Turns out, you guys, I am not an introvert.
“No shit”, said absolutely everyone who heard me say this over the last two weeks.
I’m on day 19 (I had to check, I’m losing track) of being off work indefinitely, only going outside for a walk around the block or to the store . To be clear, if all that is being asked of me right now is to stay home so COVID-19 doesn’t spread, then I’m happy to do just that.
While my friends are amazing, and we video chat/talk more than we ever have, I still found myself needing something to do. Given my recently discovered extrovert nature, my lack of work, and my complete inability to not be busy at all times, I’ve had to start finding hobbies.
I am not a hobby person. In my almost 30 years of life, I never really had a hobby, unless you count reading. But boy, oh boy am I coming out of this social distancing thing with a few hobbies under my belt. A girl can only go for so many runs. So far I’ve tried:
Sewing
This is cheating as it isn’t strictly a new hobby. I was initially excited at the idea of being home for an indeterminate amount of time because I thought it would give me plenty of time to improve my sewing skills.
I forgot one little thing. Sewing requires fabric, and I don’t have any of the fabric I need. I have two projects in mind, one cosplay and one for day to day wear. And I have absolutely no fabric for either of them.
So much for that idea. Although I did have juuuuuust enough fabric leftover from my Resistance Rey vest to make a set of matching gauntlets
Subtitling
Back in the early days of social distancing I decided to teach myself a useful skill, and I settled on writing closed captions. We kind of touched on it when I was in graduate school, but never to the point where we got to try it out ourselves.
I found a nice free software, Aegisub, pulled up a 5 minute video of myself talking, and figured I would buckle in and teach myself the software over the next week.
90 minutes later the video was entirely subtitled.
OK, this wasn’t going to occupy much of my time after all. Though, hey, hello new resume skill!
Crochet
Ah. Crochet. The most ambitious of my attempts to find a hobby.
I ordered the More Star Wars Crochet kit, stupidly assuming it was for kids and how hard could it be, really.
I suppose it isn’t that complicated for someone familiar with crochet. But as the granddaughter of an expert knitter, I spent my first 5 minutes with this kit concerned that they’d only sent me one needle when surely they meant to send two?
After realizing that, no, crochet is only done with one needle, I was keen to begin the first project until I encountered problem 2: I don’t understand crochet patterns at all.
It’s not that the book in the kit didn’t try to help. There is a full list of abbreviations and 3 whole pages detailing every kind of stitch. But as a visual learner, a diagram wasn’t enough to tell me what any of this was supposed to look like.
To YouTube!
I found this amazing tutorial that taught me how to make an amigurumi octopus, who I’ve named Squishy:
It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there though. I stitched the entire octopus using a specialty stitch called Back Loop Only, which I only realized as I was finishing up.
Oops.
That said, my crochet game improved immensely. Enough for me to go ahead and order the other Star Wars crochet set.
The problem with my developing crafty habits in the middle of a pandemic, though, is lack of access to materials. I’ve used up the yarn that came with the sets, and you would not BELIEVE how difficult it is to find the right size yarn in brown and beige at online craft stores. And since most characters require at least one of these colours it seems this hobby is on hold too, for the time being.
Honestly, while we wait this out at home I may just go back to reading. I already have all the necessary materials. Maybe I’ll even start reviewing the books I own on here.
Stay safe everyone!
