EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first of our brand new crop of writers, C! She’ll be posting every Thursday with all sorts of geeky goodness. Don’t miss it. Welcome, C!
Imagine your dream store, catering to one of your favorite pastimes. The shop is full of nothing but creative goodness. Aisle upon aisle of things just waiting, hoping you’ll purchase them, take them home, and use them to their full potential. Some items are great for beginners, wanting to try something new but needing a lot of guidance in the beginning. Others are for the more experienced, and in the hands of someone who really knows what they’re doing can become wondrous and magical. Absolutely everything piques the imagination, and whets the appetite of a creative soul.
Are you picturing your friendly local gaming store? You easily could, but my description could also be of your friendly local craft store!
Crafts are prime geek hobbies. Geeks are a creative bunch, after all. Look at the hours upon hours we put into developing character background for our RPG characters (or that a GM puts into their campaign!). Who hasn’t thought of a different ending for Serenity, or an X-Men story arc involving only our favorite characters (some characters aren’t dead in my Marvel Universe, yo), even if we don’t go as far as putting it down on paper as fan fiction? If you’ve ever painted a D&D mini or put together your own cosplay outfit, you’ve already got one foot in the door toward becoming a crafty geek.
Since the best hobbies are the ones that can feed your other hobby needs, let’s take a look at just a few of the fun crafts that can be used to accentuate your current geekdom.
Models
Painting Warhammer minis and building terrain for battlefields makes for an easy transition to putting together models. Besides looking cool (which they do), models can be used in a game to serve as superb visualization of the party’s current location. Look beyond the Millennium Falcon and U.S.S. Enterprise kits available at the game store – hobby shops have kits for cars and planes (D20 Modern, anyone?), trains (Steampunk!), and ships, among others. I recently played in a homebrew game set on the Titanic, and one of my fellow players brought in a model of the ill-fated ship that his father had made for him. We all thought it added a lot to the game, as instead of trying to describe to us where the second-class dining hall was, the GM was able to simply point to the model and say, “You are here.”
Sewing
Cosplaying can be a seriously expensive hobby. Custom-made costumes can cost an arm and a leg (and let’s not even talk about the shipping if your seamstress or tailor is in Japan!), and it’s even more heartbreaking when you get the costume and something about it still doesn’t fit right, or look right (“Sango’s armor is black and pink, not black and red! ARGH!”). The solution? Learn to sew.
Those of us who took Home Economics in high school may have some bad memories of, say, misshapen stuffed animals and sweatshirts with crooked seams. *whistles innocently* You have to purge those memories. Home Ec. teachers are working with a slew of students who would rather be anywhere than at a sewing machine, and said machines are old, cantankerous, and difficult to work with.
Today’s sewing machines are slick and easy to use, and a good one can be purchased new for under $200 (mine sews at the touch of a button – no foot pedal needed!). Most larger craft stores, like JoAnn and Hobby Lobby, as well as locally owned shops offer sewing classes for very reasonable fees, but you can teach yourself by reading the manual that comes with your machine, watching online tutorials, and picking up sewing books at the bookstore. Fabric and sewing notions can be pricey, but if you get on the coupon mailing lists for craft stores and watch their sales, you can get lots of goodies for just a little money.
Beyond sewing costumes, you can make lots of other things – bags for lugging your game books, cool curtains for your bedroom, and “normal” clothes – plus you can mend and alter existing items. So you can sew up the ripped seam on your nice dress pants for your day job (a spool of thread costs around two bucks), and spend the money you would have used for new pants on a video game instead. Awesome.
Embroidery and Cross-Stitch
Hand embroidery sometimes gets a bad rap, and with the plethora of sickly-sweet-cute Precious Moments cross-stitch patterns and dancing tomatoes on dish towels out there, it’s no wonder. The good news is, embroidery patterns have come a long way, baby. Sublime Stitching (“This ain’t your gramma’s embroidery!”) has patterns for everything from cute little wiener dogs and space robots to Mucha Lucha masks and zombies (yes, zombies!). Spend a few minutes (or hours…oops) searching on Etsy, and you’ll find all sorts of fun patterns for cross-stitch and embroidery alike. A quick browse through the cross-stitch kits at the craft store will reveal some gorgeous wizards, unicorns, and other fantasy scenes. I even own a book with a CD-ROM entitled Manga Cross-Stitch.
The even better news? You can turn anything you want into an embroidery pattern with dressmaker’s carbon paper, a transfer pen, or even a good ol’ mechanical pencil. You can also turn any image into a cross-stitch pattern; there’s special software available, but a quick internet search will turn up a couple different ways to do it in Photoshop or whatever photo-processing software you use.
With just needle and thread, you can decorate your clothing or anything else made of fabric in your home. Make pillows with cross-stitched Horde and Alliance symbols. Make a family crest for your Pathfinder character and hang it in your game room. Embellish your newborn’s onesies with beholders! The possibilities are endless. And it’s easy. If you can sew on a button, you can embroider or cross-stitch.
Crocheting and Knitting
Knitters and crocheters are geeks in their own right, though I don’t know how many would admit it. Hook and needle preferences closely resemble dice superstition. The specs for a project read like the stats on a character sheet. And if you’ve ever heard one of us having a nerdgasm over yarn…well, that pretty much settles it.
Yarn crafts have been experiencing an upswing in popularity lately, and it’s easier than ever to learn. “Teach yourself” kits and classes are available at craft stores, there are more books out there than you can shake a stick at, and YouTube is full of instructional videos that experienced needleworkers have made to help the masses.
What can you knit or crochet that’s geeky? Seriously? What can’t you? You can make dice bags that are super soft and keep your luckiest d20s safe and sound. There isn’t much cuter than a plushie Cthulhu monster. Do you cosplay? The internet abounds with patterns for Weasley sweaters (there’s even been a book published of nothing but Harry Potter-inspired patterns), cunning Jayne Cobb hats, and Dr. Who scarves. Why pay the big money for that stuff when you can make it yourself?
I could go on and on about other crafts, but you get the picture. Craftiness and geekiness can not only co-exist, they can be one and the same. If you haven’t already ventured into the world of crafts, don’t be afraid! There’s lots of fun to be had, cool stuff to be made, and all sorts of new things to obsess about and geek out over.
How about you?
What types of crafty geeking out do you do? Feel free to link us to your website or Etsy store, too. We’d love to check out your geeky creations.
About c
Well, I build models. Not Warhammer models, not wargaming models…model railway vehicles. You don’t get much more geeky then that.
The only problem is that a large steam locomotive takes up about 70 feet in real life. At a scale of 4 millimetres to 1 foot, you still need quite a lot of space for it. So I do what I can: http://www.gamesofstate.net/2010/03/third-kits-the-charm/
I make my own gaming tokens with polymer clay. I cut out 1 inch disks and paint the monster/character on it. I used to have an Etsy store, but closed it for other projects, mainly my gaming podcast.
Here are some of the tokens I’ve done:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2595/3862228395_19711f2da3.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2440/3862252871_9fb7d060a7.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3516/3862228387_43638ba025.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3425/3862228377_3a8a72164e.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2492/3862228373_d74d5c8160.jpg
Crafts aren’t just for fun. If you’re good enough at it and if there are enough fellow geeks who like the kind of crafts you create, you could make a decent amount of money at it.
In furry fandom, for instance, there is a plethora of information about how to make your own fursuit. Despite that, there are fans who would like to have one but simply don’t have the time or the skills to make their own. In response, there are at least a couple dozen fursuit makers who make a decent income from it, and some of them have a months-long backlog of orders to keep them busy. If I ever decide to get a fursuit, even though I’ll want to know enough to repair and possibly make minor changes to it, there’s no way I’d ever be able to make my own from scratch that’s as good as what some of them can produce.
The same applies to most if not all of the crafts discussed in the article. If you’re good enough at it, you could not only do it for fun, you could do it for income. And if you’re not that good at, just do it for fun and find something else you’re good at for income, like helping others improve their online dating profiles.
@mwalimu
On the other hand, turning something you do as a hobby into a career can kill it’s interest for you.
Which is why I refuse to put any adverts on my blogs, build things for others (not that I’m that good at that, mind) or even consider trying to write for profit – it would destroy my interest in what I do out of love.
@Hammer – That is certainly a risk, and something anyone who is considering turning their beloved craft into a business should keep in mind. Would you still love your craft if you’re creating it to others’ specifications instead of your own? Any artist who has ever taken commissions could probably give you an earful.
Hammer’s POV is interesting… had to throw in my two cents. My “crafts” are a bit different.
I taught music for 7 years in the public education system. It killed my desire to be in the public education system, but not my love of teaching or music.
I’ve also done my share of gigging (mostly weddings), and while it’s killed my desire to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D, I still enjoy playing music.
I’ve also done all sorts of writing for pay, including my business here and my copywriter position at ThinkGeek. There have been some writing gigs that weren’t fun, but on the whole, the more writing I do, the better I get at writing, and the better I get at writing, the more excited I am to write.
I think the key to making an income from your art is being able to set boundaries and only do what you REALLY love for as much of your time as possible. Once it starts to feel like work and a drag, it’s time to take a break or switch into a new gear.
There’s no shame in making money at something you love. I consider it a winstate, honestly.
*shakes his fist at the editors of Asimov’s*
*ahem*
Anyway. What I *wanted* to say is that a great geek hobby is actually homebrewing. If you’re willing to drink alcohol (and I respect that some geeks aren’t), homebrewing is an awesome hobby. My roommates call it “the mad scientist’s hobby,” and it really is. Also “applied biochemistry.” All the glass bottles, copper tubing, and kettles make you feel like a mad scientist, and there’s the wonderful feeling of bright-eyed experimentation. And then, later, wild-eyed fermentation.
And that’s not even taking into consideration how enormously popular you suddenly become. A bottle of good homebrew beer is practically currency, and you always seem to get invited to parties right around kegging/bottling time. Plus, brewday and kegging day become social events themselves, since anything in the brewery usually takes two or three guys to help.
It’s not a hard hobby to pick up, especially if you have a brewer supply shop nearby. I’ve become pretty adept at making my favorite kinds of beers after six months of grinding grain and hauling wort for my more experienced roommates, then another three months of fooling around with my own recipe. You can grab a pretty full brewing kit off of Craigslist for as little as $50, then get your friends to front the money for the grain bill…in exchange for some of the results, of course.
Then you start looking at the world a little differently. I looked at maple syrup and said “I wonder what it would taste like if I used that as primer instead of table sugar?” Our friends bring over honey from Farmer’s Market and say “hey, can you guys make mead?” I buy blueberries for my breakfast, and my roommate says “I wonder if we could do blueberry wine out of that…” For the SF fans out there, yes, I’ve made dandelion wine. And it tasted exactly like the last few days of summer.
On a related note: baking. It seems like all the girl geeks I know that can cook love to bake. And it’s not just the girls, either. There’s little in this life more satisfying than biting into the crisp airiness of sourdough bread that you made yourself. I just fed my starter today, and I’ve nursed it from the original fruit yeast I grew it from in the first place. And there’s something indefinably MANLY about it, sowing starter, baking bread, for those of you worried about that sort of thing.
Plus, homebrew and homemade bread are so much cheaper than the alternative. So much cheaper. Since many of us are saving pennies to feed various addictions, I thought I’d toss that in there.
And…you can look down in your hands and go, “holy hell. I MADE this.” And isn’t that what crafting is all about?
…now if I could only learn to sew…
I’ll second what Roscoe says about homebrewing and baking, but throw in winemaking and cooking as well.
I’ve done a bit of brewing and winemaking in the past, but don’t have the space for it at the moment. It’s a damned rewarding hobby though, although I believe it’s much more popular in Europe then it is in America.
Wine making has the added bonus that it can involve a lot of urban scavenging. Traditional plants like Rowan and Elderflower, can make wonderful wines. It’s also a great way to use up Red-, White and Black-Currents, Dandelions, Gooseberrys and so on.
There are also some home distillation movements in Europe, which are based on traditional practises. Very few of those in the UK though, because while there’s no regulation on homebrew and winemaking (as long as you don’t sell it), you need a £1000 licence and planning permission for a still.
Cooking and baking aren’t even things I consider hobbies really. It’s part of the fabric of day to day life and it always amazes me when people say things like “Oh, I don’t really cook”. I’m quite grateful that I was brought up with my father cooking though – I think it’s a lot of the reason why I’m much more of an enthusiastic cook and foodie then my sister is and then a lot of my fellow Scotsmen are.
@E
I don’t think being paid to do my hobbies would kill my interest in them all together. It would certainly make me turn away from them for a while.
A real life example – as well as my RPG/hobby blog, I have a blog on UK politics. A real life friend who runs a much more successful science and scepticism website asked me to write him an article on voting reform, one of my pet interests and one that I’m pretty knowledgeable on. I got about 500 words into it and then just lost interest, despite the subject being very close to my heart and the high likelihood of gaining new readers for my blog. The reason I lost interest was largely because I didn’t want to write it at that moment, I wanted to write about various other things.
I’m certain that some of that’s down to my personality – I hate being dictated to and generally work best when I’m left to get on with my own thing, albeit with some bouncing of ideas off others. So, I suppose it’s always going to be down to the individual.
@Roscoe
I don’t think it’s shameful to make money doing what you love either. I would very much like to make money from doing things I love which aren’t hobbies, and I have no problem with people who combine hobbies and moneymaking. It’s just now for me.
I’m a big fan of knitting boards… They allow for pretty quick and really neat (in the sense of not messy not neat-o) knitting. One of the best things is that there is no need to count stitches and dropping a stitch is almost impossible. And they are pretty quick and easy.
I’m also a big fan of cross stitching…. My very first finished product was this little Ariel (the Little Mermaid) for my sister for Christmas.
Just want to say welcome, C.
Crafts for me is artfully arranging the desktop icons on my computer. Oh, I did try to make a chainmail hauberk once. That is really hard stuff. Then it was going to be a chainmail coif. I finally settled for a chainmail dice bag…
Thank you, everyone, for the very warm welcome!
I feel loved!
@Hammer – Very cool models! My husband is a rail geek, and dreams of having a huge model railroad in our basement some day.
@Devon – Awesome tokens! They look familiar to me – I must have come upon them back when you still had an Esty shop.
@Roscoe – Oh my, yes, homebrewing, baking, cooking, winemaking…serious geek potential, and tons of fun to boot! I know a guy who even grows his own hops. There is definitely something very satisfying about making something with your hands and then sharing it with your loved ones. Or, you know, hoarding it all for yourself.
@A – Those knitting boards and looms have been on my “to-buy” list forever! I love to crochet, but struggle with knitting, so the looms might be my answer. And you can really create some beautiful pictures with cross-stitch. (Ariel’s my favorite Disney princess.)
@Ken – Chainmail is something I have yet to try. One of my good friends (who is also a writer in my employ at 4 Winds) does chainmail, and made me a beautiful necklace a couple years ago. I don’t think my hands could take the strain of bending all the rings.
The conversation about making a living from what you love is one I have to chime in on. For full disclosure, I do sell items I make and take commissions (my Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/ArielManx is currently empty, but I have some plans for it for the future!). At the last con we went to, my crocheted dice bags were a popular item at our merchant’s table.
As mwalimu said, there is money to be made in artisan crafts, but it’s a tough market. Lots of people make things (many of them at high levels of quality), but there are only so many buyers. Plus, it’s hard to make money, because it’s so hard to price things at a level that reflects both materials and time, but is also low enough that folks will still pay it. (This is actually an issue I have written columns about on other sites – I’ll try to stay off my soapbox here!)
Hammer is right that sometimes, turning what you love into a job can diminish your passion for it. Another crocheter I know lost all desire to crochet once she started trying to sell her pieces. As for me, I love it! I really enjoy making things for other people, and commission pieces are my favorites, because they give me opportunities to make things I might not make if left to my own devices. At MisCon, a super nice guy bought one of my dice bags, then asked me if I could make one with stripes. That was easy enough to do, but for some reason a striped one hadn’t occurred to me. He was thrilled with the finished bag, and I had a blast making it for him.
When my husband and I started 4 Winds, I did briefly worry that turning our love of gaming and writing into a business might make it less fun – but it hasn’t in the least. I still love to write (obviously!), and I await game night with eager anticipation every week. e is right – if it drags you down, you need to reevaluate what you’re doing. But as an old boss told me when I told him we were starting a business, if you love what you do, you’ll never “work” a day in your life.
You may have seen them before. I was working under the name The Top Shelf for that etsy store. I still use them in all my games, but I found that they are not something that can really compete with mass produced plastic minis.
One of the things I enjoy is baking bread. I guess you could consider it geeky because I do it all from scratch and am slowly working my way through a specifically bread only recipe book.
@8one6 – You know, I consider myself pretty handy in the kitchen, but bread is something I have yet to tackle! I don’t know why, really – I LOVE bread, and I love to bake. I think I’m afraid of somehow messing up with the yeast. But man, there’s little in this world that smells or tastes better than warm homemade bread dripping with butter… I’m going to have to work up my courage and give it a try! Which cookbook (breadbook?) are you going through?
@c
Rather then launch straight into the technicalities of yeast, see if you can get a bag of pre-mixed flour and yeast. Ok, it’s cheating a little, but it gives you most of the bread making experience and can help build confidence.
@Hammer – Oooo! Thanks! Grocery day is coming up and I will have to look for a ready-to-go bread mix.
c – I’d also like to chime in on the subject of baking. People have been keeping, ranching, and using yeast, in a variety of interesting ways, since the dawn of agriculture (there are some theories that yeast products, or the desire for them, is what *caused* agriculture). It’s pretty difficult to tick off yeast. So don’t worry about doing something wrong with it, just keep it fed and when something looks wrong, do the opposite (too much water, drain it, too dry, add more water…).
Oh, oh! I love geeky crafts, too!
Sewing, knitting, origami, jewelry, baking, you name it, I’ve probably tried it. …and yes, I’ve had yarngasms around my non-nerdy friends!
Don’t forget geeky jewelry. ;D <3
Love the article, Connie! <3
@Roscoe – True, that.
I think my trepidation about yeast simply comes from the fact that my mom never used it much, and that’s where I learned to cook and bake. She’s only got a couple of things she makes with yeast regularly, and has never been a bread baker. I’ll have to give it a try though.
@Z – Yay, another crafty girl on the staff!
@Naito – Thanks!
I didn’t forget jewelry, my article was just getting long enough as it was! 
(Gotta save something to write about in the future!)
@C – Hehe, I was just being a dork. ;D It really is a fantastic article though Connie! <3 I look forward to reading more!