NaNoBlogMo 27 - My Hobby Bucket List

I'd like to take this time to mention a few things I plan on doing...someday. This will serve as a sort of inspiration or reminder or announcement. Like how I knew when I made it public that I was trying to lose weight, that's when it became real. So by making public these projects that I want to do someday, I feel like I am one step closer to making them realities. I'll mention a few here and hopefully they will also because realities in this blog someday. I will probably add to this list in other entries as well.

I am going to cheat with the first one because I am already doing it. Knitted chainmail. A good friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in trying to make and sell knitted costume chainmail. As someone that both knits and makes chainmail, I can tell you that look remarkably similar. If you don't believe me, the chainmail worn by the actors in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was knitted wool that was dyed and stressed to look like metal. I got the patterns for our prototype and I've been making the pieces in between other projects. I'm curious to see how it will look when done.

Make A Sweater Blanket. Ever since I saw this post in a favorite hobby blog I read, I have wanted to make my own sweater blanket. I have a bag of sweaters saved up from my parents and I. Some are too big or too small. Some have been shrunk or ripped or stained. For whatever reason they have gone from "wearable" to "re-purpose for materials". I believe I have more than enough sweaters now and I plan to someday soon-ish (hopefully this winter as making a sweater in the summer seems foolish) actually sit down and turn the thing into a reality. I imagine it will mostly be a matter of cutting the sweaters, sewing a few zigzags to make sure nothing unravels, then sewing the squares together. The blog post that inspired me mentioned backing the sweater with wool jersey, and I would probably back the sweater with either a jersey knit sheet or a thin fleece like I did with Rose & Jesse's quilt. It will give me an excuse to use the sewing machine again. I had grand plans to be sewing all the time after making that quilt, but I haven't touched the sewing machine since.

This next one is much further from being a reality. It may sound a bit...I don't even know what word I am searching for...pretentious? But I have had in the back of my mind for a VERY long time that someday I hope to Paint a Sunset. And I mean like a really, really good sunset painting. I rarely paint, even more rarely if I try to think of the very few times I have painted outside of a classroom setting, but for some reason ever since I was pretty young, I knew that before I died I wanted to paint a really good sunset picture. I imagine myself all set up with my easel, outside, painting away. Of course it will be hard for me to paint a really good sunset or paint a really good anything considering that I never paint. So we shall see how this one works out.

So I've mentioned a few more crafty bucket list items, so here is a kitchen one: someday I want to try Cooking Duck. I've never cooked duck before, but I like it (especially Peking duck...deliciousness!). I don't know if its particularly hard or tricky or anything because I haven't attempted it or really looked into it. All I do know is that I keep seeing really good duck recipes that I want to try. I think the first recipe I saw that got me thinking that I wanted to try cooking duck involved smoking the duck with teas. Of course any recipe that involves the meat being smoked with teas probably is going to be complicated regardless if its duck that I'm making.

The last one I'll mention here (cuz 5 sounds like a good number) is to Finish Writing A Book. I would ideally love to publish a book someday, but just finishing one and having it all written down someplace would make me incredibly happy. I was much more gung-ho about writing when I was younger. I KNEW when I was in high school that I was going to be a writer. Sometime between then and when I graduated from college, that sure knowledge sort of faded away. Its still at the back of my mind though and it frightens me that I might just let something that was once so important to me just fall out of my life. So here is my public announcement and one tiny step towards making it a reality: I plan to finish writing a book before I die.