Let me tell you about my hobby...talent...skill.

[Cooking Goddess]

Recently, we've been WOWed by dragnlaw's eggs, K-Girl's (and others) painted rocks, and always photos by RPCooking. Lots of other talents and skills posted throughout various DC threads. Tell us what you can do. Let's make these non-cooking skills, for the record. Photos are welcome.

I used to play guitar fairly well. I have a nice Guild F-212 model I bought used from a guy who knew how to treat it well. I even managed to get up on a stage in front of a few people to play and sing - for free. They still overpaid. OK, that's one for me. I actually have more hobbies that I've since abandoned. Share what you do - again, a picture is worth a lot.

 

[caseydog]

My hobby is actually cooking. I take pictures for a living, so I don't get to just play with my photography like RPcooking does. I like building things, but as I get older, it gets harder for me to do some things I used to be able to do.

Every now and then, I get to do my job, and have it feel like a hobby. I hope to reach a point where I only do photography assignments that I really want to do.

CD

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[bbqcoder]

My first hobby is home improvement. Built a shed five years ago that is documented in this thread.

https://www.diychatroom.com/f49/diycoders-shed-project-178512/

So I’m comfortable with carpentry, wiring (studied EE), plumbing. Am head of the Trustees for the local church so I help fix problems or hire pros to do the job. Can currently have a project to replace some of our thermostats with Ecobee smart thermostats. Not an easy job because the C wire is “broken”. An example is at my house where I had A/C installed in 2005 so they ran new thermostat wires. There are a few places where they splice with other wires. Do they connect all the wires? No, only the ones they need. So you have to trace the wires to find the splices and connect the C wire.

 

[Just Cooking]

When I retired, I bought wood working tools, etc., and started making bird houses, planter boxes and replicating Victorian houses/barns, etc.. I was urged to have a booth at a few local festivals, which I didn't like too much as, I was doing this for fun and to give away.. I didn't want it to be a business.
When we decided upon apartment living, that hobby went away.. I miss it, to an extent..

Ross

 

[taxlady]

I haven't done much with my hobbies in quite a while. I crochet. I actually used to sell my crocheted stuff back in the 1970s. I have done an awful lot of crochet and make my own patterns, if I can be bothered with a pattern. Once in a blue moon, I knit very simple things or a collar or cuffs onto something I crocheted. I also sew occasionally. I really should get my sewing machine tuned up. Here's the last thing I sewed. It's a wizard costume for Stirling. I made it to match the store bought wizard hat. Yes, the wizard robe has "invisible" pockets. No, I didn't make that t-shirt that you can see peeking out at the neck.

 

[taxlady]

Just Cooking, those are really nice. It's a shame you don't have space to do that anymore. Are there any "maker spaces" near you? I have friends who live in a flat and do wood working and metal working in a maker space.

 

[Just Cooking]

Just Cooking, those are really nice. It's a shame you don't have space to do that anymore. Are there any "maker spaces" near you? I have friends who live in a flat and do wood working and metal working in a maker space.

Thank you..

I don't believe that there are local places for this and I gave all my woodworking equipment to a neighbor when we sold our house anyway..

To be honest, I don't believe that I have the stamina and concentration to do it justice anymore..

Ross

 

[roadfix]

Some of my recent non-food related projects include a back yard observatory with retracting roof top, a 16x20 pergola, and a small black bamboo garden.








My next project I have in mind is a 120 sq/ft A-frame cabin/tiny house/man cave, or whatever you call it in the corner of my back yard. I've been doodling plans on napkins for a few weeks now...

 

[bbqcoder]

include a back yard observatory with retracting roof top,

Retracting roof top? I'm impressed. Can you provide some details on how this works?

 

[roadfix]

Retracting roof top? I'm impressed. Can you provide some details on how this works?

The 8x10 roof sits on four, 4-inch steel v-groove casters, and it rolls across (pushed manually, from the inside) on inverted angle iron rails that are mounted on 16' beams. The roof in that open position is sitting on rail beams.

Hope that makes sense.

There's a complete build thread (from 2012) on an astronomy forum but all the pics are gone, thanks to photobucket.

Here's another photo I found on my phone that kinda shows the rail beams supporting the roof...

 

[medtran49]

Roadfix, they did a retractable roof observatory/couples space on a show called Make It with Amy Poehler. It was really cool.

JustCooking, those houses are just wow.

 

[bbqcoder]

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, I think I can visualize it. It looks great! Very ingenious.

There's a complete build thread (from 2012) on an astronomy forum but all the pics are gone, thanks to photobucket.

There was a problem with Tinypic at one time. People would post pictures anonymously and if the pictures were not accessed within a certain time period, they would disappear. Worse yet, the URLs would get recycled so you could have a NSFW picture show up in the future!

I've used imgur for a long time. They have been very good. Still, what happened to photobucket could happen to them. There are no guarantees in life.

 

[roadfix]

Yes, I think I can visualize it. It looks great! Very ingenious.

Very impressive build on the work you did on your shed.

Weird...I was able to go to photobucket and retrieve my albums and photos. For some reason I wasn't able to copy my photos for the longest time.

Here's a pic of a sketch/plan I did for the roll-off roof and pic of roof support posts and beams.

 

[roadfix]

My first hobby is home improvement. Built a shed five years ago that is documented in this thread.

https://www.diychatroom.com/f49/diycoders-shed-project-178512/

Inspired by your build thread and the community there I decided to join the forum... )

 

[Kaneohegirlinaz]

I was thinking about this sort of thread for the past few weeks.
I feel that folks who cook are creative and have MANY other
talents that they just look at as, meh, it's just my little hobby.
I think that we have quite the diversely talented collection of people here.
I look forward to hearing/seeing more!

 

[Cooking Goddess]

And yet you waited for me to start one! Love ya, K-Girl.

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cd, you know Mario Andretti? Your job is soooo coool! (sometimes)

I wish I could crochet and knit, taxy. I used to be able to make a very long chain with a crochet hook and once upon a time I could knit...scarves. My knitting needles would be better used as skewers. My sewing skills aren't much better, either.

roadfix, wow on everything! I showed the observatory to Himself. He turned a little bit green. Not like there's a place for it on this heavily-wooded lot, but I did promise he could have one when we move back home to Ohio. I'm not sure if even that will motivate him to help get the house market-ready. BTW, his scope is your telescope's grandpa - he has one like it, circa 1987-ish.

bbqcoder and Ross, I saved you two for last. While Himself has dabbled in construction and woodworking over the years (building a deck on our first house in 1980, and making a nice kitchen step stool for me recently) he isn't up to your level of skills. I know practice makes good - maybe I should hide his tablet for a while so he has no choice but to go down to the basement to play. I really appreciate that step stool. I wish he'd made another "something" just to stay busy, but he keeps saying his back hurts when he's not in his recliner.

 

[caseydog]

CG, I got to spend most of a day with Mario, and attend a wine tasting at his winery. He autographed six bottles of wine for me. A few months later, he was in Dallas, and he autographed the first page of the magazine article I art directed about him. Really nice guy.

A few years later, I got to be in the paddock with Mario after he did some amazing hot laps at Laguna Seca in the John Player Special Lotus he drove to a Formula 1 championship in 1978.

His PR person was wonderful. She arranged for me to be in that paddock.

Then there is Carroll Shelby. One of his closest friends lives in Dallas, and was my mentor as an art director. He arranged for me to photograph Shelby (he preferred to be called by his last name). I set up the shot, and I was the only photographer there.

CD

 

[caseydog]

I forgot about my other hobby... well, past hobby. I have been camping all my life. In my 20s and 30s it was backpacking and wilderness camping in a tiny tent that weighed about two pounds. By my 40s, sleeping on the ground became painful in the morning. So, I found a teardrop camper forum, and built one.

They are basically a sleeping compartment, and a galley in the back. Being Texas, I designed a way to incorporate a cheap window style air conditioner.

The frame was an old boat trailer that I had cut and welded to my specs, and I built the whole camper in my garage. It took about four months of evenings and weekends. I created a mural for the galley that makes the sleeping quarters look like a giant bedroom, and put Brian from The Family Guy in the mural just for more fun.

CD

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[rodentraiser]

I have so many hobbies I don't know where to start. I don't do many of them right now though, for various reasons. But as soon as I have a place of my own, I plan to start most of them up again.

Let's see. I started training my friend's mixed breed dog and with two other people (William Strand and Gail Cocking), we began to start promoting All Americans (mutts) so they could get their obedience titles like the purebreds could. This was back in the mid-70s in the Bay Area. So today when someone mentions they have an All American with an obedience degree, that's because of us!

I also did obedience training with all my coworkers' dogs till I got my own Doberman. He ended up getting his three obedience titles and a tracking title. He also did Schutzhund work, search and rescue, and marched in a Doberman Drill Team. We marched in parades and performed at places like the Los Angeles Convention Center and Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

I collected and showed model horses. I started buying one or two good ones and I have two that have NAN qualified (qualified for the North American National show), but I never went there.

I also showed and raised mice for 8 years, getting a Best in Show with one of my Siamese mice. You guys have no idea. After years of watching my dog mess up in the obedience ring, it was wonderful to show the mice. Entry fees were only $2 instead of $20, they didn't have to perform (all they had to do was not bite the judge), they couldn't run out of the ring because they stayed in their cage, and when they won, they got huge ribbons! Total win! LOL

I helped my friend work up her endurance horses for races, but I was more interested in show jumping. It's sort of too bad, too, because my friend ended up becoming a top endurance rider and I could have learned a lot from her. She won the World Champion Endurance race three times and I believe she got an individual gold medal in Sweden. Her name is Becky Hart if anyone wants to look her up. But even though I wasn't a fan of endurance, I did at least learn to ride.

I started watching show jumping in the late 90s and this last year I bought a subscription to watch the televised shows across the world and it's been a blast. I know the riders, I know the horses, and in fact, in about half an hour I'm going to be watching the Nations Cup in Falsterbo, Sweden. Super cool. My dream is to travel to Calgary and watch the Spruce Meadows shows there.

I took an astronomy class in the early 80s and the teacher hauled out the telescopes on the last night of class. I was hooked! So I got a telescope. I used to go with my astronomy club to star parties at Fremont Peak and went out with the club to set up the scopes for public star parties.

I currently have an Orion 8" f/6 Dobsonian that I hope to use when I move out to my lot. My dream is to get a Discovery 12.5" f/5 Dobsonian scope and I'm afraid it will have to remain a dream. Prices on those go up and up. The one I want is currently $1700. And that observatory Roadfix built has me drooling in envy. I had to wipe off the monitor.

I did some ghost hunting for a while here in the PNW, but there aren't a lot of ghost hunting groups here where I live. I plan to start up again if another group gets together. I can't remember if we did ghost stories here but if you want to hear any, I have a few that will lift the hair on your head.

You guys know I build and decorate dollhouses. I've had to sell or give away most of those because management here thought they were too large for the room and also, I couldn't paint or saw with a jigsaw where I am. I have a couple kits in boxes right now and when I move, I hope to get started on some of those houses.

I have a morbid interest in viruses and epidemic and there's really nothing I can do with that hobby except read about it. But, when Ebola hit the news, I knew more about it than most journalists. LOL

I also like to garden but haven't been able to do that for almost 20 years now. That's something else I want to start again when I move. That's a hobby, but not necessarily a skill. I plant things. What grows, grows well and what doesn't, dies. It makes me look like I have a green thumb, but I really don't.

I like languages, too. I took 6 years of German, a year each of French and Spanish, and learned Russian on my own. In other words, I am at about the Dick and Jane level of reading and don't even ask about my speaking skills! Again, this isn't a hobby I can do much with but when I move and don't have a computer, I think I may put in some time to learning some other languages as well. Along with studying the ones I'm already supposed to know.

My most beloved hobby is music. Basically, I like the music from the 60s to the mid-70s. I had a great education from one of the top FM stations in the country and now I like to listen to everything except straight classical, straight country western (although I like Jr. Brown and Johnny Cash), or rap.

I am now collecting as much music as I can from Youtube or on CDs, some of it being songs I haven't heard for over 40 years. I listen to country, country rock, acid rock, heavy metal, bluegrass, folk, folk rock, blues, and music that doesn't seem to have a genre, like kd lang, Loreena McKennitt, Harry Chapin, or Shawn Phillips. And it's good quality rock and roll. None of that teeny bopper, singing-through-their-noses Top Forty junk. Although, yes, there are still a few Monkees songs I listen to.

Fun fact: Stephen Stills auditioned to be a Monkee and when he was turned down, he suggested his friend, Peter Tork. And the rest was history.

OK, I think that's enough for now. My horse show is starting in about 15 minutes and I need to get myself set up for that.

 

[dragnlaw]

My mother was the classic "Jack of All Trades, but Master of None" and I figure most of my siblings picked up some of it.

My dream was to open a school where people could come to take a course in depth, just try something, make a specific thing without having to go great expense for all the paraphernalia. Be it woodworking (doll house, kits or not, bird houses,trays, bookcases, etc) carving, burning, leather work, enameling, pottery, ceramics, oil/water painting - I'm not talking sports type hobbies and not buildings such as sheds.

I can sew but I'm not a seamstress. I can only sew what I really want to. I did make my own wedding dress and the kids but not the 2 bridesmaids. I've sewn Raggedy Ann dolls, stuffed rabbits - still want to do some Teddy Bears but just haven't gotten to it. One sister can really sew and is a fantastic quilter.

I can knit and crochet ubt again only when I really see something I like - whcih is about every 15 years or so.

Brother was a professional photographer, a pretty good oil painter, a fantastic character sketcher. I tried oil painting but without someone over my shoulder saying do this.. do that.. a lttle more here...

I had a Ceramic Studio where I taught different techniques (still have a kiln in the barn somewhere). Pottery wasn't exactly my thing but I enjoyed the decorating of ceramics (these are cast in a mold) also did several porcelain dolls but I'm not quite delicate enough. although I did teach the course. You know the saying I've mentioned before- there those that do and those that teach.

I can use a circular saw, chop saw, air hammer, nailer but these are not hobbies, it's called fix it NOW or chase the darn horses down the highway! But I like doing them I get great satisfaction from my mickey mouse repairs.

I made my own tiled base for under the wood stove - especially when I saw the price to buy one. Already had the tiles from the kitchen, borrowed a wet saw. Wood, glue, grout, Done.

Is there a differnce between a hobby-ist and a DIY'er?