Hobbies?

[CrazyTaraWitch]

Wow Deb, that is beautiful!
I have for a few weeks now been attempting to knit a baby blanket for my nephew for Christmas, but I haven't gotten very far yet. Last week I also started knitting a scarf, but I broke the knitting needle so I will probably have to start over as I don't think I can get what I have off the broken one without ruining it. I'm still pretty terrible at knitting so the blanket will probably be atrocious, but it's fun!
Over the last couple of months I've also gotten really into building costumes out of things I find at Goodwill, and I've assembled various Doctor Who outfits. I've also over the last several months been really enjoying decorating t-shirts with fabric paint. I'm a horrible artists so all the ones I've made so far are boring (quotes and no pictures), but I enjoy making them and love wearing them.

[JustSkipIt]

I am so happy. First off, I finished Chiara's labyrinth blanket last night. I'll link to pictures in the next few days - I haven't uploaded them yet. But also...

Back this summer I made a labyrinth blanket for a big brother blanket for my friend's little boy when she had her baby. Last night she posted on FB his drawing of his four favorite old and new presents - his plastic Godzilla, checkerboard, new bike, and labyrinth blanket!

[JustSkipIt]

Chiara's aforementioned Labyrinth blanket.

[CrazyTaraWitch]

I finally finished my nephew's baby blanket today! Okay, so it was way to small to be a real blanket, it's really a love, and it ended with about twice the stitches it started with and it's practically a semicircle, and it has two tiny holes (I assume from dropping stitches), but even so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, cause I finally finished a big knitting project for the very first time, and I did much better with binding off than I have in the past. One of my sisters, who is an amazing knitter, said is was great, but she was probably just being nice. I'm sure I will get better eventually though.

[JustSkipIt]

Jas - if it's softy he will love it!

[CrazyTaraWitch]

It is soft Deb, though not as soft as originally intended; I had special yarn for it that was fuzzy and called "baby bee," but it was way too hard for me to knit with and I had to start over with acrylic yarn. It did come out feeling nice though, and he seemed to like it, so I'm pretty satisfied.

[JustSkipIt]

I finished a 3rd Labyrinth blanket yesterday. It's a big brother blanket for my SIL's brother's son. Also they're friends of ours. In Yiddish they are our Machtuna or "family". I'm less than 1/3 done with the blanket for the baby and we just got invited to a shower on the 15th for a different family so I'm trying to make a blanket for that baby very fast.

[Ariel]

Deb,

You are AMAZING!!!

Love your beautiful stuff!!!

Keep it coming, eye candy and I bet it's snuggly, too!

Ariel
How I Met Your Mother

[JustSkipIt]

I finished another baby blanket last week. For some reason I can't get the url to link a picture from fb for it but I think if you go to the last one you can probably page through.

Anyway... So I don't need to finish another one for a few months because the next baby (a friend's) is due in September. So I mentioned to my wife learning to knit. She showed me a few times and I've been trying. But it was really hard. Now... my wife is left-handed but knits right-handed. She had a hard time learning but does it. But when trying to teach me was showing me this thing where you like flip your left wrist and I could not do it. I literally spent 20 minutes trying and failing to do one stitch.

So Saturday the kids's godparents brought breakfast and hung out (our usual). So I told LisaDiane that I was trying to learn to knit and she said did I want her to teach me since she's right-handed. I said oh Rachel already did but the thing with the left wrist is so hard. She was like... what thing with the left wrist and pulled out her project. Then LD did a totally different thing with the right needle that was like BAM! I can do that. Now I'm practicing making my stitches even and the right tension and not making them backwards and such. It's a work in progress.

[JustSkipIt]

I'm working on a purple blanket for a baby coming in September. And I decided to crochet my son a Tardis blanket for his birthday. It will take a long time because 1. it's single crochet and 2. I only want to work on it when he's asleep. It is quite daunting.

[CrazyTaraWitch]

Last weekend I started a scarf for my costume for my Doctor Who convention next February. It's only about 4 inches so far and will hopefully be at least 10 feet when I finish, but it's a start. Eventually I hope to knit the 18-foot multi-colour scarf that one of the Doctors wears, but this scarf is for one of the Companions and is much simpler as it's a solid white, plus shorter and narrower.

[JustSkipIt]

I opened an Etsy shop for my hats and also set up a blog page to try and get donations to Livestrong. Basically the difference is that with the blog post, the person would donate and then I would contact them about what they want. With Etsy, they just purchase it and I send what they asked for, then I make the donation. I'm hoping this will bring in some more money for Livestrong.

[JustSkipIt]

I am crocheting Asher a tardis afghan for his Birthday next Thursday. I have done it in secret and don't know if I will get it done since I can only work on it when he is asleep. Rachel is going to embroider the Police Public Call Box and the words on the sign for me.

[JustSkipIt]

I finished Asher's Tardis Afghan. I think you can see pictures at: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater.

[CrazyTaraWitch]

That is a fantastic TARDIS Deb! I want to learn to crochet more than ever now.
I've been doing more knitting. I'm about done with a Ravenclaw scarf, but I still have a long way to go on the Fourth Doctor scarf I started last summer, and only a few weeks left to finish. I'm also working on a scarf for my mum's birthday, just a simple brown and green number, which is my priority at the moment;hoping to get it finished in the next couple days. Next project I start, I want to use the pearl stitch as I haven't practiced it in a long time.

[Willow_Friendly]

I'm going to start doing modeling again, but I don't know if I should start with car's, ship's or plane's first.

[Ariel]

Two new hobbies - one is volunteering with a history club in Sacramento. We recreate the Gold Rush, do a Ghost Tour for three weekends near Halloween, and recreate various historical personalities on the streets of Old Town Sacramento.

My other hobby which I hope to take up again is playing dulcimer. I've wanted to for years, practiced every day for about six months and then kind of dropped off it when my teacher let me know I wasn't very good. I knew that already but somehow hearing it straight out kind of took the heart out of me; especially since it was given without me asking for her opinion. But I love dulcimer music, so I need to find another teacher and start again. The toughest part is to allow myself to just enjoy doing something, to accept progress even if I'll never be great at it.

[Artemis]

I don't really do much hobby-ish these days, besides writing - unless collecting Lego counts? - but a couple of years ago I did venture back into building model ships, which I did quite a lot of back when I was younger, so this was a familiar sight:



That's the parts for Enterprise NX-01, from the... not great final Star Trek series 'Enterprise' (season four was pretty good, if only they'd let it keep going), and the only starship Enterprise I didn't have a model of already. Back when I used to do these a lot (and back in the 90s they'd make model kits for anything) I was impatient and used to just slap a coat of paint on and call it done, but for this I took my time and lavished attention on every piece, as best I could. Took two weeks (most of which was during holidays, so I was at it all day), and I think turned out pretty well:



Edited to put these extra images in the post, since photobucket's not cooperating:

[Ariel]

The Starship Enterprise - pretty freakin' awesome! Still remember the old narration, really wanted to sign up and fly on that ship! I tried to see all the pictures on photobucket, but couldn't. On the plus side, I saw the Tardis Afghan which is a masterpiece of utter fun.

The hobby I'm just beginning to pick up is magic. Nothing as good as floating a rose or creating a flaming O-- (just realized I'm skirting the edge of smutty here!) but I've added a couple of new pieces to the bowl vanish. Just realized I should get someone to tape it so I could put it on YouTube!

Any more hobbies out there? Fun to hear about them.

Ariel