Tag: hobbies

Winter Crafts & Update

I am still alive. Suffering near constant headaches and dealing with digestive issues often is not a lot of fun but I am doing the best I can, trying to stay positive, and keep on keeping on. I’m behind on holiday baking, haven’t started, and struggling with certain chores. My crafting is almost on track though, so let’s celebrate that. Here are a few of my projects:

My first few gnomes, some felt xmas trees, and my first attempts at Scandi-inspired ornaments.

This Friday I will be making gnomes and gingerbread men with the teens & tweens at the library. My instructor had to cancel as she has come down with Covid. Yikes, she was fairly careful and still got it. Scary as I am fairly careful and do not want to get it. Anyway, she is a great instructor as was bringing all the felt and scissors, needles, thread, threaders etc. So now I am raiding my stash and what the library has and we will have to make-do. The worst part will be the kids having to make-do with ME as an instructor, I am not good at it. So, I have simplified the projects and will be providing some already cut pieces for them to work with in case I can’t explain anything… which it pretty likely. :/ On the plus side I supposedly have 6 kids showing up to this so, wow. That hasn’t happened since before the plague!

Anyway, my head is pounding and everything hurts so I’ll leave it at that. I hope you are all well and staying healthy.

A Few of my Favorite Things

2020 has been a tough year. We’re not quite to the end of it yet but it’ll be wrapping up shortly. While I have a moment, before my last, desperate dash to get projects done before Xmas, here is a list of some of the things that brought a little light to a dark and terrible year.

BOOKS:

  • Mexican Gothic; by Silvia Moreno Garcia
  • In the Shadow of Spindrift House; by Mira Grant (audiobook)
  • The Year of Less; How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away my Belongings and Discovered that Life is Worth More than Anything You Can Buy in a Store; by Cait Flanders
  • Girls of Paper and Fire; by Natasha Ngan
  • The Hunger; by Alma Katsu

They were a delightful distraction.

GAMES:

  • Pathfinder 2ed. (We have 3 weekly games and a few others that meet sporadically.)
  • Minecraft. (Many hours, with the monsters turned off, building farms, fortresses, mazes etc.)
  • Red Flags. (Hilarious, uncomfortable, and hilariously uncomfortable. So much laughter.)
  • Dragon Age Origins. Still delightful as it ages.
  • Skyrim. I will never not want to build my houses and fight monsters to get money so I can build my houses.
  • Harry Potter Wizards Unite! It got me to go outside and walk, masked and distant, around my neighborhood.

HOBBIES:

  • Knitting
  • Crocheting
  • Sewing
  • Painting
  • Writing
  • Drawing
  • Bird Watching/Feeding

TV SHOWS:

  • Community. Light, funny, excellent.
  • Sherlock. Diverting and Distracting, completely delightful.
  • The Rookie. I keep rewatching the ones that are available.
  • The Mandalorion. Baby Yoda is a gift to all of us.
  • The West Wing. Here’s hoping President Biden will be a compassionate and decent leader to us all.
  • Vera. Freaking Awesome. Love this show.
  • Shetland. Same as above. Top notch.

VIDEOS:

  • Liziqi. A capable young woman in rural China growing, foraging and cooking food as well as making all manner of useful or beautiful things. This is my drug of choice to soothe my anxiety. Also my life goals. I have probably spent more hours watching this than anything else.
  • Tier Zoo. Real life treated as a video game. Weirdly calming and very entertaining.
  • Julie Nolke. Her future self talking to her past self during 2020 is comedy GOLD.
  • Ozzy Man Reviews. I like his animal videos the best particularly the Otter vs. Orca and Honey Badger vs. Python. His Destination F*cked videos are hilarious too. Great stuff.
  • Your Daily Dose of Internet. Amusing, amazing, weird and funny clips put together for our amusement.
  • Binging with Babish. Cooking show, very cool, entertaining and educational.
  • Bardcore. Modern songs played on medieval instruments with words altered like this: “Thee and me could write a bad romance….” Awesome.

FOOD & DRINK:

  • Local Beer. Brewery about a 10 minute walk from the house. Not my favorite beer in the world but good AND they do pay online curbside pick up… and they now recognize our car.
  • Local Bakery. Way too close to my house. Apple Galettes, donuts, bread, all manner of delicious carbs + Soup!
  • Local Pizza. Quite close to the house. I am in constant danger of deciding not to cook dinner and just order pizza for everyone.
  • Yorkshire Gold Tea. Every morning a sweet cup of comfort.
  • Cookies, home made, all of them.
  • Birthday cake. 2 in the Spring, 8 days apart, 3 in the Fall within about 2- 2 1/2 weeks. Ideally they’d be more spread out but I will take birthday cake whenever I can get it.

About all the local businesses: I live in a town of 1200 people and I have 2 excellent pizza places, a decent brewery, a fantastic bakery, a seasonal ice cream stand, and a fancy restaurant all within easy walking distance. We also have a little market with groceries, wine and beer and a deli, another okay restaurant, a coffee and donut chain store, and a few other businesses besides. It’s a quiet little town that could use a few more businesses to cover some basic needs but crime sprees around here consist of mailbox baseball, kids stealing change out of unlocked cars, occasional packages stolen off porches and speeding. I mean, you know, mostly. Sometimes someone the police pull over will have like a pound of cocaine in their car or whatever but we are between a few places where there is a fair bit of illicit drug use.

PLACES:

  • Home. The vast bulk of the year has been spent here and it really is a cute little house. It keeps us cozy and safe and has enough places to store food so we can withstand short periods of not being able to get all the food we need.
  • The Hippie Fort/Shed/Studio. Our own little getaway several yards from the house. Seasonal but excellent. Could use insulation, heat and plumbing. A great place for date night with music and candle light, a lovely place to read, write, paint etc.
  • The Library where I work. A terrific little library that has provided us with a wide array of reading materials as well as access to movies and TV shows on DVD. Also, the only place I hang out with anyone other than my immediate family for any length of time at all.
  • The Park down the street. Just a green space with some trees and a couple of benches but also a little hub for the Wizards Unite! game. Lovely trees.
  • My yard. I now have 3 little garden spots set up and ready to be planted in the Spring. The place is loaded with ticks but it’s really cute. I need to find a way to kill all the ticks. (I hate them more than almost anything.)

MVPs of 2020:

  • The Pantry. Excellent work holding lots of pasta, canned goods, tea, cocoa, cereal, crackers, snacks, peanut butter and so on.
  • Chest Freezer. Ours may be small but it has worked it’s butt off all year storing meat, veg, & breads ready to tide us over when such became hard to find during parts of the pandemic.
  • Wood Stove. Keeping us warm is a piece of cake for this little beauty. It also assists in the drying of foods and can be used as a stove top for cooking if the power goes out in winter.
  • XBox 360. Still working like a champ keeping my Skyrim and Dragon Age games ready for me to go hide in.
  • Playstation 4. My Minecraft machine that also has a Pirate Game, Witcher games, etc that everyone else uses. Also has a little game of Fallout Vault in there that I occasionally like to mess around with. Many, many hours of entertainment for the entire family.
  • CD Player. Currently providing Xmas music, often used to play audiobooks as well as music of all types. Makes life better for all of us.
  • Book Shelves. Loaded up with something under 5,000 books, 50-100 board, card, and dice games, as well as RPGs and an abundance of DVDs, they provide storage for many things that keep us entertained and distracted through this long, long crisis.