Hobby Swap

[cjsmith]

Here's a swap meet I'd love to go to. Hobby swap! Bring your old hobbies and go home with secondhand hobbies you get from someone else!

I'll probably never make candles again, so I'd bring my books and molds and paraffin and colors. I'll bring my rollerblades with elbow and knee pads. I'll bring my cake decorating books and my collection of fancy icing tips. I might go home with pliers & dowel & a bunch of thick wire to turn into chain mail, or perhaps a power sander, or a beginner's archery bow and arm guard.

Comments

[jcgbigler.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of a hobby swap, but I need to have more of a hobby yard sale. I've already got more hobbies than I have time for. In addition to my job (high school chemistry teacher) and parental duties, I manage to actually keep up with the hobbies of being a professional musician in two orchestras and the foreman (dance teacher) of a morris dance team. I still roast coffee regularly. I still get the bicycle out occasionally, and still press apple cider once a year. It's been forever since I've been caving, scuba diving, skiing, turned on the ham radio, took any pictures with the real camera, brewed beer, looked at the coin collection, picked a lock, used the candle molds, or gone climbing or rappelling.

I often joke that my "A" life consists of the things I actually manage to make time for. My (imaginary) "B" life consists of the things I'd love to do but just can't make time for. This includes the above hobbies that I've put on hold, plus a host of others that would be interesting but I haven't even had time to consider.

So I'd love to go to your hobby swap, but mostly only to browse for things to add to my "B" life.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing ruefully. I, too, have a rich and varied "B" life. It's been forever since I've been caving, skiing, running, hiking, backpacking, camping, rock climbing, candle making, quilting, talking on the ham radio, or taking decent photographs. It's been a while since I've baked anything. I haven't flown an aircraft in over two years, I have a half-finished shirt sitting by the sewing machine covered in year-old dust, and I have wine making equipment that has never been used.

Part of the idea of the hobby swap would be that I could lighten the load on my "B" life. By passing these hobbies along to others, I could free myself from the guilt of not doing them.

My "A" life contains (work and cats and Rob and) square dancing. I need a hobby to replace square dancing. That's the main thing I'd be looking for at a hobby swap. It's a tough slot to fill; most hobbies with that level of social interaction *and* learning *and* travel associated with them will also require the ability to stand up and walk. On the plus side, square dancing is a huge chunk of my life, so this new hobby can have an awful lot of time if that's needed!

[firecat]

most hobbies with that level of social interaction *and* learning *and* travel associated with them will also require the ability to stand up and walk.

There are a LOT of knitting and beading conventions around the world. And they all have lots of classes, that mostly involve sitting down!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh cool! This is good to know! Do people travel internationally for the really splufty conventions, or are they mostly lots of local people?

If I developed some weird specialty, like making my own beads out of recycled cell phones, then there's some chance I could *give* a class at such a thing some day, right? (I'm hoping that would help offset travel expenses. I wouldn't travel half so much if square dance calling didn't pay a little.)

[firecat]

There are international classes and major conventions that people travel to. A couple of examples randomly lifted off of Google:

http://sisudesigns.theshoppe.com/retreats.html

http://www.beadsonthevine.com/

And yes, lots of people give classes on their special and not even all that special techniques.