What are YOUR niche hobbies?
What are YOUR niche hobbies?
So, there are some things that most people do, playing games, watching movies or television, playing music. So let's get specific.
What are some of your favorite things to do with your time? The more hyper specific the better?
Painting expensive plastic with expensive paint.
I have finished assembling my plastic, but haven't started painting yet. I'm new to the hobby.
Two things that really upgradet my painting:
- a diy wet pallete
- a decent brush (I like the Windsor & Newton Series 7, size 1
Otherwise, don't sweat it, you can always strip the paint if you don't like it. Plus, try other colors than citadel. They are good, but the pricing is crazy.
What are your favorite miniature paints? Also, 40k?
AoS, mostly, but the Votan look interesting. Still, love my gitz. Regarding paints, I really like the Intense series from AK, great paints for a good price. But my racks also collect citadel (contrast is fun!), Army painter (so-so, imho), Valljeo (also OK) and, newest, Two Thin Coates (expensive stuff). But if I activley buying, it's mostly AK.
Fantasy plastic, future plastic, or other?
Currently, fantasy. I just love the gloomspite gitz, such fun models. Leviathan looks pretty interesting, thought. But I will probably wait for a new subscription thingy from hachette, it takes time but the saving are awesome.
I got into contact juggling a decade or two ago. It is basically a form of juggling in which a clear or solid-colored ball stays in contact with your body to interesting effect. Think the Goblin King from the movie "Labyrinth".
It is rare enough that you don't meet many people that have seen it, and with enough of a learning curve that not many people that start ever really get anywhere with it.
-Edit- Random video of what I am talking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5MqvtiHpOw
Ah, I’ve seen that before that’s cool! Didn’t know exactly what it was called. Looks real hard to do though.
Just takes a lot of boredom and lots of muscle memory. Not hard, per se, but unrewarding until you've put more time into than you'd think. A lot of skills within a week or so, you should have some sort of improvement to show for it. Not so much with contact juggling.
But once you've gotten ok at it, it kinda looks like magic.
Lately it's been collecting Indie Perfumes. They are much more adventurous and complex than most mainstream scents. It's really fun to pair scents with experiences or moods. I've roped my husband into it and it's like a puzzle game to find scents for him as well.
Any favorite I could use as a present?
Not the op, but I really like Imaginary Authors scent lines. Specifically A City On Fire which smells like you were sitting next to a campfire for hours on end before you arrived wherever you are. Cape Heartache is also a really unique scent with strawberry and fir, so like a masculine sweet scent. And for something a lot less challenging, Fox in the Flower Field is also amazing. It leans more like a Chanel N°5 but cuts it with an ozone note that takes away the aldehydic note and replaced it with a darker undertone. I'd love to hear some other good scent houses people have used though too as I'm always looking for something new/exciting/different.
That's a hard one! Do they use perfume already and have any scent preferences? I like foodie sweet scents, or vanilla scents.
I like sewing - I make a few pieces of clothing once in a while but usually I'm just mending things or adjusting the fit of store-bought clothes so that they look better on me.
I also love gardening - growing vegetables outside and mushrooms inside. I'm pretty new to both but the mushrooms in particular are really fun - many of them grow a lot faster than vegetables, so it's exciting to have a faster feedback loop and try little experiments to find what works.
I really hope the sewing communities take off on here.
Sewing is one of the things I always wanted to get into, but I never found a good hook to pull me in. Any tips?
I think starting with alterations to clothes I bought at thrift stores or sales helped me a lot - I did a lot of that before I ever tried making something from a pattern. Even making a simple garment from scratch can feel like a big project, but if you're just taking in the sides of a shirt (for example), it's easier to get it done and feel good (even though picking out the seams first is so annoying)
Yo I also do sewing and mushroom growing nice :D
Quite a few, actually
- Artisan Keycap collecting, to a lesser degree mechanical keyboards (I usually use them as displays to showcase my artisans)
- Boardgame collecting and playing. I'm a big fan of modern area control games. Also trying to design some. Slowly.
- I curate a magic the gathering commander cube. Hopefully mtgcube gets a community somewhere around here
- Reading, lots of fantasy there.
- EDM shows and festivals, recently. Probably have been going to too many, but I always jump in with both feet
Ohhhh, the keyboard thing sounds neat. I know some of my friends really love mechnical keyboards, but I haven't see a lot of cutstom keycaps.
Got any favorites you'd like to show off?
Yeh, give me a minute to upload some...
My Grail Board - Happy Hacker Keyboard 2 modded with Norbauer Heavy Grail VHS, with Brocaps Gamer set and Mitchcap modifier keys. The top row left are original clack factory multishot clack skulls, and on the top right are kbk/kwk (killed by keycaps) vandals and mummies.
OG Kyuu - OG Kyuu keyboard with GMK Bleached keycaps, brocaps gamer set, and various artisans on the top row
Reading... I found this site that has quite a few novels of which authors post chapters weekly, bi-weekly or more..
https://royalroad.comMost of it is fiction/fantasy, quite a bit of it is litrpg
I can sink hours on this... Public transports, coffee break, lunch break, evening beer... I just can't stop myself
I'm hoping that the r/fantasy and progressionfantasy groups move here. Currently rereading Cradle to catch up to Waybound
Oh yeah, I've heard of Royal Road before. I used to (and still do) read a lot of Cultivation novels, and I know that that subset of writers tends to have a lot of cross over with the Royal Road audience.
Yeah! there are great one on there too, quite a few very popular ones: The main ones I can think off the top of my head are
- Beware of chicken; takes itself less seriously, and is quite a fun slice-of-life cultivation thingy
- Forge of Destiny; more serious and closer to classical cultivation novels, slow-burn but honestly quite magical, I dropped it because I have a really hard time with Asian names and had trouble to difference characters, but honestly, very well written
- Path of Ascension; A different take on cultivation, outside of the Asian origin but keeps some of the mechanics while applying more modern ideas, on a grand scale, honestly love that one
There are plenty of others and people more qualified than me on cultivation novels could guide you better (I am quite impaired by my inability to parse Asian names unfortunately...)
I build and fight combat robots. Think Battlebots but smaller.
I'm getting my kids started with LEGO Mindstorms! Sumo bots is the first idea that came up.
... I think my 13yo wants to go bigger. Welding, anyone?
I do enjoy bouldering and also jump rope. I suppose those are niche…
What's bouldering? Is it just a different name for rock climbing?
It’s rock climbing but more specifically the type with no ropes or harness. Just the body and your chalk. The height ain’t high of course and there’s safety mats. Fun to solve those short problems.
It's rock climbing shorter heights without a rope. Classically climbing a large freestanding boulder instead of a cliff face hence the name.
Do do you remember tamagotchi? The little electronic egg with a pet you should take care of? I collect those. They are more advanced now. They have color screens, they charge with USB, you can connect them and marry, have a whole families.
Oh hell yeah. I loved those little things, although me and my brother usually had either Digimon or Virtupets or whatever the cheap knock-off was called. I remember there was a game boy tamagotchi game that I got for my birthday though and I played that for ages and ages.
My favorites (right now) are learning to play star wars legion better, getting back into gunpla, finding mobile games that aren't utter garbage, trying and failing to find decent friends, and sorrowfully watching hasbro destroy magic the gathering.
There are too many sets and spoiler season never ends. I mainly just follow now in case there are any good singles for updating my cube
Yeah I stopped playing about 2 years ago just because of product fatigue. And the new LOTR stuff costing twice as much as a regular set? No thank you. They have also leaned heavily into turning MTG into a weird "investment vehicle" with all these ultra-collectible and exclusive cards, the most egregious of which is the "one of one ring." It's pretty gross. It's much less about the actual game now, which I'm sure would (does?) disappoint Dr. Garfield as he only wanted to make a game. He expected people to play magic at the kitchen table and wrap a rubber band around their deck when done.
Urban exploring (for lack of a better term) with no purpose other than to discover. I live in a city and I'm constantly just wandering around going down streets I've never been down or into alleys I've never been in or checking out stores I've never been to. This is my approach when I travel to other cities and other countries too, I often don't have a plan for my trip/vacation, I just arrive there and then start to wander and see what I find.
Hardware modding. Consoles, handhelds, old computers, RC cars... whatever.
I'm interested in learning how to solder, but not really sure how. I'm not a DIYer when it comes to electronics, so I don't know what to practice on. I just feel like it's a skill I should at least be familiar with.
I stuck with the card game Yu-Gi-Oh! For the last 20 years. Got quite the collection now with over 100’000 cards sitting around here (and counting)
I’m also quite the Apple nerd, especially some of the older devices like the G4 Cube that’s sitting next to me here, but in general I’m just a tech geek.
paper models
Roller Derby - I strap on skates, pads, and helmet and then knock people on their ass. It's great fun.
I enjoy building gunpla.
Lately it includes growing gourmet mushrooms, re/learning languages such as Russian and Ukrainian, data organizing stuff (such as assigning each horror movie I've seen with fears from The Magnus Archives, been fixated on horror movies in general so I've also made a tierlist for all the ones I've seen), and sewing/making clothes. I'm looking to maybe have an isopod colony again (properly this time), make fursuits, continue studying wicca/witchcraft stuff, as well as finally get back to art once I'm over this burnout ^^;
