The Mandelbear's Musings

Metaquotes - She calls her craft room her Precious. You just know that nothing good can come of this... (from The Wordsmith's Forge - One Stash to Rule Them All)

*Waves at cflute*

Everybody needs a hobby, but it's especially important when you're living with a loner. Let's face it: your loner's going to want to be alone a lot of the time. You need something to fill in the time and, above all, keep your mind occupied with something other than how much you want to be with somebody who's off in a private world of their own right now. (Don't worry: your loner almost certainly has one. That's the problem, isn't it?)

You need something so engrossing, so engaging, so enjoyable, so addictive, that when your loner calls for you to come to bed you have to think a moment and then say "wait til I finish this last little bit".

Ideally you should have two, maybe three. You should have one hobby that you can persue quietly, by yourself, but in the same room as your loner, and that lets you pay a little bit of attention just in case they feel like starting one of their rare conversations. If your loner is a performer, something you can take to a concert. Knitting, crocheting, beading, and needlework are popular choices. And of course there's always reading and writing, if you can multitask or at least fake multitasking and don't mind missing a few things.

The other thing you need, for your own sanity as well as your partner's, is something that you cannot do in the same space. Woodworking, sewing, ceramics, maybe music (bagpipes, for example). I'm pretty sure this is why Mom took up ceramics and gardening. Ceramics is a great choice: clay is sensual, easy on the hands, and it affords a good mix of complexity and the mindless but highly satisfying activity of "wedging" -- flinging a lump of clay repeatedly against a flat surface to work out the potentially-explosive air bubbles and your equally explosive latent frustration at the same time. Breadmaking is almost as good. Woodworking lets you play with sharp blades and noisy, potentially deadly power tools.

Colleen's choice for this one is watching old movies -- whenever she thinks I ought to be spending some time by myself practicing or writing, or when my grumbling or moodiness get on her nerves, she has only to put on one of her favorite movies that I've seen a dozen times already, and I'm gone. And they comfort her -- that's important, too.

The third possibility for a hobby is something you can do either apart or together. Music, for example. This gets a little tricky -- one of you will generally be better than the other. And there are going to be times when you'll want to be making music together, while your loner would rather be playing a solo. Music by all means -- I expect that a majority of my readers are filkers, after all -- but it shouldn't be your only spare-time occupation.

Good luck!

"My generation's problem is not a lack fashionable clothing, but the excess of mass consumption products," said Nora Abousteit, the hobby sewer of the two women. "We aim for conscious consumers who want to make their own unique clothing items."

To better understand those consumers, BurdaStyle has teamed up to share offices with Etsy.com, a Web site that helps people sell their handmade items.

For Abousteit - who earned money in high school selling hand-sewn hair bands - technology and handicrafts are following parallel trends within a sharing-based economy.

"Ours is an open-source approach to the sewing patterns," Abousteit said. "We removed copyright restrictions and actually encourage people to make money selling their improved versions over our own Web site."

The only requirement for people to use modified Burda patterns is to acknowledge the company as the source.

Removing copyright restrictions from the patterns that made Burda Moden money and fame was a move that required approval from Hubert Burda.

"Instead of opposing the removal of copyright," Burda "drew a parallel between sewing patterns and the music industry," she said. "He said we should not make the same mistakes as record companies did with copy restrictions."