A little copper cup in which a diamond is held while being cut.
A friend told me she needed a hobby. I had lots of ideas, but as is normal for an “Idea Man” they were all dismissed. Shooed away with that sweeping hand gesture which says there is no use for that.
Bookbinding used to seem like it would be enjoyable and even useful but with digitization this little joy could be on the brink of deprecated uselessness. Re-assembling a tattered book for future readers seems improvident when zapping said books to digital image form could allow not just for reading of the content but fuller searchability and (of course) ad revenue for whichever of the searchies gets to it first. One can complain about the lack of physical connection between humans and digitized books, but those jeremiads will likely fade, subsumed by the tireless (if often presumptuous) march of technology.
Model ship building also seems to be a fading hobby. A few years ago I tried to find basic model kits for ships, boats, and planes at any of the mainstream toy stores in my area. I either found none at all or I was unimpressed with what I did find. I looked to mom & pop hobby shops and the like for those classic old model boat kits such as I used to make in grade school. Several web sites sell such products but the prices for these sight-unseen and object-untouched kits were too high for my risk tolerance.
Making your own soap or window cleaner or other household product might be a worthy hobby. I knew a woman who could not believe I spent money on products like Windex and Fantastik when, she believed, you could mix ingredients yourself and get comparable if not superior potions for a tiny fraction of what those brand name products cost. I have never tried this but at times I look at a bottle of Windex and think feel like I see right through the branding and the packaging and see nothing magical at all, just some everyday liquids mixed together with some food coloring. I briefly looked into making my own soaps but it did not suit the time horizons I would have established for such a project.
I don’t know if diamond cutting could be classified as a hobby, but other type of stone-setting or cutting might be hobby-worthy. Glass-blowing has interested me for some time, and a conversation with a one-time practicer of that craft led me to believe that it is not as exotic or expensive an art as one would expect.
I occasionally try to chase my dream of being a cartoonist, but I invariably fail for being unable to draw the same thing twice. I can not even do two or three identical circles or squares. Each attempt is different, making it impossible to do what I would want to do, which is develop cartoon characters that readers could consistently and unconsciously identify through the other wanderings of the storylines.
A good hobby is hard to find.
