Ended Official BYC Mini Contest - "WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY?"

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Thanks. Wasn't as easy as the pix make it look, a lot of the glazes looked identically 'greige' (grey + beige = greige) when wet and the color wasn't actually visible until after the pieces were fired -= hence some of the sloppiness.

I didn't see any sloppiness. I think they're incredible.

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

I remember that griege color! A co-worker of mine had a ceramics study for a very short time. It was always fun to see how those colors would come out. My mom did ceramics for a real long time, I still have a nativity set she made and a big Christmas tree.

Always enjoyed that hobby but never could find a place close by where I could do it.

What else have you made?

Omg... not another one...

When I lived in WA there was a paint your own ceramic place a few towns over. I bought a monthly studio pass so that I didn't have to rush. I spent hours and hours there. I found it so relaxing. Even though I can't draw a good looking stick person, I was able to turn out some fairly decent looking stuff.
Nowadays I buy the player pieces and just use acrylic paint. All of my paints froze and thawed for years in storage, so I'm starting from scratch this year with basic colours. Here's a couple of the Christmas presents that I've made so far this year.

 

[perchie.girl]

I meant to write that I like your wire work jewelry @perchie.girl. A women further down the mountain here does similar work with silver wire and amber. She had a table at the exhibition I was at last weekend.
I was so late contributing to this thread I just can’t comment on all the posts that have accumulated.

Thanks ... I would love to work with silver one day....

deb

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Okay, that soap sounds amazing. I guess I'll have to throw my hat into the ring, too.

My number one hobby (outside of the chickens, of course) is birding. I've loved birds as long as I can remember, even before we started with the chickens, so birding is just a further extension of my passion for all things avian. So, basically, I go out in nature somewhere and just sit quietly for hours until a bird comes to me. Then, it's a battle to see the bird clearly and completely enough to get a positive ID without moving around so much that it flies off. Sounds super fun, right? (No, but really, it is quite peaceful and relaxing. )

Our woods here is one of my favorite places to go birding because it gives me the opportunity to see how it's doing out there. The woods is mid-succession, maybe even slightly early succession at the understory level, because my grandparents ran hogs through there decades ago, but the surrounding area was more recently (you know, only 15-20 years ago) farmed for crops and is in the earlier, grass-forb to shrubby-seedling stage of succession. That kind of texture isn't necessarily a bad thing for species. I keep a 'life list' of bird species I spot and more than 80 species on that list were spotted here, mostly where the woods meets that recovering cropland.

Unfortunately, I don't have a camera with a long enough lens to do any good bird photography while I'm at it. We do have bird feeders on the back deck (away from where the chickens could get near them), though, where I occasionally take pictures. Here is a really shadowy but still somewhat adorable Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) at one of the feeders:

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A Northern Cardinal male (Cardinalis cardinalis) on a branch outside the living room window:

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And a panorama of the woods during early May this year. This was around the time I spotted an American Woodcock (Scolopax minor) in this area. He did a lot of displaying those evenings, but I never was able to catch him in the act. Fingers crossed for next spring! You can see where the woods just sort of stops and the early succession shrubs begin in the background, here:

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I hope I didn't ramble too much! I love seeing what others do outside of chickening.

I used to have feeders set up outside my patio door. I'd sit for hours watching. The tufted titmouse was my favourite. Sadly, we don't have them where I live now. We don't even have cardinals . I envy you and the opportunity to enjoy so many species.

 

[R2elk]

is there a way to save your post? so I can bookmark to come back on this new site or not? @R2elk

At the bottom of each post next to the Report button is the Bookmark button. When you click on the Bookmark button it will open a box that will allow you to give it a title, a tag and choose whether or not a public or sticky bookmark and whether or not to mark it as a favorite. When done choosing the options you want be sure to click on the Bookmark button at the bottom of options box.

After you bookmark something, you will be able to access it and your other bookmarks by hovering over the Account button in the header and selecting "Your Bookmarks" from the drop down menu.

If a person does not have a PFM membership, the Bookmark button will not be visible at the bottom of each post.

 

[N F C]

Omg... not another one...

When I lived in WA there was a paint your own ceramic place a few towns over. I bought a monthly studio pass so that I didn't have to rush. I spent hours and hours there. I found it so relaxing. Even though I can't draw a good looking stick person, I was able to turn out some fairly decent looking stuff.
Nowadays I buy the player pieces and just use acrylic paint. All of my paints froze and thawed for years in storage, so I'm starting from scratch this year with basic colours. Here's a couple of the Christmas presents that I've made so far this year.
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Yeah, another one Michelle

Nice presents! Does a little light or candle go inside the cottage?

 

[N F C]

At the bottom of each post next to the Report button is the Bookmark button. When you click on the Bookmark button it will open a box that will allow you to give it a title, a tag and choose whether or not a public or sticky bookmark and whether or not to mark it as a favorite. When done choosing the options you want be sure to click on the Bookmark button at the bottom of options box.

After you bookmark something, you will be able to access it and your other bookmarks by hovering over the Account button in the header and selecting "Your Bookmarks" from the drop down menu.

If a person does not have a PFM membership, the Bookmark button will not be visible at the bottom of each post.

Good explanation!

 

[Blooie]

@Blooie
I really really like some of your quilts.
Moonlit Garden is absolutely gorgeous.
Also very impressed by The Albatross.
All the others you’ve posted look lovely but not necessarily my taste.
I know this is a how long is a piece of string question; I often get asked about the lamps I make....
Approximately how long would it take you to make a quilt with the detail level of Moonlit Garden of a size suitable for a double bed?

Seriously, I’m impressed. I see all sorts of good quality arts and crafts when I go to the fairs with my lamps. You could share my table any day.

Thank you. Remind me to answer you more completely when I’m not trying to type on a phone bouncing down a bumpy, snow covered road in a pickup truck!

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Hobby #1—Photography
I'm not very good, but I have fun. I've gotten into the BYC calendar twice, but as a general rule I don't do competitions or sell prints.
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Wow Banty! That's the kind of photography I want to do. Would love to get my hands on a good macro lens.

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

Most of my hobbies are arts and crafts related. There are SO MANY THINGS that I love doing, but my first passion in life was drawing... think I started when I was old enough to hold a crayon. My parents used to enter me in coloring contests and I always took art classes in school. I really meant to go to college, but life happened, dance clubs, horses and other stuff... and after 20 years of being a florist and shop manager, I lost my job unexpectedly.

My husband and I had been trying to have a baby for years, but my workload and holiday stress level never seemed to allow it. Losing my job felt like the worst thing in the world just happened, but turned out to be the best. Unemployment paid for me to go back to school full time for graphic design. Shortly after I started school, (approaching 40 years old) I got pregnant! Then my hubby got his dream job. Anyway, after I had this lovely sweet baby girl growing up without me at the babysitter's, I never did finish my degree... just decided to be a stay at home mom.
Oh well.

Hobby #1 is Drawing

My favorite media to work with was pencil and watercolor, I think because they could be erased or easily manipulated as the work progressed. These are from junior high school.
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My first and only attempt at drawing anything mechanical. At the time, my husband owned a Triumph Daytona 675 (his pride and joy) so I drew this for an anniversary gift -with a mechanical pencil.
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Then I discovered charcoal, another easy-to-work-with medium, but very messy. This is a large drawing and I also used a white chalk pencil.
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Here's that sweet little girl I was talking about. She was the focus of many of my school projects.
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mixed media: charcoal, graphite, pen and ink.
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not a drawing, but I had to draw the outline before I could cut it out of paper.
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The following are a few sketches from last year. I tried doing a couple drawing challenges which required a new drawing for every day of the month.

October's challenge was called "Inktober" and was supposed to be ink only, which I never had the confidence to really try before, but I pushed through. Each drawing was based on a specific prompt word for the day. I used Sharpie, sometimes ink washes with a brush, various ink pens and also some tinted markers.
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"Huevember" could be any medium, just a dominant color based on a different shade every day from a color wheel containing 30 colors for the month of November. By this point I became pretty fond of ink, and most of these drawings were ink and colored pencil.
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I know this post is getting really long but I just have to share this... because I also love coloring in coloring books and it's something my daughter and I can do together. My favorite books are by Johanna Basford.
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This lovely author periodically has world-wide coloring contests, so we entered one on a whim. This competition was for the release of her new book "Ivy and the Inky Butterfly." She's based in the UK and has a beautiful website.
These are my entries
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And my 6 year old daughter Emily's entries
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So as it turned out, Emily was one of 5 winners!
She won an enormous gift pack of art supplies and a personal note from Johanna Basford herself. Talk about a proud moment!
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Omg! You are so talented! Now that your daughter is in school, you should do more, to sell. You'd make a fortune with that talent! My favourite is the boots. Absolutely incredible!