I think I need to edit my hobby. I’m pretty sure my hobby is now my cat. XD (I spend more on her than art by a long shot).
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It’s so interesting to see what everyone does! My big three categories are probably:
Fitness - $40/month for a yoga studio (may end up higher, this just gets me 5 classes and I supplement with YouTube), and $300ish annually on race entries and running paraphernalia.
Entertainment- we don’t have cable but do have Netflix, and Hulu, and Amazon, and had Filmstruck before it went away, and will get the criterion service whenever it launches. So 40/month or so there, and now that we’re in a town with a great nonprofit cinema we have a $90 annual membership plus probably $30/month in movie tickets. I know this seems like a lot but we watch 100+ movies a year and love them. Oh, and we became members at our local art museum! That’s $85 annually. I don’t even know what this all adds up to and I can’t be bothered to math right now.
Booze- we like our fancy beer and cocktails. At least I mostly make cocktails at home where they are cheaper? But it’s really a fun creative outlet for me - I love making up new ones and trying to custom craft them for people’s tastes. We probably spend $75-100/month on booze, and that may actually go up now with so many amazing breweries in our new town. I do not regret this. 
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Criterion service! I hadn’t heard that yet; must check it out.
Your last paragraph makes me want to visit you 
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( I think my new hobby needs to be learning multiple quoting instead of just replying all over the place)
@ielerol you just reminded me my state parks have a Passport Club and Hiking Club - both are geared more toward kids, but I think it’s super fun! Passport Club is what it sounds - a physical Passport you can get stamped at each park office. Hiking Club has specific trails to complete and mark off the answer to “secret” questions. I ended up biking a lot more last year, but love hiking.
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Do you have any recipes you’d like to share? I love fruity drinks, except I’m pregnant right now - so I’d love to hear any mocktail ideas you have! 
Also - how neat that we have so many knitters/crocheters here!
I was thinking the same thing. Would anyone be interested in a “Share your WIP” type of thread? Is there a place for that here? I think it would be fun to post updates/pictures and/or resources for projects we are working on. I know I would love to see what others are doing and maybe get some help sometimes.
I created a thread (please remove if it doesn’t fit the forum):
Hmm - I haven’t done this, but I actually think you could probably make a pretty good mock Mai Tai if you got some orgeat - it’s an almond syrup that’s the secret ingredient. I’d do a mix of orange, lemon, and lime juice, plus some orgeat and angostura bitters, and a splash of (preferably homemade or at least not the bright red fake) grenadine. Ingredients listed in decreasing amounts, but not totally confident on ratio… You could throw some pineapple juice in there too if you wanted.
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I have recently started pottery for the fourth time in my life. Classes are $135 per 8 week session, but do not include clay, which is $25 per bag. I have only finished a few pieces this session, and have recycled the rest back to clay to use during the next. I feel good about spending $20 per week, it’s about what I would spend getting drinks with a friend, but this is a bit more productive and I am meeting new people in a low stakes way.
I also dabble in sewing, but without dedicated space, I find that I do it in spurts. My husband and I bought fabric for Christmas projects this year and that probably cost about $200, but we still have quite a bit of fabric left for future endeavors. I bought a new pattern and fabric for a sundress as well, but that has yet to see the light of day.
For other crafters/artists: do you have dedicated workspace? I find the drag of setting things up and taking them down stresses me out enough that I sew less than i would like.
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I do, yes. But it’s also way more chaos-y than I’d like. 
I have a “wet” studio in the unfinished basement of our house-- where anything sculptural or paint-y happens beyond watercolor.
And I have drafting table and an art computer set up in my bedroom.
But both are dirty and cluttered and not enticing to sit down at, and I need to fix that.
Yay for pottery!
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I don’t really have a dedicated space. This is fine for almost everything, because the only real “set up” you need for knitting or crochet is just picking it up in your hands! My afghans get really cumbersome to move around, though. I tend to leave those in my booknook once they get too big to fit in a project basket, and then I’ll often work in the booknook and otherwise just use the half finished afghan for its intended purpose while I’m reading there.
Something like sewing or painting, which needs more equipment and which has more delicate/messy in-between stages, seems to benefit a lot more from dedicated space. Not gonna lie, one reason I haven’t gotten into sewing is that I’d have nowhere to put a machine.
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A booknook sounds nice!
With sewing, I have more trouble with space to cut things out than where to put the machine. I would ideally like a dining room table sized thing. I am better at mending things, because there is not as much cutting out needed.
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@Ckni27
What does your sewing space look like? I know you do a lot of sewing and cutting for your business. 
Those spaces sound nice! I think the being dirty and cluttered is a cyclical thing for me as I am not naturally tidy.
I am throwing on the wheel mostly. It’s been fun, if not frustrating at times.
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I have two industrial machines that are built into their own tables each with a bit of space but not enough for cutting and then a big wooden table for cutting that I wish was bigger. Once we have a place where H can have and use his tools I dream of him making me a 4’x6’ tabletop. If my studio weren’t a mess I’d take a photo
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My new sewing machine hiding spot, in our loungeroom. I can’t sew in our study/craft room, as I can only sew when toddler is asleep and his room is right next door. I do all my pinning and cutting in our craft room (or on the loungeroom floor for bigger projects), then take it to the lounge to sew.! Also yes it’s march and we still have Xmas decorations up…
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I do triathlons and distance running events and spend about $200/month (in addition to a gym membership that I’d have anyway). This includes travel for races so it’s kind of a vacation expense too. My expenses are mainly gear, nutrition, and race entries. Expenses will fluctuate a lot depending on the events I’m doing - if I’m doing a full Ironman for example, I’ll be spending a LOT more than if I’m just doing some halfs.
I have done some cross-stitching and really enjoyed the methodical nature of it, but I don’t like that I don’t create anything useful from it. There’s only so many cross-stitched pictures I want around my house.
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That’s so cool! I didn’t know that.
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Hobbies!
I average $300/year on my yard/garden. Over the last 10 years that has ranged from a low of $50 to a high of $600.
Crafting supplies average $113/year (low of $15 to high of $358). This is mostly “yarn”. By “yarn” I mean old sweaters that I take apart for new-to-me yarn. Any craft supplies that I buy specifically for making into gifts are not part of this total - that is categorized as a gift expense.
Recreation averages $1650/year. (high was $3000, twice). This includes about $450/year for dance classes and $550/year for gym membership. The gym expense is fairly new, though (one year), so that’s going to bring up my yearly average. The rest is mostly watersport-related such as boats, equipment, sport-specific clothing. Also classes, launch fees, and transportation to get to the water (when I ride with someone else and pay for gas).
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This got way long because it turns out I really like shit when I’m not cripplingly depressed? 
Hiking is the big one for me right now - I want to climb a Munro by Midsummer. I have a good backpack, good walking boots and proper trousers & base layers accumulated so that doesn’t need to cost me anything except buying coffee afterwards in return for my cousin driving. It also doubles as fun family hanging out time with my cousin and niece (who is a little frustrated that Auntie ThreeOfWands is fat and slow but knows better than to say that now unless she wants a lecture about how all bodies are beautiful and I like my tummy and that if someone is doing something they find very hard and continues to do it despite that, that’s a really big deal and she should be proud of me). This will hopefully also expand into camping this summer, which will be a reasonable outlay but then should pay for itself pretty much since campsites in Scotland tend only to cost a few quid for the night (especially if you don’t mind that the woods they’re in are probably haunted).
I really, really want to try rock climbing so I’d like to book myself a taster session at some point, probably around May, which costs £32 and is walkable from my flat. Then one-off sessions are between around £15, I imagine I’d go maybe once a month.
Next on the list is wild swimming, partly because one of my favourite memories of my mother is that we couldn’t pass a body of water without her grabbing the swimming costumes and insisting we have a dip, no matter that it’s Wales IN MARCH, and this makes me feel closer to her. The cost is technically free - and I can incorporate it into the hiking because Threipmuir Reservoir (above) is in the Pentland Hills and apparently isn’t freezing because the water is very peaty (bonus - probably tastes like whisky?). My friend Emily and I are going to go on road trips and she says I can make the playlists. We also live by the sea, and there’s a group that goes out every Sunday. I will need a wetsuit for that, and probably some kind of neoprene sock so my foot doesn’t touch a fish??? I do not want my hobby to be ‘fish touching my feet’, no I do not.
Spin class is an unexpected addiction after literally the worst experience of my life at SoulCycle, but Tribe Cycle is much, much nicer and there’s a whole backstory about how it literally saved my life one very bad day, but that’s for another time. I usually stock up on ten or five class passes for £50 or £100 when I get a freelance gig I haven’t already budgeted for - in an ideal world I’d be able to spend £1,000 on a yearly membership and then go whenever I wanted, probably a few times a week, but I do not live in that world yet. Also, they do really good yoga classes.
Inspired by a friend who has just met her goal of being able to outlift Brie ‘Captain Marvel’ Larson, I’ve started lifting very small handheld weights and I want to do more of that? I have some at home, gifted from a friend which was lovely but also means I can’t justify buying the really pretty pastel set I saw. There’s a social enterprise gym in town that’s super queer-friendly and aimed at people on a budget and they do proper lifting classes as well as disco yoga and yoga for women and femmes which all sound like my cup of tea (they also do separate training classes for transmasc and transfeminine people which I don’t need but love the existence of). They have a reasonably priced personal trainer and also a sliding scale for a counsellor which I could probably do with, just to sort some of my people-pleasing shit out.
Fandom is probably my biggest - and most sedentary! - hobby, and is also effectively free unless you count the many hours lost to staring at pictures of Miranda Otto.
I sucked balls at actually playingroller derby, but the Edinburgh league is really good and I should support them more! Bouts are pretty cheap to attend, but I just discovered their merch site so I’m pretty fucked.
Beyond that… reading feels like my job a lot of the time, although now I’ve stepped back from most of my reviewing responsibilities that feels more like pleasure again. Compulsively making and organising Spotify playlists. I also enjoy booping my cats on the nose, which is free provided I don’t to it do FCat because he is too dignified for that shit and will twat me, then requiring a plaster.
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Everything about this is amazing and I want to join you.
I will definitely join you in the “staring at pictures of Miranda Otto” hobby.
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