The hobby effect

How "hobbies" undermine making

This is the thing about hobbies. You get interested in one, buy the tools, buy the materials, find something to make. Eventually, you finish the item. So now what? What can you do with this thing that you made for your hobby? Some hobby things wind up adorning a wall. Some get draped over the back of the sofa. Some get worn.

But a lot of hobby items aren’t actually for anything. They’re just something cute that sits on top of your desk or an end table. Nothing wrong with making something decorative. But now you’ve made the decorative thing, and you still have free time and you still have a hobby. You also still have all the tools and leftover materials taking up space in your home.

So you make another thing, and another one, and another one, and then you filled every free space, and you give them away to friends and family, and everyone says oh, I love the stuff that you make, but I just don’t have room for anything more. So what are you going to do with all these hobby items? Are you just going to throw the older ones in the trash? Are you going to start selling them? Can they be donated to a charity?

I’m not down on collecting or making decorative figures or whatever hobby as such. I’m just saying that there needs to be an end goal with the hobby. Hobbies these days, especially ones that can be started from pre-packaged starter kits, tend to focus on the making, not enjoying what has been made. They get marketed as creativity, but they’re really just another form of consumption.

I’m uncomfortable with how we call anything that we do outside of paid work a “hobby”. I’ve heard people call exercise a hobby. Or cooking a hobby. Or shopping a hobby. Those are all things that you need to do outside of work. But they’re not hobbies.

I knit, crochet, sew, make jewellery, and more, but I wouldn’t say I have any hobbies. The reason why, and to me this is important, is that I always make with a purpose. Not everything I work on results in a finished object. Sometimes I just do materials or method experiments to learn something new. But the effort is always towards supporting myself and my household. Not supporting myself by earning money from making, but supporting what I and my household need. So for me, making a pair of socks and making a batch of soup is the same thing. I needed something, so I made it.

This is different from people who have hobbies to fill spare time, with no purpose directing what they are making.

In the past several decades, hobbies have built up specializations and identities. People don’t just say they do needlework. They’re a crocheter. There is a weird underground rivalry between “crocheters” and “knitters” with untold numbers of blog posts and Youtube videos weighing in on which is “better”. Which, for those of us who enjoy both, is a ridiculous question. The “better” one is whichever best suits what you want to make. If either will work equally well, you pick whatever you feel like.

I have crafting magazines from as recent as the early 70s which are simply about crafting: sewing, crocheting, knitting, macrame, embroidery, and more, all covered in a single magazine. It was expected that the readers of these magazines would be comfortable with several of the techniques presented. There was no merit in limiting your skill set to a single practice. The idea of crocheting yet another blanket because that’s your hobby, even though you already have more than enough blankets and no-one you know wants any more of them, was much less of a thing.

Many crafts share skills. If you can thread a needle, you can generalize to threading a needle for darning in yarn ends, sewing thread, or tatting cord. But many people choose to specialize to an incredible degree. I’ve even met people who can only crochet with yarn of a certain weight, using a certain sized hook. They can’t even generalize to crocheting with thread to make lace, even though it’s the same techniques, just at a different scale.

It just seems disconnected to me. If you generalize, you can solve new problems by applying existing knowledge. When I was installing a new floor in my bedroom, I needed a carpenter’s square to trim floorboards, but I didn’t have one. So I used a quilting ruler instead, because it was the right size and let me line up to a 90 degree angle accurately. Generalizing gives you skills in endeavours you’re doing for the first time.

What do you count as your hobbies versus household work? Is there a difference for you? Let me know in the comments.

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