What are your other crafty hobbies?

[livetogarden]

The hobbies I like the most are.....decorating cakes; gardening is my favorite (have a 50' x 100' veggie garden...all organic and our entire 1/2 acre back yard is bordered by flower beds, then I also have the pond); I love to can my home grown produce; sewing....all the window coverings in our home that are possible to make I made; and probably my weirdest but most enjoyable thing to do is weed. Ok...so I'm a little different.
Cath

[KatFish]

Oh, sweetie - I have lots of your brand of happiness right in my backyard.  Come on over to paradise 

[livetogarden]

I'll be there asap.   
Cath

[Desertponder]

Not a blasted thing anymore.

I used to do a lot of counted x-stitch. I loved to do decorative painting and I also used to make porcelain dolls.
I no longer have time to do any of these things anymore. I hate that too because it was my way to relieve stress.
I have so many unfinished projects and things I've got stashed in the basement that I need to work on and finish and I just can't find the time.
I'm having a real hard time even taking care of my water gardens this summer. The last two years that I've had to take on more and more
of helping my dad I've just lost all my own personal time to do things like crafts, etc.

[Esther]

Shanna, sorry you are so stressed, but maybe eventually you'll be able to get back to the things you enjoy. Hopefully you'll never regret taking the time to care for your dad.

[Julles]

"I have so many unfinished projects and things I've got stashed "

Hee hee hee.  That's how it is over here.  Not just craft projects, but just about ANYthing - bookkeeping, house cleaning, bill sorting and filing, just about anything that SHOULD be done, but doesn't really HAVE to be done.  Especially not when there is something more interesting or fun that COULD be done.   

[Desertponder]

Esther, I don't regret taking care of my dad's needs but it does make things very rough for me.
I hope I can get back to doing some crafts one of these days.

Jules.....I know, you should see the pile of antique furniture in one corner of the basement. All pieces that need repairs and need refinished and I've been packing them around for several years and can't get the time to redo them. Several pieces I started to redo them and then couldn't so work has to be done all over again. Most likely I will end up selling most of it. If nothing else though I have have to get my hoosier cabinet put together.
Then I have all the stuff that I've bought at auctions or yard sales, etc. thinking "oh, I know what I'm going to make out of that" and it never gets done.

[Esther]

Shanna, that is one reason I stopped going to rummage sales.

[Bullfrog]

Well beside kayaking, fishing and motorcycles I like to use my metal detector. I don't hunt schools much, I prefer to find things of historic meaning. There wasn't very much civil war activity in this area but in 1862- 1863 Spaight's Battallion was gaurding the river against an imminent yankee invasion. The historical libraby has a lot of good information and I found this..

"About 3 miles above town and where the dense timber begins, the river makes a sharp, short turn. There is a clear cut road for the riflemen. Here, we propose to mount two howitzers."

I knew this place, since i was a child I walked that old road through the woods to the river and wondered why it was there. I later leaned it was "Santa Anna's Ferry." a very old crossing. It took three trips but I finally found 6 big pistol slugs in the stump of an old tree that had fallen down. As the tree rotted, the center fell down and 5 of the slugs were in the ring where the stump was. There was a depression where the tree had fallen and the last slug was about 5 feet away from the stump ring. I held in my hand bullets that were fired into a tree in 1863 by a bored soldier. they aren't worth anything, but they do tell a story.

[LeeAnne151]

Julles, since we were talking about crafty hobbies, I left household chores off my list of unfinished projects. 

I freely admit it, I am horrible about household chores. I can let dirty dishes pile up and laundry too though usually the piled up laundry is clean. I can step over just about anything on the floor except a hairball without picking it up. I get up and I say I'm going to do this or that and then I spend six hours online talking about ponds or gardening or horses or just reading Wikipedia....

I come from a long line of women who sew and cook and who are spotless housekeepers. (most weren't career women) My father is a neat freak who has cleaned the bathrooms obsessively as long as I can remember. I was not raised by slobs at all. They all tried. I'd just go back to my book. I'd mean to read for a few minutes and three hours would go by. Poor Krista will likely never come to a Portland Pond Partay again since she worked for two days to help me get ready because I was woefully lacking in hostess skills and house cleanliness even though a friend came and helped me clean before Krista got here.

 My brother is even worse than I am. He won't even fix broken things at his house and he knows how. My husband gave him a hot water heater over ten years ago and it is still not installled.....His house is falling down around him but he just went on a three week Harley ride through Alaska.

I wasn't joking about ADD, I was diagnosed at 6 and took Ritalin through grade school but when my mother got sick (encephalitis) and permanently brain damaged no one refilled my prescription for high school. Looking back as an adult, I know this was a huge negative turning point in my life. Huge. Not just the loss of my mother as she was before (she has been like an Alzheimer's patient ever since) but the lack of Ritalin for high school. High school teachers didn't realize that was the problem. My report cards are full of can do the work but won't.

I have been to see a specialist in adult ADD and have a bunch of books but knowing about the problem doesn't help me much. I've tried Concerta but it just made me jittery. I need to go back instead of whining but I'll probably just go buy another plant and read another book instead.

Sorry, I have no idea how I got so far off track, or maybe I do......  

[Desertponder]

Shanna, that is one reason I stopped going to rummage sales.

LOL, me too!

[Julles]

LeeAnne - you're my kinda gal!!  That whole "...freely admit..." paragraph coulda been written by me.

I used to beat myself up for slacking off re house cleaning and filing and the like. I was driving myself crazy and running myself ragged, staying up 'til the wee hours, trying to get everything done.  Then one day, I realized that the world won't stop and life as we know it won't end if these things aren't done as well as I'd like them to be done - or even done at all.

And it's true.  I stopped sorting all my old bills by utility type and month, and - the world did not stop turning!  It took work, but eventually I taught myself to sit still and do NOTHING while I watched a movie.  I, too, walk over piles of clothes, and store stacks of papers on the floor. 

But ya know what else?  I have a lot of friends, I go a lot of places, do a lot of things, have a zillion interests, take care of my pets, enjoy my yard, play and recreate.  I'd rather have all those things and experiences, than a pristine house or neatly filed receipts from '03.