Quills and Needles

Just truckin' along here. It's starting to be the End of the Semester, which means finals are approaching, which means my free time will decrease slowly and then increase rapidly (after finals are done.) This week, I have mainly been working on The Dress, with a little spinning thrown in. (I also knit the first four rows of Chart B on my Haruni before deciding it wasn't very good movie knitting, and set it aside for later.)

( Pictures within... )
I was hand-basting last night when I couldn't sleep, and got to thinking about magic stuff—in Tamora Pierce's books (I'm thinking of Circle of Magic, specifically, but also in the Tortall universe) the characters have special magics in their particular areas of interest. (I find it interesting that the magics correspond to what the characters love, but of course that may be a correlation = causation situation.) If I lived in that world, I'd like to have either textile or animal magic (so, either Sandry or Daine, basically.) But of course, I don't. I have to put in all the slogging hours hand basting this dress, and I can't just order the thread around or demand the organza stop slipping and lie flat. (Silk apparently likes Sandry, so I assume she wouldn't have this problem.) I'm still pondering the economic implications of that. And, you know, in worlds with craft magic, you might meet someone who doesn't have magic but who excels in their field, because they're exceptional. But never anyone else. "This is Sandry, who is awesome with textiles and has magic. And this is Sally, who is incredible—and she doesn't even have magic! How incredible! (Oh, and this is Carrie, who is sorta middling with textiles and doesn't have magic, and isn't worth mentioning, even if Sandry might have been sorta-middling without any magic.)" Doesn't happen.

"Not everyone who loves a thing has magic with it, you know," Rosethorn said. (Tris's Book, p. 49)

On the plus side, no one here has magic, so at least that's one even playing ground.

 Finished spinning some beautiful green silk yarn:




I also bought a spinning wheel from a local spinner. (Previously I have only spun on spindles.) She also gave me some angora from her bunnies and some alpaca fiber she had. It's a lovely saxony-style Kromski Prelude. I feel like a noob spinning on it, but I just don't have the hang of it yet.



It's kinda my end-of-the-semester present to me. It's been a rough semester. Still working on finals.

I have a whole post about the differences in hobbies/crafts I participate in up in my head somewhere, it'll probably get posted when I start being disciplined as a blog writer. :P One thing, though, that strikes me as interesting—there's so often the assumption that the particular hobby being discussed is the only one you have. My writing acquaintances often talk about 'write every day', 'don't complain about not having time,' etc. Same from drawing people; similar stuff from photography people, even though that hobby is more business oriented (at least in my circle of people, which admittedly focuses on model photography.) Even knitting people often talk about knitting All The Times, although this is the hobby that seems least isolated; I know lots of knitters who also crochet, weave, spin, etc.

(I'm not saying everyone in the hobby does this/has no other hobbies/ etc, it's more of a general impression based on my experiences and social circle.)

It gets me to wondering: do most people only have one or two hobbies? I have this impression that they do, but, um, clearly I do not. I pick up a new hobby every 1-2 years, on average. (In addition to the ones I've mentioned here, I also sew, play video games, and ride horses. I plan to learn to spin, weave, dye, and learn to shoot films at some vague point in the future.) I don't watch TV much—when would I have the time? :)

Anyway, if you have a hobby or two or several, post them here? It will be a very unscientific poll. And do your hobbies have the impression of being an exclusive hobby or are they full of multi-hobbied people?