Friday Favourites: Your Favourite Non-Reading Hobby?

Friday Favourites - a chance to rave about a favourite reading/book related topic each week.

Sometimes you just want a chance to rave about some favourite aspect of reading that doesn't really come up during regular blogging posts - that's what this is about. I'm willing to bet that at least some of those will come up one week or another.

This week I'm asking what your favourite non-reading hobby is. I'm sure that in terms of hobbies, reading takes the top slot :), but other hobbies are lots of fun too.

My answer:
I've tried a lot of hobbies, and they have tended to shift in terms of favourites and the amount of time I allot to them. In the past were hobbies like cross-stitch, drawing, calligraphy etc that are all year-round and engaging. All of which I still enjoy to an certain extent, but rarely do much of any more. Then there are the seasonal hobbies: gardening, snowshoeing, hiking etc. They're great, but you can only really do them at certain times of the year.

Right now, my priority (aside from reading) hobbies are those involved with yarn-craft. Mostly in this case, that refers to spinning and crochet, although I'd like to try dying some day, and I want to teach myself to knit. It just seems somehow that I have trouble figuring out the instructions for any particular stitch, and the motions don't feel as comfortable as crochet did immediately.

Of those two, I'm honestly not sure if spinning is more a favourite than crochet, or if it's the other way around. They're equally as portable - at least if I'm using the drop-spindle and not the actual wheel ;). I know one thing I love about them is the feeling of accomplishment I get from finishing something. And it doesn't tend to take forever to complete a project.

Spinning is, like photography, one of those hobbies I've stuck with. It has to have been five years or so now since I started using a drop-spindle and thane the wheel, and I'm still going strong. Other hobbies I've picked up for a while and then abandoned more or less completely, such as the time I did some soapstone carving. After a few months, it just got left.

That length of time in itself justifies spinning as being a favourite. Crochet is a more recent addition, but it's definitely got my interest. One of these days I'm intending to combine the two and actually do some crochet with some of the yarn I've spun. To date, I haven't had the confidence to try much crochet with my handspun. I've been sticking with the commercial stuff, at least partially because it's more predictable.

So, what's your favourite non-reading hobby?