Sunday Contements – Hobbies

It’s only 10AM on Sunday, and so far I’ve recorded and produced this week’s Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, gone back to bed, snuggled and cuddled with the Hubster (ah, quality time!), had breakfast, read part of the newspaper, and gotten the laundry going. You can so tell that we are past the holidays here. The day is just going beautifully.

I’m on the couch right now, sipping coffee while I blog. Princess and Hubster have headed out to church, poor Catholic darlings, while Pixie and I remain delightfully heathen and enjoy a quiet morning at home. In a few, I’ll change clothes, exercise, start dinner for the evening, and get to work on folding laundry. Heck, I may even clean a room or two.

But right now, I’m blogging, and today’s topic of contentment is hobbies. I was just reading in Parade Magazine about how people are reacting to the economy and the damage to their incomes. A lot of folks are giving up the big expenses and are focusing on smaller enjoyments. In the paper last week, an article on thrifty living mentioned picking up a hobby as a way to save money. Hobbies can be easy on the wallet, and they give a person something to do with their free time other than shopping. I know for a fact that when I’m busy with writing or art or podcasting, I certainly don’t have time to spend money, so I’m happy to hear someone else agrees this is a good way to save.

I took up a couple new hobbies recently: knitting, which I’ve mentioned here before; and over the holidays I taught myself to crochet. Only the basics, obviously, but I’m doing well enough right now that I can finally indulge in something I’ve wanted to do for a while – make amigurumi dolls.

Amigurumi dolls are tiny little hand-crafted dolls, either sewn, knitted or crocheted. They can be anything from the usual lineup of stuff animals – bears, tigers, etc. – to things more obscure like little stuffed felt tea cups or ice cream sandwiches with smiley faces embroidered on them. I’ve opted to try crocheting a few dolls, since I found a couple of books on making various horror, fantasy, and sci-fi characters. How cool would it be to make a crocheted ninja! Or a Gorgon! Or a zombie!

While I was visiting my in-laws after Christmas, I started my first attempt. I took a ball of cheap rainbow-colored yarn and picked out the simplest pattern of those in my books (a robot zombie, waaaaay cool!). One of my brothers-in-law joked that it looked like I was making hackey sacks. Those were actually the head and body. Then I spent New Year’s Eve chatting with my best friend Mary while I made the legs and arms and stitched the whole thing together. I made plenty of mistakes. It took me a while to figure out how to count the stitches and how to properly decrease each row to make things come out just right. But by the time I’d finished up the last little leg, I had the hang of things. Pixie immediately claimed the end result as her own, and wouldn’t even let me embroider a little face on it. So now she gambols about the house with what looks like a faceless little malformed psychedelic crocheted voodoo doll, and she loves it. We decided to call him Rainbow Baby (or sometimes Fleur, after the ring master in Cirque du Soliel’s Allegria, which is Pixie’s favorite movie right now).

Here’s a picture of Rainbow Baby.

I’ve already started work on the next one, and this time not making nearly as many mistakes. Princess has already laid claim to him. Since Princess and Pixie are now both taking karate classes, I can imagine I’ll be doing quite a bit of crocheting and knitting while I sit in the dojo and wait for them. I like that idea, that I’ll have a couple of hours every week to just sit and make something simple and fun. Especially if what I’m making ends up being a zombie or a ninja or a Gorgon…

Or a faceless little malformed psychedelic crocheted voodoo doll. I mean really, how cool is that?!

Have a wonderful Sunday everyone, and be sure to take time to relax.