We are a creative bunch; must be all the rainy days, but hobbies are a curious pursuit. I don’t mean things like yoga or book-club, but fiddly pernickety things like model-making, building ships in bottles and creating tens of metres of track for teeny-weeny trains. It does have its merits of course; much early scientific research was, in effect, a hobby of the wealthy. Then there is of course the compulsion to collect things. For example, Niek Vermeulen of the Netherlands has 5,180 airline sickness bags from 1,003 different airlines which he has accumulated since the 1970’s. He’s a Guinness World Record holder and ever’thin’. Talking of collecting, train and plane spotting is eternally elusive to the uninitiated. In 1977 five British plane spotters were arrested in Greece and spent 10 weeks in jail for espionage. The Greek court had not understood recording plane serial numbers could be regarded as a hobby.
Have you got busy hands?
Love from Steph and The Laundry
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8 Responses to “Idle hands do the devil’s work”
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 11:30 am
my hands are very VERY busy…I do parchment craft, well I also teach it, but the wow factor is amazing. It’s turning parchment (much like tracing paper) into things that look like lace. Just google Pergamano, or parchment craft
oh um, yes…then there’s frogs…
I have over 800 of them (and no, none of them are alive) but I’m only allowed to buy one from a town I’ve never been to - obviously only when I get there.
ribbit
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Oh My gosh! Ness- that is more amazingly fiddly and pernickerty than I think Steph could have hoped for!!
Just did as you said and looked up pergamano- it looks beautiful- how do you do it? Is it sewn on to the paper?
I never knew dried frogs were so readily available, or do you do the drying youself?!!!
h
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
LMAO oh ok thanks Harriet - so I know I said the frogs weren’t alive…what I MEANT was that they are ornaments or frog-type-style things *rolls eyes*
As for the pergamano - it’s the paper that is actually pricked, cut and embossed to look like lace - you can stick things on it but those would be considered embelishments.
My favourite frog at the moment has to be ‘Toadtruck’ from the Fanciful frogs range - he’s lush!
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Oohhhhhh! I geddit! Rachel is also now LHAO (i had to look that up on google!!- got any more bloggy accronyms for me?)
Hee hee- the thought of draws and draws full of dessicated frogs was a bit odd- but you know, didn’t want to judge!!
Thanks for the clarrification!
Harry x
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
*grin* ok here are some of the txt spk acronyms…
BTW = by the way
ROTFLMAO = rolling on the floor laughing my @rse off
LOL = laughing out loud
IMHO = in my humble opinion
ORLY = oh really!?
TTFN = ta ta for now (not sure who still says ta ta but hey!)
that’s all I can think of now - I’m sure there’s a site out there somewhere with everything on it
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I think that air sick bag guy has a website (http://www.airsicknessbags.com/), too… Some of them are very amusing..
Posted: Jun 5th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Thanks Steve!
Posted: Jun 10th, 2008 at 10:49 am
On the collections side, I used to collect pretty stamps (they had to have nice pictures on them!) and beer mats.
As for busy fingers, I cross stitch which definitely keeps my fingers occupied - although not quite as fiddly as Pergamano. It looks gorgeous and there’s some very dainty work there.