Hi, To quote Mary Karr (writer, “The Liar’s Club”, and others), “welcome to my chew toy”. Together “Blog” (this section), and the various hobby sections comprise my online journal.

• Under “Blog” I will post writings, reviews (reading adventures), experiences, personal opinions. Basically- brain dumps.

• I will chronicle my attempts at art, record progress (and yes, failures, a part of any good story) and reflect on what I learn along the way. Also I tend to share pictures of projects on my Instagram profiles https://www.instagram.com/green_sheaves/ and https://www.instagram.com/taylor_patterns (mostly sewing, apparel related).

• In some titles I will use this date format: YYMMDD if I know the day. If I don’t know the exact date I may arbitrarily assign one with my Poetic License, or just put the year, as I did with “ Tribute ” (1973).

To start, I thought to list the hobbies I have had over my life, best I can recall them. Some came/went, and some are lifelong. They could each easily warrant a blog post or three.

Roughly in chronological order:

–              Reading: my first, and to this day, a big part of my life. A voracious reader most of my life. Some say, still. Started before age 5. Lifelong.

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Childhood hobbies, approx ages 6-11

–              Collecting stamps….  together with-

–              Collecting coins. I still have a few stamps, European coins and some coins Dad felt would be valuable someday (though I doubt they will be in my lifetime, or the Grandchildren’s lifetimes). As an Air Force brat, collecting coins and stamps was easy. We traveled and moved around a bit, as did everyone we knew, so supply, and variety, was plentiful.

–              Collecting comics.

–              Building models. Planes, aircraft carriers, battleships, and movie monsters. And later the star ship Enterprise from “Star Trek”.

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started in adolescence:

–              Aquariums. Lifelong. 

–              Music. Collectively including a small variety of instruments.  Lifelong.

–              Outdoors. Includes camping and hiking (and walking). Hiking = lifelong.

–              Sketching/drawing.

–              Writing.

–              Science: microscopes, science projects, experiments, curiosity of… you name it! Lifelong.

–              Chess. Lifelong

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–              Carving (wood, mostly). – started late teens

–              Travel, sight-seeing.- scattered through life

– Cooking – started in my 20s

– Herbs – 30s, I still keep a rosemary plant around!

–              Old house restoration (I restored two Victorians in Nashville TN). – 30s

–              VW Beetles (I had four altogether) – 30s

–              Sewing (kind of goes along with my life vocation, pattern making). Lifelong.

–              Computers, building them. – late 30s

– Web site building, including some HTML and CSS, mid 50s

–              Wood working (relatively new to me). – early 60s

–              Painting (new for me), collectively including watercolor, acrylic and oil.  – mid 60s

–              Yardwork (!?) A hobby? I think, yes, can be.

–              Napping (!?) A hobby? Some think so!

–              It is possible I am forgetting something, this is a place holder. 🙂