A ton of people in my life have seem to acquired new skills or hobbies during this prolonged quarantine/COVID time. Have you started something new that you weren't doing before? Or maybe something you used to do long ago that you picked up again? Tell me about it! I want to know what it is you've started to do and what made you choose it.
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Personally, I picked up scrimshawing (bone carving)! Early settlers and sailors used to do it on ships with whale bones and I'd always been a bit intrigued by it and finally had the extra time to really give it a try. Started with writing phrases on deer mandibles using an old dental tool I had gotten from a weird store years ago. It's now turned into a full-blown curiosity! I'm practicing with sigils, symbols, words, some pictures on all different kinds of bones and teeth. I'm also starting to paint bones and realized I'm super interested in learning about skinning/tanning and eventually mounting/taxidermy! It really feels right and I'm super excited to see where I can go with this.
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That's really neat! How did you learn? Real-life books on paper, internet tutorials, youtube, literally just ... started doing it/self-taught??
As for me, new hobbies, I definitely have not. I'm struggling to keep up with my old hobbies, but trying my darnedest. (Writing stories! Reading books!)
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Maelstra(11-19-2020)
Self-taught for me! i'm trying to do it as old-school as I can. So no fancy power tools or anything. I've just looked up some WikiHow things on like basic how-to information. I looked at a couple Youtube videos but they weren't very helpful and I don't have much of a attention span for videos anyways lol. So most of what I'm doing is just me experimenting!! It's honestly super fun even though it is rather difficult. xD
Ooh, what kind of stories are you not writing?
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♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (08-07-2020)
That's such a neat thing to do and nothing I would have even thought about getting into...
I started gardening. We bought a condo this year and for the first time since I moved out of my moms house 10+ years ago, I have an actual YARD. It's not big but I've got a little area in the front and a little area in the back. And since we moved in last October, I've been telling my mom I wanted to start gardening because I eventually want to grow my own vegetables and spices and such so one evening when I was at work, my mom and stepdad came by with two flowers, planted them in the little bed out front to get me started and now I've got 12 different plants/flowers out front. It's been super therapeutic. I sit outside at night and talk to my plants sometimes lol
10/10 would recommend and now I can't wait til we get a house with an even bigger yard but that's still a few years down the road.
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Crow (08-07-2020)
That's so cool! I've never been good with plants but recently my aloe plant (which was a rescue) started thriving and giving off babies nonstop!! So I went out and bought some soil and little seedling plants to put the babies in, and have been giving them away to whoever will take them!! I'm starting to get to the point where I'm considering giving them away at work lol. I have never thought of myself as someone who has plants but I actually think I'm doing okay. So I adopted a little venus fly trap and he's somehow still alive after a month which is insane for me!!
Maybe one day I'll get into actual gardening. But I'm super glad that you finally have! Gardening is certainly a helpful skill and you can do a LOT with it and there's so many directions you can go with it.
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That's really a neat hobby. And you are not going to run into many people with it, so when you can go out and meet new people again (if you like to do that), you'll always have something interesting to talk about! lol
I like to write urban/modern fantasy! Right now I'm working on a story with my wife that's about... sort of these different factions of people with different powers and how they come into a conflict over someone with bloodlines from two different types of power that their world has very strong-held beliefs should not be allowed to live. They're basically the different kind of archetypes of magical powers - Wizards, Psychics, Mages, Shapeshifters/Druids, Witches/Warlocks, Vampires, etc. The main characters I'm writing are a telepath whose abilities are so strong she's kind of crippled by them, a wizard who walked out on the wizard establishment because she didn't like the structure and rules, and another psychic character who's the mother of this sort of 'forbidden' hybrid character. My wife writes a host of other characters (including the hybrid in question) and we work together on it in the evenings after work.
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Crow (08-09-2020)
Um hi I would love to read that. My best friend and I are collaborating on what will eventually be a webcomic about a world where supernatural/magical beings exist but they're not necessarily the norm although the world knows about them. We're still working out kinks and trying out different ideas so I don't know how to accurately describe what we plan on doing but your story sounds like it's right up my alley and if you wanna test it out on anyone, I'm your guy!
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Crow (08-09-2020),♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (08-09-2020)
♥ PrettySarcastic ♥ (08-09-2020)
Whoa, I've heard of scrimshawing! I've always thought it was neat, especially some of the ones with those really fine, tiny details. I feel like it'd be a difficult hobby to find supplies for? When you need another bone to work on, where would you even acquire that?
I started doing my own nails, then eventually started making press-on nails that I sell online. Didn't want to get an outside job during the pandemic, so I'm try to make things work from my house lol. It's weird since up until this year I literally never had nail extensions and have only painted my nails a handful of times.
As terrible as the world situation is, it is kind of nice to have a reprieve and develop new skills.
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Crow (08-09-2020)
Cooking/baking
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