Home and Hobbies

One of the best things about working overseas is coming home. One of the worst things is trying to fill your time with things to do that are productive or fun or both. If I owned a house I could fill my days with doing house stuff. Like paint a room. Then repaint it the next day because the color was wrong. Or pay someone to paint it because seriously, mariners should not be painting anything that's not a boat.

Since the house thing is not going according to planned right now (mixing house hunting with shipping out is a bit more difficult than imagined), I try to fill my days doing things I've wanted to try but previously was unable to afford it. Number one on my list was gambling at a casino. Got that one finished and ended up breaking even. After the gambling came the various hobbies I've been itching to try. This hitch off I tried embroidery.

Super successful. My lettering is a bit off, but I like to claim that I meant to do it that way. 

I thought for sure that embroidery would not only be difficult but expensive to start out with. To my surprise, everything you see in that picture cost less than six dollars. I'm sure you can go out and get super nice silk thread made from silk worms fed silk-worm-ambrosia to embroider with, but since I've just taken up the hobby I don't think it's wise to be choosy like I am with yarn. Look up yarn snob in the dictionary and I think you'll find a picture of my yarn stash. I'll use that yarn...someday.

Another thing I like to do is go to flea markets and yard sales and antique stores. Not to find anything super serious, although once I get a house I'll start trying to find furniture (right now there's no where to put it). Today was a good day at one of the antique stores I went into with my parents.

I love chickens. The more hideous the better. 

For the price, I couldn't resist the bronze whales.

And the piece d'resistance, an iron octopus  towel holder. This would go in my tentacle themed bathroom. I'm going to try to figure out a way to make more of these without pulling out an anvil.

On Monday I'm going to learn how to do the one thing I've been meaning to learn for years, ever since I bought that non-working spinning wheel from the antique store across the street from where I lived. Yes, I'm going to try learning to spin yarn, although not with my antique wheel. That one's still in Vermont with David at Merlin Tree.

I'll post my hopefully positive results of my spinning attempts.