General Chat

Just sitting here scrolling through old threads on this and the Hobbies board. It made me wonder. Do children and adults still have hobbies and interests outside of technology (internet Xbox etc)?

I was thinking back to when I was very young and there would be collecting crazes. In the 40s one I remember was collecting beads, we’d all (well the girls not the boys) have tins with beads in, which we took to school to swap with friends in the breaks. Oh the excitement if we swapped for a ‘crystal’ bead. Then some of us would collect stamps and cigarette cards, match box covers, even cigarette packet fronts, marbles, conkers (in season of course), photos of film stars from magazines like Picture Post. All these were such simple pleasures, mostly inexpensive to collect. Stamps and cigarette cards did cost money and I for one used to send for sample packets of stamps.

I suppose our collecting habits became more sophisticated as we got older. I still have a stamp collection and a first day cover collection, although that stopped when the Post Office caught on and it got expensive. I have other collections as well: Aynsley china, Button hooks, 3 wise monkey ornaments.

My interests of course became more craft orientated, card making, scrap booking, adult colouring, having passed on the way, knitting and cross stitch.

I have probably forgotten a few, but what started me off thinking was, we have a hobbies board that for a long while has hardly been used. Do people check it out or is it largely ignored? Since Greaders finished the board hardly moves.
:-) :-)

Strange, 16 people viwed. 16 people with nothing to add??? :-S

Nothing really to add! 2 of our adult children don't have time for outside interests or hobbies & we don't have youngsters old enough to collect things.
The OH of 1 adult children is very much into board games. They hold 'gaming nights' at their home for similarly interested adults. They're all too complicated for us!

I'll read the back of a cereal packet if there's nothing else around. OH has several interests - photography, electronics & carpentry/joinery. He did look into doing an OU degree in physics but decided it was too expensive & too much like hard work.

Did you not collect anything when you were little Det?

Yes I will read everything and anything as well. And one of my main interests now is photography, forgot to mention that. :-)

I never bothered with crafts at all when I was younger, preferred to be outdoors
playing and enjoying the freedom and fresh air. :-D :-D <3 <3 I always loved reading when growing up and still do now but not to the extreme of how I used to. I
should do really and make more time for something I thoroughly enjoy and also
love to know what others are reading.......

I am guilty of not going onto the hobbies threads and must try harder in going on there and posting.

Edit....will say I have a new lease of life on my family history and local history and thoroughly enjoying it.....


<3

My hobbies are drawing, any sorts of paper crafts,knitting,sewing,cross stitch, reading and of course Local History to name but a few.

Mmm.. as a child there were stamps, foreign dolls (mainly gifts) and and sew on badges from the places we visited. The badges were sewn onto a rucksack used for GG camping.

The stamp albums are tucked away somewhere along with ones my father collected, the foreign dolls must be somewhere in the loft and the rucksack went out about 20 years ago.

Our son used to collect round pin badges and key-rings as souvenirs. The girls didn't seem to have the same hoarding instincts!

I can't remember our two collecting anything although son was model train crazy, went to model railway club etc. neither were into Guides or scouts (neither was I).

Maybe it was a thing of my generation, maybe being able to collect things after the austerity of the war years. Beads were free from broken necklaces. Match box covers were picked up in the streets (who said litter was a new problem, the gutters were full of cigarette packets (empty) and match boxes). Cigarette cards were free with some cigarettes.

Ooooooo I remember collecting glass beads,I thought thy were the Crown Jewels and I loved my mothers button box :-D

I forgot my stamp collection I have not touched it for ages and also my vast thimble collection too.

I was one of the 16 Ann, but food called :-)

I used to collect stamps, and as a teenager used to paint and do cross stitch, but work and life generally got in the way. I do still like taking photos, and gardening, and reading of course :-)

I think my hobby is genealogy, not nec' my own now but trying to help other people.

I do remember sometimes to look at hobbies board ( I forget really because it was 'new') , mainly at the gardening thread :-)

I suppose as a craft style hobby in recent years, I used to stitch printed canvases. A bit like painting by numbers but with wool :-D

A couple were framed as pictures, since consigned to a charity shop. The frames might have been useful to someone! I've still got a partially completed one in a cupboard, but the electric light makes it hard to work out what colour goes where.

That is why I gave up cross stitching pictures, I found it hurt my eyes. My one regret is that I never managed to master crochet other than doing a long chain stitch :-D And I would love to be able to draw and paint too.

We have a few talented people on here. AnnX is really talented at jewellery making and also glass painting.
TW who used to be on here is also talented at jewellery making and has written books on the subject.
Rose you are a talented writer (as was TW).

I am sure there are others who hide their talents.

Kathryn glad I am not alone remembering collecting beads.

I don't think I have ever collected things, saw too much of my mother's hoard of junk I think, but I do have far too many books and really must weed before too long.

Since Fred died and I have been able to and,indeed, needed to do things to let the stress go, I have finished the patchwork I started forty odd years ago, which has left me with too much fabric to get rid of.

Generally, I do things to get the most out of what I have bought. The patchwork was started to use up my old clothes but necessitated buying more fabric to finish it.The little bits have been cut into smaller hexagons to make lavender pillows and little oblongs which went into a clippy rug. The little tats go to a woman who runs craft groups for children to make collage.

I had a peg loom for Christmas with which I am hoping to make rugs an bags from my old clothes, which I or a charity might be able to sell.

Apart from that I have my bit of medieval stuff and some knitting. I only do garter stitch although I can do others. That was because I opted to knit dishcloths rather than take tranquilizers and have found it to be so soothing.It is a couple of cushion covers at the moment.

I can't remember having many hobbies as a child. I was, and still am, a voracious reader. I collected stamps but that was more to please my father than myself. I was a brownie and then a girl guide.

I do remember spending a lot of time playing with the other children in the local park or out in the street - lots of hide and seek, ball games, chasing games. I was the accident prone one who fell in the pond and had to be taken to the local laundry to be dried out and who ripped her knickers climbing over the park railings. Luckily that was all I ripped ;-)

I collect thimbles as souvenirs of places I have been. I also used to knit and sew quite a few of our clothes but that was more for economy than anything else. I am full of admiration for all you skilled crafts people out there - my brain and my fingers just don't work together.

As for the younger generation in my family, I don't think any of them collect anything but they all have hobbies and interests in the fields of sport, music, theatre etc. Times change and we can't expect the next generation to be the same as we were at their age.

Sharron you do make the most of your time and you are very innovative. Good to donate bits for children to use. I save bottle tops (milk, tonic bottles etc for my neighbour you is a teaching assistant in an infants school, they make all sorts of things using them. I also donate some of my scrap stuff when it threatens to overwhelm my craft room.
Lavender bags will make nice gifts at Christmas. I can remember the days when in my teens I used to make pot holders from scraps to be sold at the church bazaar (in those days called sale of work :-D)

I used to sit on the kerb at the end of our road and collect car numbers. also had a stamp collection and the sets of badges from the marmalade jars.

I used to collect beads, I still have a few of the 'best' hidden away upstairs. I also collected cards from PG Tips tea, stamps, theatre programmes and foreign dolls brought home by my well travelled uncle.

My son collected baseball caps and has continued to add to the theatre programme drawer!

I used to collect the cut-out dolls and clothes from the backs of "Bunty" when I was a young girl. I would have beauty competitions with them :-D :-D

I would make houses for them out of exercise books, drawing rooms on each double page. Then I would devise ways of being able to slot the paper dolls into them- eg cutting out blankets and sticking them on to the beds with an open bit at the top to slot the dolls into! :-D

I must say I had more fun creating these things than actually playing with them afterwards :-0 :-D

I do have something else that I don't consider to be a hobby and never intended to do.

We have two parish magazines, one coming from the church which I won't be contributing to again and another, renegade, one that started about four years ago. Just to give it support, I wrote a thank you for Fred's funeral. Then, just to keep up the impetus, I wrote a little article about what I remembered of the village of my childhood (I am something of a curiosity, having been born here) assuming that it would inspire others to do the same.

Like hell it did. One person who was at primary when I was, wrote a bit and nobody else did. It doesn't stop them wanting something off me every month though, goddammit!.