Women's Work

Fleshing out my culture post

I mentioned the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in my last post, and since it just happened, I thought I'd blog about it in more depth. This was the 10th year of the festival. The link will take you to the site with descriptions of all the films, but I have quoted it extensively below, as well. It was either the 4th or 5th year I have attended and I didn't volunteer to work like I have the last two years, so I was able to see a LOT of films. It was quite the marathon, though. Lots of walking all over downtown between venues, putting my Z-Coils to the test. We (Laura, Robert, Liz, Jay and I) went to the opening night film, Adventures of Power. It was a fun and funny film about air drumming, not nearly as bad as the local bi-weekly "City" paper, Black & White, made it out to be. Yes, it was ripping off Napoleon Dynamite (and Dodge Ball and most of your Ben Stiller/Will Farrell-type movies) a bit, but it wasn't horrible. It was a little too long, though. That was a complaint I had about most of the feature-length films I saw. Five out of six to be exact.

Then various combinations of the five of us went to movies from 11 AM until 11:30 PM on Saturday. The first was a block of 6 International Shorts:
• The Line | Kent Bassett 2007
• Infinite Justice | Karl Tebbe 2006
• Silly & Serious: William Robinson And Self Portraits | Dennis Tupicoff 2008
• In Between
• A Day's Work | Rajeev Dassani 2008
• My Dad | John Vaughan 2007

Two of these, The Line and A Day's Work, were about bad things that happened to illegal Mexican immigrants and were a little heavy-handed. Infinite Justice was a little (pun-intended) tirade about the Iraq war, made with action figures (who knew there WAS a W action figure?) that was also extremely messagetastic. My Dad was dark, but good. In Between was a Polish film about a guy whose girlfriend was pregnant, but he thought the baby couldn't be his because he was shooting blanks. The best of the lot was Silly & Serious, about the artist William Robinson and all these self-portraits (silly and serious), that he's done.

Laura and I saw Medicine for Melancholy which was billed as "a love story of bikes and one-night stands told through two African-American twenty-somethings dealing with the conundrum of being a minority in a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco." That's pretty accurate. And it was good, though again, too long. And they stuck this in this community meeting about rent control that totally didn't fit the flow of the rest of the film and was obviously supposed to learn us something. This film was preceded by a short called Merrily, Merrily, about a teenager whose parents tell her that she doesn't exist, that they just wanted a kid so bad, they imagined her. Yeah.

Next up, the first zombie movie of the weekend and the one I liked the least. It was WAAAAY too long and just didn't make sense. I know, I know, it's a zombie movie and there has to be a willing suspension of disbelief, but...not that much. The best thing about this movie was the actress who played the zombie in question. From the program: "MAKE-OUT with VIOLENCE is a genre-bending tale of a boy trying to fulfill his unrequited love for a girl who has risen from the dead. Set against the backdrop of a summer of cicadas and swimming pools, the film blends elements of up-beat teenage melodrama with the strange gravity of classic coming of age stories. It tells the story of twin brothers Patrick and Carol Darling, newly graduated from high school and struggling to come to terms with the mysterious disappearance of their friend, the bright and beautiful Wendy Hearst. When a drive through the countryside surrounding their suburban community leads to the discovery of Wendy’s mysteriously animated corpse, the boys secretly transport the undead Wendy to an empty house in hopes of somehow bringing her back to life. As the sweltering summer pushes on, they must maintain the appearance of normalcy for their friends and family as they search for ways to revive the Wendy they once knew, or, failing that, to satisfy their own quests for love amongst the living and the dead."

The first documentary was one of my two favorite films...both of which were documentaries, now that I think of it. Again quoting the program: "We Are Wizards is an intriguing look at the world of Harry Potter mania and the newly emerging Wizard Rock musical genre. The film delves into complicated and often convoluted issues regarding intellectual property, obsessive fandom, inspiration vs. plagiarism, the collision of art and commerce and life in the age of cultural remixing. It becomes a documentary about finding one’s place in a world that often feels as if everything has been done. We Are Wizards is funny, poignant, moving and strangely triumphant. It’s a charming film that proves -- not only through its endearing look at HP fanatics, but also by its very own existence -- that one ingenious creation can indeed produce equally unique and inspiring art." This was hilarious and my only complaint is that it was a little too long and went off into pointless flights of video that had nothing to do with the story they were trying to tell about Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, and etc.

After a really nice dinner at John's City Diner (must recreate the mac and cheese w/prosciutto), we saw the second and third (and final) zombie movie. The first of these was Prombies - a hilarious take on the stereotypical 50s prom, and then Dance of the Dead - which had some excellent effects and stunt work. In fact, film was shot in Rome, GA and some of the stunts were coordinated by someone we know in Atlanta, Nils. Both were a lot of fun, but the feature was (say it with me), TOO LONG. I have this complaint about 99% of the wide-release commercial action movies I see, though. There are too many scenes that are devoted to "action;" in this case, killing zombies, and not enough devoted to plot or character development. Favorite line, "We're the Sci-Fi Club."

Liz's friend Michelle got us into the filmmakers party, although we didn't there until 11:30 or so. We stayed for a couple of hours, drinking the free wine, chatting with folks and watching people dance. I saw another "man" wearing manpris. Oh, the horror.

Sunday, we fortified ourselves with a huge breakfast at The Original Pancake House before setting off for the festival. Laura and I saw Goliath, preceded by 3 shorts. Goliath was about a guy in Texas who loses the eponymous cat, is getting a divorce, gets a demotion at work and finds out a sex offender is living in his neighborhood. He has a rough time. The film was uneven - funny at times and poignant,and long in places (the 10 minute scene of signing papers, for example) - but overall it was good and I loved the end. It was shown with 3 shorts in front, all of which were good:

• Trust | Daniel Scheinert 2007 (Office worker takes a team-building group exercise too far. Funny like a good SNL skit)
• Dear Fatty | Hsin-I Tseng 2008 (Just adorable tale of an animated hamster)
• Hot Dog | Bill Plympton 2008 (Funny fire-dog animation)

Pageant was next. My favorite film - the only feature that wasn't too long. It was a documentary about several men competing in the Miss Gay America pageant, which has been going on since 1973! It's a pageant for transvestites, and the best line in the film is, "You don't have to be gay, but it helps." Utterly fascinating and funny. The amount of money spent on costumes and props and sets is amazing, in both quality and quantity.

Raising our social consciousness, we saw The Dhamma Brothers, preceded by the short, Story Time. Both of these were prison documentaries and gripping. The short was about women in state prison who are mothers (70% of the women in Alabama prisons are) and who participate in a program where they pick out stories for their children and tape-record themselves reading the books. It's just so incredible to me that you can go to jail for LIFE for drug possession. The feature film is well described by the Sidewalk site: East meets West in the Deep South. An overcrowded maximum- security prison — the end of the line in Alabama’s correctional system – is forever changed by the influence of an ancient meditation program. Donaldson Correctional Facility, situated in the Alabama countryside southwest of Birmingham, holds 1500 of the state’s most dangerous criminals. Behind high security towers and a double row of barbed wire and electrical fence, dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, a spark was ignited. In January 2002, Donaldson Correctional Facility became the first maximum security prison in North America to hold an extended Vipassana retreat, an emotionally and physically demanding course of silent meditation lasting 10 days. The Dhamma Brothers tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of 36 prison inmates who enter into this arduous and intensive program. It challenges assumptions about the nature of prisons as places of punishment rather than rehabilitation and raises the question: is it possible for these men, some of whom have committed horrendous crimes, to change?"

Finally, to lighten things up, we saw an encore showing of Skiptracers, most accurately summed up as "Dukes of Hazzard meets CSI." Funny (and a little horrifying), I was tired and wished it was shorter, but glad I saw it. Laura, Robert and I were pretty glassy-eyed and filmed-out by the time we wrapped up the weekend with some Thai food at Surin.

All in all, an excellent year, I thought.

Hobby Lust

When we first got this assignment, I thought, "Hobbies? Do I even have any hobbies?" There are things that others in this little community have counted among their hobbies that for some reason I had never considered as such:

• Reading is a pleasure that came to me late in life. Not that I'm doing much of it at the moment, but when I was reading in earnest it was really so much more a necessity to make it through my commute.
• "Collecting" seems more like a hobby applied to me by others to make gift giving easier. Don't get me wrong, I love all my frogs, but I can't think of any that I have purchased on my own. (I think I feel guilty purchasing too many things due to a lack of skill in displaying them pleasingly).
  
• Cooking? I love to cook. And I definitely like to eat the things I cook. But hobby? It's just something I do as the mood strikes and as time allows. These days, sadly, I'm mostly a bake, broil or fry kind of girl. On every day other than the Jewish holidays, my cookbooks sit on their shelf just hoping to be taken down.

I believe that what I mostly have is "Hobby Lust."

I can linger in the art store gazing at watercolor sets and easels and brushes... just wishing I had the talent to buy those beautiful materials and, in turn, create beautiful artwork. Similarly, I have been known to spend hours in the bead store, pouring over the myriad of sizes, shapes, colors and textures, sure that creating jewelry would be something I'd like. But the truth of it is, the one chance I had to bead I was totally lost and had to rely on the kind shop owner to do my layout (see my labor necklace, below). I was overwhelmed.

Knitting and crocheting? I'm fascinated by, and a bit jealous of, my knitting kin and friends. But for some reason I never got past casting on with knitting. And while I'm actually pretty good at crocheting -- I make pretty, even stitches, and have even taught others how to make popcorns and scallops -- I think I've finished only one or two projects in the 20-plus years since I learned how. My sticking point? It's so silly to even say it because I know I could figure it out if I really wanted to... But I never mastered the proper technique for tying off one piece of yarn and starting on another. I live in fear that a completed piece will come unraveled on the lap or shoulder of the recipient. That's just ridiculous. I'm obviously just not that interested, right?

My hobby lust can sometimes be a problem. Whenever I see a neat little craft that looks both impressive and achievable -- and especially if it happens to be around the time of any sort of gift-giving occasion -- I run out and buy all the materials a girl will need to create said craft. I'm both adept enough at following directions and anal enough in my attention to detail that I create a few nice, totally gift-worthy pieces... And then life gets busy and/or another neat little craft catches my eye... What I'm left with is piles of leftover supplies that sit collecting dust. Anyone in the market for bookbinding paper? How about soap molds? Fabric paint?

Sewing, while not something that has ever before been an all consuming interest in my life, is the one "hobby" and creative pursuit I seem to keep coming back to. As a kid I remember sewing doll cloths both by hand and on my mother's machine. I actually remember using my mother's machine a lot, though for the life of me I can't remember what -- other than the aforementioned doll clothes, of course -- I ever made. About ten years ago my (then future) MIL gave me an old portable, straight-stitch-only machine that had been my sister-in-law's when she was a child. I played around with it a bit, but made little. I just didn't have much of a need to sew at the time.

Sometime later my MIL gave me her 1959 Necchi Automatic Supernova. I love that machine, all heavy and metal and built to last forever. I've made baby blankets and slings, eye pillows and rice packs, curtains and chair cushions. And now finally, I've started making clothes for the kids. It is so satisfying to take something from concept to completion. It's even more satisfying to hear your daughter say "Thank you, Mommy, for making me this pretty, pretty dress." And it's very cool to get compliments on your child's outfit from someone who has no idea you made it yourself.

I've had so much fun designing and sewing the clothes that I decided to try my hand at making it a business. I'm so excited that my sister has decided to join me in my madness. It' s still in the planning stages. And while it seems a little silly and cart-before-the-horse-ish, it has given me an outlet -- a focus (I think I've heard that somewhere before) -- for my hobby lust. I actually feel more creative and more competent focusing on just this one thing. And with my creative pursuits chanelled and challenged I'm able to breeze through the art store and pick up just that one thing I need for my son without stopping to gaze with wanton desire at the tools of someone else's trade.

Irregular hobbies

Unfortunately I don't get to do my hobbies on a daily or weekly basis, but if I'm lucky it's at least once a month: traveling and photography! Now, I don't go on really exotic or unique trips, and I don't have a fancy camera, but then again, they are hobbies, not professional pursuits. Although sometimes I wish I could be a professional photographer who specializes in travel and nature photography.

My parents took us on trips abroad when we were just a few years old and I still remember little things from our first trip to Spain when I was four or five. Later they took us to the Canary Islands, Morocco, Tunisia, and then Kenya and Thailand. In high school I took a train and a year later a car trip through Europe, spent two summers in England, and visited Sri Lanka. Another family trip was sailing in the Caribbean. When I moved to the US I explored the East Coast (I think I've covered almost every state from Maine to Florida) and visited friends in places that I would consider quite off-the-beaten track for German expats: Lubbock,TX, Urbana-Champaign, IL, and Columbus, OH. I've also taken road trips through New England and the Southwest, and went back to Europe to visit Scotland, Rome and Venice. Now that I'm in Switzerland, I'm back to exploring Europe further, and I spent a week in Prague and Budapest and visited the World War I sites of France as well as Nice in Southern France. And I'm working on getting to now Switzerland better, but if there's a chance to travel someplace else, I usually grab it.

I have pictures from all the trips starting when I was 10 years old, that's when I put together my first photo album. I didn't call it scrap-booking back then, but I usually collected flight and ticket stubs and other souvenirs and put them in the photo albums as well. On the top and bottom shelves are my "old-fashioned" albums, the ones with real prints glued in. In the middle are the new ones that I put together online with digital photographs and had printed from a vendor. But the albums don't just hold travel pictures, I also like to take pictures at special events -- and even the smallest occasion is reason enough to bring my camera along. I guess I like to document, which goes well with my degrees in history and library and information science.

I probably got my first camera in 1989 -- at least I have negatives going back until that year. They are all nicely organized and housed in archival sleeves. In 1999 I bought an APS camera, and around that time I started to order digital files together with the regular prints whenever I got films developed. And I've gone back to scan older photographs, first for special projects such as my sister's wedding, my aunt's 60th birthday and for my grandparents, but I've started to do this more systematically. So far I've mainly scanned old photographs, but eventually I want to move on to my negatives. I had thought about sending them out for scanning, but it is very expensive. I share my pictures with friends and family online -- which is one way of staying in touch, since I live so far from many of them.

My dad used to have a film camera and a couple of years ago I got all his old movies transfered to video. Just to have the video transfered to DVD, when this new medium came along. I had edited the videos and added music, but I redid everything once I had digital files, which was so much more fun! I also put together a film of my sister's wedding with both video and images, but these days it seems like my computer is no longer up to the task. Eventually I would like to explore this further though.

Since a few people have talked about collecting things as their hobbies, let me just add a few words about that:

I used to collect stamps -– the highlight of my collection still is a first-day-of-issue stamp  from  Paraguay featuring Boris Becker. Not that I was ever a big fan, but he was the best tennis player at the time and when I read in a magazine that Paraguay came out with this stamp, I wrote to their postal office and they answered. That was really cool! But then collecting stamps stopped being cool...

I moved on to everything Madonna -– I was definitely a big fan! I cut clippings from magazines, recorded her videos, bought all her singles and housed them in plastic sleeves, etc. I don’t think that the collection has any particular highlights, but I still have it -– even though (just like the stamps) I haven’t added to it in years. I still like her music and go to her concerts though.

The next collectibles were miniature perfume bottles -– I went to fairs and actually spent quite a bit of money on them. They are all still at my parents’ place, sitting in two nice old letter cases, and they still are quite decorative. One of these days I will take them with me and display them in my own place –- and maybe one day I will start buying more. But for now the collection is on hold.

The two things I collect now are Maruhon orange pottery, which I look for on eBay, and souvenir shot glasses I buy whenever I travel. Both look very decorative on my kitchen shelves and both are relatively new collections –- I went for years without really collecting anything.

I have one potential hobby lurking in a closet somewhere -- a bag with quilting supplies. I took a class a couple of years ago, but never really got into it. But I have everything I need to get started, so maybe one of these days this will become a new hobby! I'll keep you posted!

Hobby, hobby, who has a hobby?

Not I.  I've always though of a hobby as something requiring much more time, effort and money than I have or can afford to spare.  Most of my spare time is given to reading but reading is not a hobby, reading is a way of life.

I do however admit to having interests and pastimes and sometimes even projects but these vary. For example, I used to do a lot of baking.  Now with no children demanding snacks and a husband who seems to have decided he's on the South Beach diet for life, I bake maybe once or twice a year for holidays or special occasions.  That's not often enough to even merit being called an interest.

Stitching, crossword puzzles, furniture refinishing all go in and out of my life on a semi-regular basis.  I guess what it boils down to is that I'm too lazy and without the necessary focus to sustain any activity to the point of it being called a hobby.  I must say I'm impressed by all the things you ladies out there accomplish.

As a side rant, I've always disliked be asked "What are your hobbies".  This is probably because every application I've ever filled out, from school to job, has wanted an answer to that question.  The idea that knitting, or bowling or bungee jumping would have an effect on studies or job performance because hobbies make you "well rounded" is pure poppycock.  Social scientists and psychologists  have really managed to sell a bill of goods to institutions, haven't they.  Oh well, I guess it gives the little darlings job security.

More than just hobbies

Last week, one of my co-workers and I were discussing retirement, as we'd just heard that a long-time favorite customer of ours was taking a buyout from his position and essentially taking early retirement.  We both marvelled over the fact that he had expressed concern about not knowing what to do with himself once he had officially stopped working.  We agreed that we didn't think we'd have ANY trouble at all filling that spare 8-9 hours a day with more interesting things than coming to our job every day.

Like Shani said in her earlier post, I have to force myself to limit where I focus my attention - if I didn't, my house would be buried even further in my hobby supplies, and I'd be unable to focus long enough on any one thing to ever accomplish anything.

It's probably because I am interested by so very many things that what is more important to me than exactly what my hobbies are at any particular moment in time is the effect they have on my life in the larger picture.  I can honestly say that in at least two cases, my hobbies have changed my life.

I joked in my introduction that I wondered if you could consider the internet a hobby.  I've thought some more about that, and I would have to say that I abolutely can and even should.  I mean, I spend at least 10 hours a week wasting time here, I get a good deal of satisfaction out of the time I spend, and the truth is that without it, my life would be very different. 

I first started using the internet my freshman year at college, when my boyfriend insisted that I go sign up for an e-mail account with our school - that they weren't automatically handing them out to every incoming freshman should tell you how early this was in the online world.  I watched as he got sucked into all kind of things online - MUDs and MUSHes and IRC and I don't even know what else.  I watched as a few of our friends got kicked out of school for failing grades, mostly the result of spending too much time online.  I had too much riding on my GPA to do that, so I mostly posted a lot in newsgroups and our school's little bulletin board.  I thought it was amazing that you could easily have conversations with people on the other side of the world. 

As we moved through school, W (boyfriend then, husband now) settled into a few sites that he played a lot on, one of which was a MUSH called TinyTIM.  At that time, there was a large group of players living in Boston and they used to get together for parties and activities fairly often - we lived in Worcester, but since W still had high school friends in Boston, we drove in pretty regularly to join in the festiviess.  Once I got to know the real people behind the characters, I started logging on too.

Once I did that, I meant a whole lot of interesting people.  Most of them neat and interesting and geeky, a few of them weird, most of them nice.  I tend to be fairly quiet in person when faced with a lot of people - I'm the one sitting on the fringe, watching everything, not saying much until I have a handle on everyone in the room.  TIM was perfect for that - I could hang out in the main space, watch everything that was going on and not stick out while I was doing it.  Once I got to know people, I started making friends.  A lot of them were in Boston, where we moved soon after.  A number of them were further afield, but that didn't matter.  In the community's strongest period, we would have parties that players would travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles to attend, and even now, more often than not, when I travel I know someone who lives near my destination.  My co-workers joke that I must know everyone, since almost anywhere they can think to send me, I have a friend I can call up to have dinner with me.

TinyTIM is a lot smaller now - there were always little dramas happening in small scale, and the group as a whole went through an upheaval of sorts a few years ago.  The advent of new and different online amusements and ways of keeping in touch with people have siphoned off a lot of the players as well.  I miss it sometimes, but even I rarely have the time to spend in an environment that is busy that needs constant attention - my internet times comes in little stolen moments over the course of a day.  At the end of my time as a frequent player, I can't complain about what I got out of my time there - of all my dearest friends, and of all those friends I see the most often, and spend the most time with, the vast majority of them are people I met on TIM, people I would have been unlikely to meet any other way.

These days, LiveJournal plays the same part in my life that TIM did then.  Many of my "friends on LJ are people who have also migrated from TIM, but many are new.  It's different, of course, in that it's not real time and I've not yet found anyone organizing huge sleep on the floor parties (that may have more to do with the passage of years than the medium), but it's allowed me to connect with those I would consider my tribe.  For someone who's never quite felt like she fit in anywhere, that has been a wonderful thing.

My experiences with knitting have been remarkably similar - when I walk into a knitting circle, I know I have something in common with everyone else in the room.  Our knititng works as an entirely comfortable ice breaker as we discuss projects and yarn, patterns and techniques.  We all have a reason to be there other than socializing, so the occasional silence is rarely uncomfortable, and again, I don't stick out very much as I sit on the outside of the circle waiting to figure out how I fit into it. 

Many more eloquent knitting writers than I have noted how astonishing it is that knitting is such a strong common denominator that it allows people who would never otherwise have any reason or desire to meet one another to get to know one another and become friends.  I'm not sure why it happens, but it is true - I have made friends at knitting circles who are all kinds of people - and yet, we find we become real friends, and it is something I count myself wildly lucky to have found.

I have other hobbies of course, and endless things I enjoy trying out.  I get more out of all of them than making friends or finding connections with other people as well.  But I still think the the best hobbies are the ones that take me beyond myself and into the wider world when I do them.

Hobbies: the things that ate my desk

A hobby, to me, is something to which I'm willing to devote time in my week, space in our tiny apartment, and also produces some kind of result, if even a small one. Order from the chaos of daily life, if you will. It's almost too casual of a word for things that produce a lot of joy.

My interests lie in several directions, but I try to keep them focused into just a few areas because anything I really get interested in is something I'll eventually spend a lot of money on as well. If I sort them by the order in which they take up space in my house, I'm first and foremost a hand quilter. My maternal grandmother, Granny, was a quilter before her eyesight went and the arthritis came, and my mom and I have many of her finished products, as do a lot of other people, I know. When I was a little girl, she gave me two quilts backed with Strawberry Shortcake fabric. I'm sure at the time I was totally obsessed with the Strawberry Shortcake characters. My cousin was in his Star Wars phase at the time, and the two quilts he got were backed with Star Wars fabrics. Granny didn't really do themed quilts; they were all made of scraps and remnants of clothes, but the backing material was generally new, because you have to have a lot of it. Sometimes they were bought clothes, sometimes they were scraps created of clothes she'd made for my mom, or herself, so they were really remnants AND scraps at the same time. Granny grew up during the Depression and never wastes anything (even now, she washes her paper towels. My generation could learn a lot from this--she's reduce, reuse, recycle in one package). Anyway, mom never let me use mine until I was an adult, so mine are in perfect condition and go on the spare bed, and my cousin's were probably in the trash a year after he got them, because they were his Favorite. Thing. Ever. and I know his mom let him use them until they fell apart. Not that anyone would be bitter about that, right? Suuuuure.

But I have a closet full of cotton fabrics, mostly carefully chosen and paid for at the astronomical rate of $8.98 a yard, which makes my granny cringe every time I mention it. I gave her the first quilt I ever finished, which was supposed to be a lap quilt but ended up hanging on her wall until my aunt moved it, and now I don't know where it is. I've finished several since then, mostly baby quilts. I do all the work by hand, although I've had a recent yen to want to learn to use a sewing machine, and I may finish my next baby quilt that way as a challenge. After that I think I may go on a baby quilt hiatus, I have several large projects calling to me from the closet, unfinished, and I'd really like to work on them before I forget what I was going to do with them in the first place.

It annoys the tar out of me to pay $4 a card to Hallmark for every birthday or minor holiday I'd like to recognize through the year, so another hobby I've been 'investing' in is card-making. Most of the materials overlap with scrapbooking, including stamps and ink, nice tidbits of textured or patterned paper, sparkly and shiny pens, colored pencils and water colors, ribbons, stickers (!!) and lately, punches that create positive and negative space designs. The box of card-making supplies overfloweth, and dwarfs the huge box of sewing notions already on my tiny desk. I'm not sure at this point that I'm averaging less than $4 a card when I make one, but I do try to get versatile materials that I can reuse when I can. I get a big thrill from being able to just to dig in the box on someone's birthday and spend fifteen minutes putting together something that's perfect ...well, to be honest, they are slightly less than perfect, as are my quilts, but the thought was there, right? I didn't just swerve into Walgreens on my way over, swearing at being late and still needing a g-d- card, right? That's not how I want to celebrate birthdays, or Mother's Day, or pretty much any day for that matter.

The perfume hobby (habit, really) actually takes up less space than both of the other two, but that's because perfume is awfully concentrated. I've always been one of those super-smellers--if you're making popcorn in the office, I'll be the first to smell you unwrapping the plastic. I discovered the totally obsessive online world of perfume oils about two years ago, and since then I've probably acquired a hundred little bottles and say, three or four hundred little samples. 'Little bottles', in this instance, mean 5mL bottles, or 1/6 of a fluid ounce. The samples are typically 1/32 ounce, or roughly 1mL. I have a pretty rough idea how much I've spent on this hobby since I started, and I'll never admit it to a soul. Our conversation would have to be protected by law, let's just say. The space investment? A train case on top of my dresser, plus some space on my dresser, a little space in the kitchen, a little space in the bathroom, a little space by my chair in the living room, a little bag under my desk, a bigger bag in my quilting closet...ok. It does take up a lot of space, I admit. The time investment? Huge, since I help run an online forum dedicated to the discussion and swapping of scent samples, and I swap them myself, for which I keep around packing materials, tape, bubble mailers, and even a postal scale. The result? I smell great, every day, and I always have at least one thing to wear in the morning that fits, which is a hell of a plus when your weight keeps going up and down the scale like a beginning pianist.

I think that may be all the hobbies I have time for. I don't really consider reading a hobby, since although there is a time investment involved in reading, a lot of my reading is re-reading and is just brain candy for when I'm bored. There are some subjects I love to research, but they produce no results other than a little satisfaction at apprehension. I don't consider cooking a hobby, although I love to do it, because on some level that's also a chore--you have to cook the food if you want to eat it--and that can take the fun out of it. I don't really collect anything specifically anymore. I used to, but the risk is that someone will decide that all you ever want is, say, cat themed items, and some of them are ugly, and some of them are from the Dollar General, but by god you can't get rid of them because don't you know your great aunt Sally picked that out for you, etc. It just collects dust, and I've come to the point in life that I'd rather not spend the time dusting anything I didn't absolutely love.

I'm not interested in knitting, despite the very deep interest shown by most of my friends. I get the beauty of hand-dyes and the lusciousness of exotic materials, but I get the same thing out of a good hand-dyed bolt of fabric, too, and I honestly think a lot of knitted projects I see in pictures are really ugly. My friends often have the talent to see something beautiful at the root, but it quite escapes me, just as taking a yard of fabric and cutting it into tiny pieces may baffle them. I've no problems dissecting a scent to say it has notes of jasmine, magnolia, leather, and wood, but most fiber crafts are just too deconstructed for me.

Someday? I'd really like to have the time, space, money, and energy to put into a really lovely dollhouse. I'd pick an era and theme it all to match, colors, furniture styles, clothes. I'd spend years assembling it, making little things for it, getting it just so. Not for any real reason, or result, just putting a little order back into the chaos of a daily life. Just for the joy of doing it.

Happy holiday weekend, y'all. Hope it's a good one.

You say hobby, I say obsession

Ah, hobbies.  I’m ashamed to admit, but there have been days when my hobbies have been my reason to get up in the morning; I’m that into them and derive that much enjoyment out of them.  I guess that’s a good thing, but I’ve also been late for work because of them (though, due to the flexibility of lab work hours, it’s never mattered), missed sleep, and ignored work because of them.  So maybe what I have is more of an addiction, eh?

I’ve always been crafty.  When I was four or five years old, I amazed my mother by sitting down with a cross-stitch project (nothing fancy, as it was aimed at kids my age) and working on it for several hours straight, until I got it done.  So I guess crafts always carried with them a degree of the obsessive for me.  In my childhood, I tried just about every kind of craft that was easily accessible to me, and loved just about all of them.  My favorite thing to do, though, was to create objects for my dollhouse and dolls from stuff I had lying around the house.  I covered old wooden blocks with velour paper for furniture, molded tiny food out of modeling clay, and knit little coverlets for tiny beds.  One of my dolls, which I still have somewhere, wore a completely hand-sewn outfit, including pants and shirt with pockets, a hat, a cape, a backpack (stuffed with a map and handmade miniature food) and a climbing rope made out of a long crochet chain with a clothing hook fastener at one end.  I don’t know why, but it was important for this doll to have that backpack and rope. I guess he was an adventurer.  He was also my favorite doll, just because I crafted so much for him.

After experimenting with silversmithing, weaving, and pottery (the latter, quite unsuccessfully) in college, I decided to make beading my primary hobby.  I’ve always dabbled with jewelry-making, but at the end of my junior year, I sat down and actually learned about it.  I got online and taught myself stringing, wire-work, and beadweaving.  The first year of grad school somehow afforded me lots of free time, so I spent hours beading just about every night.  That’s also when my obsession with TV began – it’s so easy to have it in the background for company while I craft.  I sold a good amount of my jewelry then, enough, at least, to cover the cost of the pretty pretty beads.

For some reason, beading gave way to knitting about three years ago, and I’ve been obsessed with that ever since.  I crochet, too, but not as much or as well as I knit, though I do enjoy it.  Oddly, I have almost no interest in learning how to dye or spin yarn.   I’ve also started blogging about this particular addiction, and have recently ventured into designing my own patterns.  One day, I’ll so totally be famous for this.  Well, I can dream, right?

Because I knit, folks frequently assume that I can also sew and cook.  Let me tell you right now that I am very bad at both, though I do have a few good recipes, and I bake damn good cookies.  Fabric and I do not see eye to needle’s eye, and I’m bad at sewing, even though I sure do like to do it sometimes.  I’m hoping to start a quilt later this year, too.

Unfortunately, my crafting hobbies have almost completely taken over my other childhood interest, reading.  While I can knit and read at the same time (yes, really), I prefer not to, and since I can never resist a knitting project, my reading greatly suffers.  I’m lucky if I finish a book a month these days, though I really do love reading.  My favorite stuff is late 18^th-early 19^th century fiction.  I often joke that unless it’s over 50 years old, I will not read it, and it’s almost always true, though my husband has turned me onto non-fiction recently.

Finally, I have a couple of on-going collections to which I devote varying amounts of time.  I collect those vintage Polly Pocket compacts, although I think I’m done adding to that particular collection.  I also collect whistles and flutes, a collection that started when I actually played flute in the school band.  But my biggest and most beloved collection is my erasers.  I started collecting them when I was 8 years old, and people have been bringing them for me as souveniers from all over.  I think my love for miniatures is what did it for me with erasers; in any case, I think they’re adorable and love them all.  I have close to a thousand pieces, because, unlike the other two collections, anything goes in this one.  Erasers are so small and so cheap that I can generally afford to get any that I at all like.  I like to think of it as an anthropological study of sorts, and include such boring specimens as a Pink Pearl and plain ol’ pencil toppers.  But I also have some real gems, like shape puzzles and a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo.  Recently I’ve taken to cataloguing them, and hope to have an online album of the whole collection soon. 

It’s really a wonder I get any work done. 

Riding the Controversial Hobby-Horse

When we selected "hobbies" as this month's topic, I had no idea it would be so stir up so many mixed feelings!  In fact, we were trying to select a slightly "softer" topic rather than diving right into "motherhood" or "feminism" or "health."  With over half the entries posted, we've got a very divided group of women.  To wit, from the posts and the comments:

"I've never got the whole idea of "collecting" - it all gets wound up in my head with "stuff", and I've never managed to separate the two in my head."  "I never thought about myself as having hobbies - things I like to do, want to do , must do - but not hobbies."   "...if an obsession can be called a hobby....."  "I think of hobbies as being productive, consuming, even if the product is unnecessary, so answering "reading" always made me feel a bit like a hobby slacker.  A hobbyist, I thought, was a numismatist or someone with books of pristine stamps....."  "After spending most of my life referring to writing as a hobby, I can now say that it is my profession."  "First of all, in my mind, “hobby” applies only to things people did in the Fifties: stamp collecting, model airplane building, bird watching. But the bigger problem is that, to me, a hobby ... is a pursuit that is all consuming. Of spare time and money. A continual thing, persistent."  "What I've learned from so many of you lately is that I probably need to change my definition of hobby."  "My hobbies really brighten my life."

These observations are in addition to posts where the hobbies listed can barely be contained in a single list.

I wonder if part of what establishes our multitude of reactions to the topic is not only an issue of semantics but one of guilt?  It's my opinion that, as women, we often feel like the things that bring us joy can only be justified if they fit into some greater context, serve some larger purpose, or produce something of use.  Joy for its own sake -- for OUR own sake -- isn't very high up on our list of priorities. 

I just read an outstanding book by Faulkner Fox: Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child.   You can take a look at it on Amazon.  While Fox obviously focuses a great deal on motherhood, she also spends lots of time discussing feminine guilt, societal expectations for white middle class women, and how taking time for ourselves and our passions is seen as a selfish thing -- most often by our very own selves.  I found Fox's words resonating, disturbing, sometimes irritating and sometimes funny.  I may have had no trouble listing my hobbies, but I realized that the number of things I feel guilty about is higher than I had ever acknowledged. 

Is guilt a priority pastime?  I sure don't want to call it a hobby.

Hobbies

My motto is all work and no play makes Sally a dull girl. My hobbies really brighten my life. Knitting is especially important. I like the challenge of figuring out patterns and making adjustments and accomplishing something. I can see exactly what I have knitted. There is nothing abstract about it; no guessing how close I am to nirvana. I can tell if I am exactly halfway through a scarf because I have a tape measure. Sometimes, I become very perfectionistic about it, and then I get tense and cross and want to make everything just so. That's not really what hobbies are about. While I try to maintain a certain level of quality in my work, it is important to remember that it is just a sock and it goes on my foot. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Because of the knitting I developed an interest in spinning yarn. Last Christmas, I got a castle style spinning wheel. I love to show it off and spin with it. My yarn is still lumpy and uneven, but it brings me a great deal of joy. I look forward to being able to spin neatly and consistently, but that doesn't detract from the present beauty one bit.

Another philosophy that I have is that people like to do those things which they do well. That means I probably won't enjoy doing something that I don't do well. I'm trying to develop skill at exercising so that one day it might become an enjoyable hobby. Because I have an interest in living in a well-maintained home, I have at least a stake in learning about home maintenance -- even if I don't do it that well yet.

There is always room in my life for a new hobby. An old one might be abandoned for awhile, but I find ways to return to it. I may not be able to read a book every day as I did while I was in school, but a Saturday afternoon with a good book is a delicious experience. I often wonder what my next hobby will be. I’ve heard good things about rock climbing. . .

Hobbies are not my thing

It's been my stock response for years to say that I just don't have any hobbies. I guess it's more accurate to say that I don't have any traditional hobbies. I don't make anything, I don't collect anything, and I don't feel obsessive about any one thing. What I've learned from so many of you lately is that I probably need to change my definition of hobby. These are lots of things that I am interested in, and lots of things that I enjoy. And to tell the truth, I do make a few things, but they tend to get eaten. I decided to consult a few other people about this since I'm obviously not very objective about my own hobbies.

My main interest, and time suck, is reading. I read, a lot. Book, magazines, blogs, e-mail, on-line news. I have even been known to read nutrition information or medication directions when really desperate. I was always the kid who tried to get her mom give her five more minuted before lights out. I just never wanted to put my books down. I still don't. And if I don't read, I get cranky, so I know it's an important part of my life. My current novel reading tends toward the Young Adult genre, though I certainly don't limit myself. I went through my romance novel phase between say 11 and 14, I went through an Anne Rice phase that lasted for ages, though I still can't bring myself to read Christ the Lord. I went through a sci-fi phase that started with Star Wars and went from there. The one thing I don't do is force myself to finish every book that I start. For years I felt guilty if I didn't finish, but that fell by the wayside ages ago. Life is way too short to waste on something that I'm not enjoying.

I read anytime and anywhere. I read in front of the tv, I read standing in lines, and I read when I should be doing other things. Before my palm pilot died I never had to worry about not having a book with me. I kept Little Women and Pride and Prejudice on it for emergencies. Now I have to carry books with me, but I always do. There is never a time that is not good for reading.

I completely forgot that healthy eating and losing weight are a pretty big part of my life and have been for about a year and a half. It's so much a part of who I am these days that I forget about it. I've lost about half of my weight so far, and am still going strong. The cooking had spring out of this. I have always liked to cook, but until recently I didn't do it very often. Now I cook almost every day and I love to try new recipes and find things that are healthy and taste good. It's like a game, and I love it. But since the products get eaten, I have nothing to show for it.

I have interests and I dabble in lots of things. I cook, I watch a ton of movies (many over and over again) and lots of tv, and I'm pretty obsessive about college football. But would I call these things hobbies? Probably not. Are they hobbies? The jury's still out.