that does not quite mesh with the Wiki: These trees are quick to fruit, like 3-4 years, abundantly from the get go [some trees look red/black from the house] and the mature bark doesn't look as furrowed as the photo they have here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_serotina
Next year, I'm hoping to try the same treatment on mulberries, as I expect to have quite a few, red/black and whites.

there are several different subspecies of prunus serotina, it is a very ancient tree and theres also many localized adaptations....theres also several types of wild cherries not in the serotina species, such as bird cherry, prunus avium or prunus padus

Jane Mulberry wrote:What a wonderful thread. Some truly talented people here!
Writing is my main hobby, as well as an income source. I've learned all aspects of indie publishing, so I do everything that's needed for my own books myself, apart from editing and proofreading.
My next time-use is reading, planning, and daydreaming for my future piece of land I'm in the process of purchasing, a weed-filled acre with an old house and a stream at the bottom of the garden. Reading "Invasive Plant Medicine" in preparation.
I also sew, paint, and do a little woodworking, all badly but I have fun so that's the main thing.  Oh, and fermenting. I'm just getting back into it again and making some interesting (and sometimes explosive!) edibles.

What IS that chocolatey-ice-creamy looking thing??

leila hamaya wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
Also, I make Kirsch from the wild cherries we have around here. I don't know what they are: they are not the tart cherry but sweet cherries can't survive our winters in zone 4, so it is not a sweet cherry either. It is sweet enough to eat out of hand but does have a large stone relative to the flesh. The whole fruit is the size of an overgrown snap peas.
It seems to be a "prunus serotina": The timeline for flowering and fruiting seem to mesh. The immature bark looks like that too. However, in the liquor I make, I ground the flesh and the pits and the seeds inside them, and everything goes in the Vodka to make an extract. The Wiki says that the seeds are poisonous, just like the pits of apricots & peaches, but I assure you that liquor is pretty darn good and has not even given me the slightest tommy ache. Perhaps it is the Vodka in which it macerates for 3 weeks that kills the poisonous effect? I'm not sure.
Another thing that does not quite mesh with the Wiki: These trees are quick to fruit, like 3-4 years, abundantly from the get go [some trees look red/black from the house] and the mature bark doesn't look as furrowed as the photo they have here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_serotina
.

there are several different subspecies of prunus serotina, it is a very ancient tree and theres also many localized adaptations....theres also several types of wild cherries not in the serotina species, such as bird cherry, prunus avium or prunus padus

Well, Leila, you may have solved my problem. Because the prunus avium is what *sweet cherry* cultivars are called, who don't make it in Wisconsin zone 4, I had excluded that possibility out of hand, but my wild cherries didn't quite 'fit' the profile of the serotina either. Looking more closely at the picture of the prunus avium in the Wiki article below, another difference that jumped at me is that the fruit attachment is not that of a raceme. Rather, they seem to sprout all at once from a common pedicel, more like sweet cherries, although a few of the tress I have also have racemes, and the petals are larger, making quite a show when they are in bloom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_avium#Mazzard
Reading also that this cherry used to be in old times referred to as a Mazzard cherry and knowing that many sweet cherries are on Mazzard stock, perhaps what I have growing in great abundance here is the former *stock* of the prunus Avium/ Mazzard. I do have a sweet cherry, a Danube cultivar that made it several winters here. I might try to graft this Danube on a number of wild trees, just to see what will result. I might also try other sweet cherries that have not been growing here, some zone 5 sweet cherries, since the Arbor Day Foundation keeps telling me that I'm in zone 5, now that winters are warmer here.

i have a few that keep me busy. homebrewing wine beer and meads, restoring /resto modding furniture, tinkering with cars / motorcycles and  making videos for my youtube channel.

My job is in education, so most everything else falls into the hobby category at the moment.

- gardening and learning about life and ecosystems
- cooking - an impetus to keep on gardening!
- woodworking and learning about trees, structures, and art.
- reading - mostly science fiction and fantasy. I used to seek out new books a lot, now I tend to re-read good series over and over. My favorites are the Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien middle earth stories, Harry Potter, Earthsea, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- board games - my primary social hobby, mostly on hiatus until everyone (including myself) feels more comfortable meeting and hanging out indoors.
- tabletop role-playing games - especially Dungeons and Dragons. I have been playing sporadically for over 25 years. It's so hard to keep a group going, but I intend to try again once my kids require less attention.
- Making crafts for tabletop role-playing games. Once I discovered the youtube channel now known as "Runehammer" I realized I had been missing a component of D&D that I really wanted to dive into. Making physically interactive bits to augment the narratively interactive bits totally fills out my love for the hobby.
- Music - I occasionally dabble on the guitar, piano, or other instruments even less occasionally. I'm not very good, but I took lessons and a few interesting courses in university like Indonesian gamelan and intro to film scoring. I also picked up enough music theory for it to be very fascinating to me, but didn't practice enough to put it to much use.

Retired hobbies
- video games - I used to play Starcraft, Text MUDs, Dwarf Fortress, and console games like final fantasy, mario, etc.
- bouldering - climbing was fun, but I plateaued and lost interest.
- photography - I think I got tired of sorting photos...
- linux - I got tired of tinkering with my OS in favor of just using it to get things done.