Hobbies for winter evenings

[Iftheskywasbkue]

What hobbies do you do at home when it’s getting colder please? I feel like I would like to try something different other than reading, DIY and watching TV.

I have a pyrography (wood burning) set to try and I fancy trying water colour painting but I have no idea where to start. I’m not remotely artistic but for some reason I’d like to try this.

Crocheting/knitting, easy to get into, relatively cheap, also portable, relaxing and rewarding.

Pyrography is great but the pens don’t always mix well with sofas (ask me how I know! 🤦🏻‍♀️)

I find sewing quite relaxing while sitting on the sofa. Either hand quilting, English paper piercing, cross stitch or embroidery. And you get the warmth from it being over your lap. Make sure you use a pincushion though. Or knitting. Again, painting isn’t particularly suited to the arm of a sofa, especially if you have kids, animals or anyone who sits down with the grace of a cannonballing hippo on a diving board, but you can do stickers by numbers, which is not dissimilar.

I'm mostly a reader but I also do a lot of junk journalling / creative journalling / gluebooking / collage and I also love adult colouring books. I also do cryptic crosswords and murder mystery games.

Water colour painting / painting by numbers.

Painting by numbers
Knitting
Yoga (You Tube)

I'm an avid reader and to get enough moving activity I'm doing Youtube workouts, last year it was Chloe Ting, I loved her longer "challenges" programs but she got a bit too repetitive imo, so this year I'm probably switching to someone else's channel or will mix her workouts with others'. I'm also a big fan of genealogy and have been going thtough archives and documents on my ancesters, lately I've been digitizing family photographs and films from my grandpa's old camera (here is a good article on digitizing slides if you need one), so I'll probably spend quite some time sorting it all out as well.

Crochet, with the advantage that if you’re making a throw or blanket there comes a point where you can sit under it and work on it at the same time.

I enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles

-I also crochet in front of the TV. If you've never done it before, start with youtube. There are some good teachers on there and you can stop/start as much as you need.
-I have a collection of seaglass and some deep frames from B&M. One project I'd like to do is make some seaglass pictures
-One year I made lots of terrariums using vases and glass containers from charity shops. Once you have the soil, rocks, plants etc its fairly easy. The succulent plants re-produce easily from just a leaf, so you can eventually get lots of plans from just 1.

-I've read about doing macrame to hang indoor plants and make string bags, diamond art but ever tried these myself. I used to do cross stitch and tapestry years ago.

I cross stitch, but recently bought this which I am loving:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Draw-Your-Way-Botanical-Watercolour/dp/1781579725

Knitting - I have lots of lovely handknitted socks to wear in the winter months.
Crochet, cross stitch, slow stitching, junk journalling, Lego or Lego style kits.

I’d like to try water colour painting but have no idea where to start.

I read and am about to start using my pyrography kit too - I might look for some Christmas as themed ideas to try. I’d like to try crocheting a blanket but I’m not sure I have the patience!

Stamp collecting. It has fallen out of favour in recent years, which means there are a lot of old collections being sold off really cheaply. You can aim for a worldwide selection, concentrate on a particular country or era, or collect stamps depicting a particular theme, such as flowers, birds, steam trains, Olympic Games etc.

I like sewing felt birds and horses as Christmas decorations. Lots of embroidery stitches and beads to make them sparkle. I have a three tier tray on wheels from Ikea to keep everything contained and easily accessible from the sofa.

I have a candle making set which looks fun. I haven’t tried it but you just need an old pan. Then you can use the candles after you’ve made them (supervised and away from kids and pets of course)!

Genealogy. It’s addictive and so fascinating. You can usually get a free trial to see what you think. I’d advise having a google for some basic guidance before you start, so that you don’t fall into bad habits.

Felting kits, jigsaws, reading for me.

Jigsaws. Perfect mindfulness.

Learning Italian. I got a course syllabus (for a course I'm not going to do) and then ChatGPT teaches me. I asked it for help to set up an 'Italian tutor' bot and it's working out quite well. It has great voice recognition of what I'm saying (or trying to, at least!).
More time efficient than Duolingo etc in my view.

I love to crochet and make felt Christmas tree ornaments in front of the tv in winter . It stops me mindlessly scrolling on my phone .
I’m making a granny square cardigan at the moment so there’s loads of ends to sew in too .

Sketching is a good place to start if you want to paint.

Just simple things like a cup or the view from the window, or even the tv and surroundings. Watercolours are hard paints, they are very unforgiving, you can see the mistakes and really hard to cover and keep it all together.

This might be classed as DIY, we have a kitchen blind that fell down, and it was dreadful brown brown material, so I have got red crushed velvet and want to work out how the thing goes back together and then sew the new blind material to size with appropriate pleats for rods etc.

I quite like a project on the sewing machine though. I can do the sewing it's the construction in the right places with no pattern that is perplexing.

I enjoy doing jigsaws, Wentworth ones in particular.
I’ve bought some wool and crochet hooks as I want to learn how to do it, been watching some tutorials but haven’t put it into practice yet.