I’m curious about your crafting and hobbies and what you’re up to! What are you doing lately to support and recharge yourself?

(I’m very nosy this week. )

  Tara: I’m playing Hades again and have also been playing Balatro on my Nintendo Switch for months.

Sarah: Hades! There is a lot of Balatro happening in Casa Wendell amongst my offspring.

Tara: I think I’ve played almost 400 hours of Balatro since December .

It’s a perfect game to play while listening to podcasts!

Sneezy: Pencil crayons!

Sometimes we collect stuff for hobbies and feel guilty about not using them. And sometimes we really want to make stuff and Past Us is all, “WE GOT YOU SHINIES!!!!” and we say, “YEAH!!!!” and definitely didn’t use misuse our Bad Decisions Book Club card.

This was a prompt from my friend! “A bunny riding on a whale shark, swimming through a river of stars”

Who can resist a prompt like that?

Claudia: I am continuing with my ceramics education (really, I need summer school!! It does not come to me ‘naturally’ or whatever that’s supposed to mean.)

At the behest of a dear friend I am also taking a six-week flower arrangement class this summer!

Shana: Please share what you learn, Claudia! I went to a flowering arranging event recently and discovered it’s not a skill that comes naturally to me.

Claudia: I will! I feel I do not have a “good eye” so I am looking forward to learning more about composition etc

Shana:  I’ve been knitting again recently and I love the repetitive math. It’s very relaxing.

Elyse: Every year Westknits does a Yarn a Long Craft Camp. You can buy the kits from Stephen and Penelope and they release three shawl patterns over the course of the summer.

I’m working on the first shawl right now and I’m enjoying all the new techniques I’m learning, but it’s definitely “pay attention knitting” and not TV knitting.

Lara: I desperately want to craft more. I miss it a lot. I have so many projects planned out in my head but finding the time to action them is proving tricky with a baby in the house.

I do have one craft going at the moment. I’m knitting a baby jersey. So much quicker than a jersey for adults!

Amanda: Not crafting, but a lot of mobile games or gaming on handheld systems in bed. It’s what I do as a nighttime wind down routine to help combat doomscrolling. So something a bit mindless and repetitive like the games Tara mentioned have been great. Brian also plays a lot of Balatro as wind down time.

Sarah: Agatha Andrews of the She Wore Black podcast recommended sticker by number books and I am intrigued:

One unexpected treat for me recently is I’ve discovered a mild addiction to Sticker by Number books with vintage imagery.

I’ve been doing these while listening to audiobooks and it’s done a lot to decrease my stress after some really difficult days. Here are two I suggest if you want to give it a try.

Sticker books seem to be a very trendy hobby, which makes my elder heart very happy since I had a sticker scrapbook I adored when I was a kid.

I just got a pitch yesterday about Fall in Love & Save the World, a Rrrrrrrrrrrromantasy sticker book with illustrations by Catarine Cruz: 

I wanted a closer look and Noelle Brown at S&S sent me some sample images – some of these I want, like, right now, and so does my 8 year old self, despite not knowing what rrrrrrromantasy is.

I typically cross stitch and listen to audiobooks, but I could get into sticker books. I could get into them very easily, she said ominously. What a perfect marriage of low-stakes craft and high-grade nostalgia.

Currently my cross stitch project is this tarot card:

But I also have added shelving to my sewing area in the basement because I wanted to see all of my fabric instead of digging through different storage bins.

That’s a quilt I’m working on right now – I finished the top and am working on piecing the back.

Because of the weirdness of prices, especially on imported goods, I am determined to shop my own stash, given that I have a solid number of fat quarter bundles and yardage I bought on sale. And as we all know: acquiring the supplies and using the supplies are two different hobbies.

What about you? What crafts or hobbies or activities are you spending time with lately?

NB: I’ve enabled images in the comments so you can share pictures if you wish!