Where my 'non-screen-based' hobbyist at?

[Graceless]

-NOT a place to look down on digital/screen hobbies -

I'm looking for all my Drawing, metal working, Knitting, Crafty So-n-Sos

Time is super valuable these days, so what you choose to craft for hours on end is the most interesting thing to me.

I took up Cross Stitching in the last year.  I was getting Migraines from working with computers all day and only having screen based hobbies- (video games mostly). So I had to find something to do when my head starts to explode.

Spoiler

If you feel like it- maybe share your hobby, why you do it, any current or fav projects, or anything else really.

p.s. no I'm not hip to the kids 

 

[Karst]

I do a lot of sketching, and I run Dungeons & Dragons games.

[Graceless]

7 minutes ago, Iridium said:

I do a lot of sketching, and I run Dungeons & Dragons games.

My Husband and I play DnD! It's fun coming up with ideas and creative stuff (weird character builds etc) We also took up table top games, Dead of Winter being a house favorite.

If you don't mind me asking- do you run pre-made campaigns? Or make you own? (We will finish running hoard of the Dragon Queen someday - no spoilers lol)
Do you sketch stuff for DnD or other stuff? (is this too many questions?)

[Karst]

I make my own campaigns.  One particular quirk of mine is that I'm a geologist, so I'm very exacting about creating maps that make sense.

[AceMissBehaving]

I love your cross stitch!💜

 

When it comes to non digital hobbies I have so many! Dance, aerials, china painting, shoe making are some of my current ones.

 

This is the last pair of shoes I made from scratch on vintage last (the mold used to make shoes)

Spoiler

 

 

And a  teapot I painted...

Spoiler

 

 

[A. Sterling]

Drawing and breeding chinchillas mostly. 

 

I've been trying to take up sewing too so that I can make clothes I actually like. 

[Karst]

@AceMissBehaving, those are pretty!

[Nuit_38]

I like block printing. At the moment, I'm torturing myself by printing a whole book by hand

[Graceless]

7 minutes ago, Iridium said:

I make my own campaigns.  One particular quirk of mine is that I'm a geologist, so I'm very exacting about creating maps that make sense.

Sounds like your DnD Maps must be rockn'
(sorry not sorry)
 

5 minutes ago, AceMissBehaving said:

When it comes to non digital hobbies I have so many! Dance, aerials, china painting, shoe making are some of my current ones.

 

Not to pick Favorites but SHOE MAKING?!?!?! - those are beautiful BTW - just wow.
Such a cool skill- so many materials you work with~ And that Tea pot is to die for XD

 

2 minutes ago, A. Sterling said:

Drawing and breeding chinchillas mostly. 

 

I've been trying to take up sewing too so that I can make clothes I actually like. 

Chinchillas are pretty cute, and heck yha make clothes you like, sewing has always been one of those things I could figure out so more power to yha- (I'm getting into cross stitching on clothes, fun way to personalize)
 

1 minute ago, Nuit_38 said:

I like block printing. At the moment, I'm torturing myself by printing a whole book by hand

Block printing? Like... carve the words into wood put ink on and press? or is that something else? Sounds cool though- I think I'm thinking of... illuminations? but I think that is paint and calligraphy.

[Layria]

I also play D&D! I'm currently a player but am building a world on the side that I hope to use to run a campaign one day. @Iridium I am in school right now for geology! I haven't made a map for my world yet, but you can bet it will make sense geologically.

For other hobbies, reading, writing, and pipecleaner art are all very important in my life. I can't visualize a character without making a model of them first, and I can modify the model as the story grows to represent the character better.

I also do some cosplay when I can. I wish I could sew better, it would make cosplay a whole lot easier, because currently I'm just holding things together with pipecleaners.

[fooledbysecrecy]

i do knitting and sewing and play piano.. ...when i actually have the motivation which is not often🙄 used to play guitar too, unfortunately it's been years since the last time..

 

@AceMissBehaving actual shoemaking, holy shit!! so cool! what a talent!

[Graceless]

@Layria  Pipecleaner Art sounds so cool! I can just feel that texture on my fingers now XD and Cosplay too! I had friends who 'held' thing together with Hot Glue - I guarantee they are not having half as much fun as you are lol

 

@fooledbysecrecy  Knitting and Sewing - for me the patterns make no sense- I'm so jelly of people who can make their own cable chain pattern things XD I'd wrap my life in it if I could. 

[Nuit_38]

47 minutes ago, Graceless said:

Block printing? Like... carve the words into wood put ink on and press? or is that something else? Sounds cool though- I think I'm thinking of... illuminations? but I think that is paint and calligraphy.

My bad, I was talking about linocut. English isn't my first language, so I wasn't sure. Illuminations are usually painted, my linocuts are there as replacement for photos

[Gloomy]

Coloring, drawing, and sometimes painting.

 

Sometimes I’ll get a sudoku book or word search book when I see one at the store too.

 

Sometimes my exercising in screenless. Usually when I’m working out at home I have headphones in and am either listening to either YouTube videos or music, but when I go for walks outside my phone is in my bag.

[SmallBean]

I'm currently am learning how to knit and over the summer I became a bracelet making GOD at rehearsal for a show I was doing

[fooledbysecrecy]

29 minutes ago, Graceless said:

 

@fooledbysecrecy  Knitting and Sewing - for me the patterns make no sense- I'm so jelly of people who can make their own cable chain pattern things XD I'd wrap my life in it if I could. 

oh i can't do patterns 🤣 it's just tons of colourful stripes! (that being said i HAVE made two (2) scarves with some sort of pattern years ago but tbh i don't remember how lmao)

[Guest]

I collect, repair, restore and use vintage items of almost any type, mainly 35+ year-old TV sets. Things that are in particularly rough shape are often broken down for raw materials to be used for other projects. So, although I'm not overzealous about green living, I help protect the environment by not constantly chucking things and replacing them with cheap trash.

 

Here's a work in progress, an equipment rack made from an old GE apartment-size dryer cabinet. Unfortunately the door was wider than standard rack-mount equipment so I had to cut much of the front panel out wider and very carefully cut patch panels to be butt-welded in. Unfortunately the guy who did it was inexperienced with welding thin sheet metal and botched it, so I had to cut even more out of it and now I have to make new patches and have them welded by a pro. It wasn't a total loss though, the small patch for the upper left survived. I told the guy that if he wasn't sure he could pull it off I would get someone else to do it. 🙄

 

[

 

At first glance it appears to be cut out a little too wide at the bottom, but the pattern generator with mounting brackets attached is not quite 19" wide.

 

I re-used the sheet metal from the drum as well; I removed the front and rear, ripped out the seam and rolled it the other way to get it to lay flat. It now makes up the bulk of a sliding window insert for an air conditioner. Incidentally its corrosion-resistant properties made it ideal for exposure to the elements. I plan to paint it and make structural improvements; it was July 5th and boiling hot by the time I got this much done, so any extras had to wait. I built it over two days, making a lot of precise measurements and cuts. The whole assembly just drops into place in the door track and holds firm, no bolts needed.

 

[

[daveb]

4 hours ago, AceMissBehaving said:

This is the last pair of shoes I made from scratch on vintage last (the mold used to make shoes)

Wow! Those are awesome! Excellent painting on the teapot, too!

 

5 hours ago, Graceless said:

maybe share your hobby, why you do it, any current or fav projects

I have a few non-digital hobbies. As far as crafting or making stuff I sculpt and draw, paint miniatures (like the kind used for games such as D&D), have done a little embroidery, and in the past made some plushies and puppets. Non-crafting hobbies - mostly reading, playing board games, card games, rpgs, and miniatures games.

[Larkaloke]

I have a decent amount of non-digital hobbies, I guess. I play D&D, other tabletop RPGs (mostly MERP at this point), and board games. I also paint figures for use in RPGs, which I just finished a batch of recently. When the weather is nice and I'm able to, I like to hike, bike, and kayak. I kart when I can (as money allows). I'd count photography, since even though I use a digital camera it involves getting out in nature and finding locations and such. Drawing isn't entirely a hobby for me, since I'm an artist by profession, but I do a lot of it. Then there's historical martial arts and stage combat, which are decidely non-digital things. And reading; I don't read quite as much as I used to, but I still read at least a few books a month and a variety of magazines.

[Guest]

Apparently I can't put more than two spoilers in a single post so I'll put the last things I wanted to mention here...

 

Here are screenshots of my two latest vintage TV scores. The first is a 1977 RCA XL-100 with the CTC86A chassis, RCA's last modular chassis. It was stone dead when I got it; upon closer inspection I noticed that a small circuit board in the power supply that had been soldered to the chassis frame had broken loose and shifted just enough to cause a dead short. Once I moved the board to where it wouldn't touch anything else it started right up. The CRT is the infamous 25VCZP22 but apparently mine is one of the better ones as the red and blue guns responded to a couple of shots of auto-restore from my Sencore CR70. The green gun was as strong as an ox from the get-go, don't ask me how. The picture is good but could be better as the convergence needs adjusting; this is kind of a "black art" in TV repair, it's easy to tweak one setting and throw off another. Also, perfect convergence is impossible in most cases, chances are it's going to be a little bit off 2-3 inches from the edges of the screen at best. The second is a 1984 Sears-branded Sanyo; I didn't have to do much of anything to that, just blow some dust out of it, clean the controls, re-connect the original speaker, remove the add-on jack for an external speaker and re-flow the solder joints at the chassis speaker connector. The volume control is still scratchy but the picture controls are fine now; perhaps the logarithmic taper of the volume control element makes it harder to clean. I use DeOxit, can't get a better contact cleaner than that. It has a strong A48JAF71X CRT which has a razor-sharp picture when seen in person. I can't get very good screenshots with my digicam; they easily overwhelm the optical sensor and it makes the scanlines very obvious. It has an inline-gun CRT with a slot mask as opposed to the RCA's delta-gun CRT with a dot-matrix shadow mask which probably contributes to why it looks worse on camera. Another fly in the ointment is that both were being fed by a 480i DVD player.

 

The screenshots are from Matilda (1996).

 

 

[krystal_muzik]

I am a singer/songwriter. My latest EP "Lady Sisyphus" is available on iTunes, Spotify and wherever music is sold/streamed! 

 

Me on Spotify!

[CallaWolf]

I draw, albeit poorly and not as often as I should. I mostly avoid doing it because the only thing I am good at drawing involves straight lines and very little curves, such as hallways.

 

I need to draw more often thsn i do, which is once or twice a month. Especially since I believe that you need to have a balance in the universe. If you take, you must give. I love comic books for their art work, so I must give in terms of drawing. When i get something going, I kinda like doing it too. I just wish I was better because I try too hard to strive for realism, when I need to be more abstract, and believe me when I say, both are difficult.

 

 

I also like learning about world history, but I don't know if that counts, so I am always listening to history podcasts and am on the search for historically correct fiction in my video games and movies (if that makes sense).

[MoonDancer]

I do oil paintings when I have time (and inspiration). I can paint water, sky, faces and hands pretty well. I'm bad at painting grass, rocks, and hair, so no painting is perfect, but I keep trying. I also make lace. Mostly bobbin lace, and tatting. I used to make most of my clothes, but now it's too expensive. I also do very easy knitting projects that basically involve making a rectangle or a tube (bags, scarves, hand warmers - ribbing stitch is the fanciest I've gotten so far)

[DarkStormyKnight]

I work on paint by number paintings in my spare time! Other than that I play saxophone (like my avatar) and I've been fooling around with this circus prop called a leviwand for years.

 

Here's a link to a performance I did last spring: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xioqpOkRh-QM9O9nYR3jZdpS5vdQtCzm/view?usp=sharing

[Twisted Tempest]

I enjoy writing by hand if that counts? Besides that, I build models. I'm not that great at it, but I enjoy it nonetheless. 

[Your friend]

I don't know if I should answer this since nearly all my hobbies involve staring into a computer screen for long periods of time. But I guess playing the piano counts as non-screen-based. I have a musical keyboard that I bought on Amazon for $100 and I try to practice on it every day. I also do figure drawing with pencil on paper, but the drawings I do are done from photos on a computer screen, so this one doesn't count in my case. 😐 Overall I'm a pretty high-tech person and I don't think I have a single hobby that doesn't involve computers or electronics in some sense.

[ColeHW34]

Coin collector and wannabe horticulturalist over here!

[Your friend]

Actually come to think of it I do have a few hobbies that don't involve computer use at all. Most of them are physical or athletic hobbies - running, hiking, weightlifting, swimming, and yoga to be specific. I'm obsessed with staying in shape and I try to do as many different kinds of workouts as I can. I guess cooking is sort of a hobby of mine as well since I do enjoy it, though I do it more because I'm hungry than for pleasure.

[Alawyn-Aebt]

I play the piano. I took lessons for the past 14 years and I am not half bad, it's killing me that my college has no public access piano and will not allow non-music majors to use those in the music school. I also compose music, but again as I am limited in my access to a piano I am relegated to compose on the computer... 

 

I collect coins, both foreign and US, specializing in foreign ones but my US collection is larger. All of my coins I have either pulled out or circulation or were given them by my relatives, I don't spend money on it. In recent times I have considered delving more deeply into coin collecting (going after world coins mostly) but I can't easily collect when I am in college.

 

I also collect stamps. This is a really new hobby for me, I pulled 300+ foreign stamps out my grandmother's trash when she decided to toss my great-grandfather's collection, but I really like it. Again I mostly just do foreign stamps. My plan is to get at least one stamp from every nation from 1900+ (including colonies). Since finding foreign stamps on packages and letters is rare for me I have found other ways of collecting cheaply. I can buy 5 old postcards from my local antique shop for $0.25, and many postcards have foreign stamps on them. Sometimes the postcards are really ugly but the stamp is great! I found a postcard with a really boring and fairly-old image of a street in Munich but the stamp on the back was a 1876 Bavarian stamp.

 

I do model railroading too, but I on hiatus from this due to college. Also it's expensive, so my modelling activities are limited to small shunting layouts. I really like railway modelling though.

 

A final hobby, that probably no one else on AVEN and few in the world have, is my made-up country. I started creating an imaginary nation when I was 4, and it kind of grew out of hand. I have 6 binders devoted to the brief history of this nation, thousands of pages of information about the present day state of this name (government, economy, society, environment, etc.) spread out over 10 more binders, hundreds of files on my computer relating to this nation (with paper backups of it all), about a dozen notebooks filled with information ranging from the mythology of the nation to the design for the Royal Regalia, plus uncategorized papers in my uncategorized folders and a massive map that is over 25' long and 12' wide when laid out fully (I don't know the size of it since it is too large to ever be fully unrolled in my house). So my hobby is completing my knowledge of this nation. Also there is a language with the nation. I am actually not too bad at it but I am continually expanding my knowledge of it and its dictionary.

[daveb]

37 minutes ago, Aebt-Ætheling said:

my made-up country

That sounds pretty cool actually.

Does that come under the heading of world-building? I've done small amounts of that for games and just for fun, but nowhere near that level of detail and depth you describe.