Hobbies new and old

I was out shopping the other day and saw something that I thought would make a perfect Christmas gift.. asked myself if it was to early to be thinking Christmas... glad I'm not alone

I too enjoy mowing  when it's nice out, I put my ear plugs in and ride around for hours.... lol not much exercise but it is somewhat peaceful.  I'd like to come up with something to do with my hands, crocheting seems like a great way to just have something to do.

I shop for Christmas all year long- helps a lot come holiday time with lowering the frantic piece.

I love old movies.  It's too bad AMC and TCM added in more modern movies (I really didn't like the '60s beach movies but when they started in with '70s and '80s I stopped watching).  

When I was younger I enjoyed tennis. I'm hoping once I lose weight that I can play again. Of course my joints may not agree :)

I plan on doing more bicycling. We have some trails nearby that are upwards of 100 miles long, not that I'm planning on that big of a trip but who knows?

I'm also an avid walleye fisherman and with less weight I'll be able to hit more rustic areas in Canada. Right now camping is not a viable option, I tend to stay at resorts or cabins. Plus I think I'll be able to fish more days locally because my body won't be so abused by the extra weight. Bouncing in 2-3 ft waves is rough when you weigh over 400lbs.

I may try to get back into deer hunting. I enjoyed it when I was younger but trekking though the woods at my size is a recipe for a heart attack or a broken ankle.

All sounds like wonderful and achievable goals... well the tennis would do me in :)

I've always had to have something to do with my hands, and crafts are something I really enjoy. I have just enough artistic talent to turn out a decent whatever, but not enough to really design for myself and create works that stand out enough from the pack to be notable and valuable. I'm basically a crafting dilettante for the most part.

My favorite hobby is making glass beads. This involves melting glass rods with a propane and oxygen fueled torch, wrapping the glass around thick wires, and then removing them from the wires when they're cool. There's a lot more to it than that, but you get the gist. I haven't been able to do any of this work for a while because of nerve damage in my right hand/arm, but I'm hoping I can get back to it eventually. I'll also need to build a home studio since the open studio near me has closed. The focus and concentration needed make it very enjoyable to me. Along with making the beads I've done a lot of bead weaving and stringing and jewelry design.

Cooking and baking, definitely. I've been knitting a bit lately, I'm teaching myself lace knitting at the moment and have promised myself a nice cardigan when I get to goal. Needle felted sculpture is something else I have planned. I've dabbled in quilting, sewing, woodworking, stained glass, crochet, and quite a few others, some as exotic as pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs.)

I'm trying to work on swapping out most of these sedentary, crafty type things with more active and dare I say, athletic things. I mentioned in another thread that I like to shoot a bow and arrow, and walking/hiking is something that's always interested me as well. Once I get to goal I also want to get SCUBA certified and do a little diving before I'm too old!

I think I'd really enjoy trying stained glass.  

Does the nerve damage not also keep you from knitting and such?

No, because nothing else requires as much fine motor control and timing. If I need to do a k2tog tbl, I can take my time and work it slowly. If I screw it up, I can tink it and redo it. But if you put molten glass in the wrong place, or don't do it quickly enough, the whole piece you've been working on is quite possibly ruined. And it can take hours to make just one bead, depending on the difficulty.

I believe it must be incredibly difficult to make glass beads by hand.  I love long tedious jobs, but the idea of doing something so small with something molten freaks me out a bit.  Not to mention every time I see someone blowing glass I imagine them inhaling instead and dropping dead.  (shudder)  

I just thought that maybe the repetitive motion of knitting might cause you pain, but it's clearly the motor skills that are more affected.  I'm not sure which would suck more.  I know I've had all my nerves pinched in my shoulders, elbows, and wrists from swelling and that was pretty unbearable but I wouldn't like to lose fine motor skills either.  >.>

Exactly. It's not that the movements are painful, it's just that the last two fingers on my right hand are numb and I have almost no fine motor control with them. It wouldn't seem like those two fingers would count for much, but they do. I do a lot of holding and spinning of mandrels (the thick wires) with that hand, and I found that I used to drop them way, way too often when I first got the problem. So I haven't worked at it since, but I'm itching to get back to it and try to adapt to what's apparently my new normal.

If it helps, I've tried blowing glass a couple of times, and you'd have to inhale really, REALLY hard to inhale any of it.  The kind of glass work I do is commonly called lampworking, and is a little smaller in scale. But working with molten glass that way can be interesting, too. You need a whole new set of clothing requirements: No man-made (in other words, meltable!) items, no shorts or short sleeves, and because sometimes the glass rods "pop" from thermal shock if you heat them up too quickly, absolutely NO plunging necklines! *OUCH*, from experience!

I have a couple of photos of some of my work around on an old computer, I'll see if I can dig them out or just take a few new ones.