Getting on the hobby train

I've never been one for hobbies. It always seemed like something other people did. Even the sound of it seemed so uncool that even had I had one, I would never have admitted it! Even the word sounds ridiculous! Try saying it a few times and I bet you end up saying it like a Rowan Atkinson character! "Oh! You have a 'hobby' do you Baldrick??" You can just hear it can't you.

Still, all that being said, once I'd finished my parental sentence, I decided that I wanted to explore things that I'd never had the time for. 

I flirted with Genealogy for a while. It was fun, finding out who I was descended from, where they lived, what they did and I still have an interest, but it's one of those things that now sits in the 'I'll get back to that' pile gathering dust. 

There were two things that I thought might interest me though. Years before in another career I'd had the opportunity to work with clay and had enjoyed it. So, I enrolled in an evening class and decided to see what i could do. 

Oh Yes! Getting mucky and pushing my fingers into clay again. It fired up my imagination and pleasure centres that it probably shouldn't but it felt good to mold and shape it. I spent most of the six week course doing my own thing and at the end of it, I produced this!

 

Not particularly earth shattering but amazingly satisfying! I was completely fired with enthusiasm and started to plan how best I could carry on this new 'hobby' (yes I did the silly voice) with no kiln or access to one. I discovered air drying clay and with the help and support of a great friend reinforced air drying clay which I still use today. i vowed to get a small kiln and still want to, but at over £1000 it still eludes me.

The other thing I'd always wanted to try was stained glass work. I love colour with a passion and adored stained glass. Flushed with the success of the first encounter with evening classes I searched once again for a class on this subject. No luck.. none, nada, zilch. The only way I could apparently learn this was to go to a professional stained glass company and hand over a kidney and maybe a lung in the hope they'd teach me. So, this is still in the waiting zone for when the lottery win arrives. In the meantime, I explored 'fake' stained glass, using lead and paints to decorate vases and suchlike. Here's a few of the results so far:



So there you have it. Two hobbies. I'm a frequent flyer at Hobbycraft and spending lots of time creating. In reference to the quote at the beginning.. I think I have my crayons back now :)