Tag: Knitting

Anything But Books Tag!

Today I’m sharing this Anything But Books book tag as a little bit of something fun to do. Not only that, but I’ve spent the last week or so after getting back free time from study enjoying some of the other hobbies I like to do other than read.

These posts are a great way for you to get to learn a little bit more about me and who I am as a person. This is purely a bit of fun and I hope you enjoy today’s post. I was inspired to take part in it after seeing a similar post on ZeeZee’s blog. The original post is a few years old now but it was a fun read regardless and if you want to check that one out for yourself, here is the link.


Name a cartoon you love

I’m not really a big watcher of cartoons (I’m in my late 20s). However, I have been enjoying an anime on Netflix recently.

My boyfriend and I are watching series two of Arcane right now and I’m really enjoying it. It’s the first time I’ve watched anything like it for a good number of years. I don’t tend to watch animated programs, but I’m glad this is an exception!


Favourite song right now

Partly following on from question one, one of my favourite songs right now featured in the intro to season two of Arcane and sang by one of my favourite artists, Freya Ridings.

It’s called I Can’t Hear It Now and here is a link to the video on YouTube in case you want to check it out for yourself.

 

What could you do for hours that isn’t reading?

Honestly, there are potentially a lot of answers to this question.

The first one that springs to mind is knitting as that’s something I’ve done quite recently. However, the same could be true of any craft project. I have spent far too many hours working on a cross stitch that nearly 3 years on is still not complete.

I’m also quite fond of gaming. Palia is a game I’ve started playing recently, but I also enjoy classics like Minecraft or even Mario Kart. My favourite game series on PlayStation right now is the Horizon series.


What is something I love to do that my followers will be surprised by

Something I don’t talk about very much, but I do still enjoy a lot is cooking and baking. Cooking is one of those everyday tasks that almost gets overlooked. However, I do enjoy making my own food. What I’m less keen on is doing the washing up afterwards, but thankfully my boyfriend enjoys doing that. So, I get to make the mess and he gets to clear up after me! Lucky devil!

Up until this year I’ve not really done much in the way of baking either. I never really had a good reason to do it very often. However, I’ve gotten more involved in baking at work this year to give myself a reason to do it and experiment with new makes a little.


What is my favourite specific thing to learn about

It is very specific, and it’s something I’ve talked about on my blog many times. I love learning about World War II.

It’s a pretty morbid subject in reality. So many people lost their lives during this period, but I can’t stop myself from reading about it or watching documentaries on it. Whether it’s fiction set in this kind of time period, or non-fiction about actual experiences of concentration camps during the holocaust, I’ll eat anything like this up.

I’m not sorry either.


What is something unusual I know how to do

Um, pass. I can’t think of anything.

 

Name something I’ve made in the last year

I wanted to get back into knitting a little bit more this year. It’s a hobby I enjoy, I can make great gifts out of it and it’s a hobby that works really well with audiobooks. Any of my other bookish fans who like both and want to combine the two together – that is my recommendation!

I am also the kind of person that has a lot of projects on the go at once. So, I only really have one completion so far this year. That was a very quick project I started a couple of weeks ago and finished in two days to try and get myself back in the swing of things. It was only a chunky bobble hat.

On top of that, I’ve worked on knitting a shawl and progressing with the aforementioned cross stitch project earlier this year.


What is my most recent personal project

The first and least exciting personal project I’ve worked on recently is completing more study for work. I recently sat an exam based around operational risk in financial institutions. Draw your own conclusions from that, but if I’m honest, the subject was every bit of dry as you could imagine. However, that’s not to say it wasn’t useful.

More recently, I’ve started a course on learning how to draw artwork on my iPad. As you probably gathered, I’m quite a creative person in nature and I wanted to give this a go. It’s a potential revenue stream for some passive income if I want to go down that route, but mainly it’s a bit of fun.


Tell us something you think about often

I often wonder what family members who are no longer with us think of how I turned out as an adult.

To stress, this is something I think about. I’m not something I worry about. Something I’ve not really talked about on this blog is that I had lost all my grandparents to various illnesses  by the time I turned 18. Naturally, I wonder what they think about how I have turned out since they didn’t get to meet me as an adult.


And something that’s your absolutely favourite in a very specific moment

Random question, but I’ll answer it!

The taste of ice cold water when you are parched. It doesn’t have a taste literally any other time, but when you NEED it it’s heaven.

 

Summary

If you’ve enjoyed today’s Anything But Books book tag. If you want to take part, I would love to see your answers to these questions as well. Make sure to tag me in that post so I can see your answers and see how we compare.

I also hope it’s giving you a chance to get to know me a little bit more. It’s been a lot of fun for me to complete.

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Top Ten Tuesday – Non-Bookish Hobbies

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s Top Ten Tuesday post!

Today’s topic is actually a little premature as it’s earmarked for Tuesday 3rd November. Unfortunately, I have a blog tour that day but I really wanted to share the post anyway. It’s especially relevant at the moment as I am finding myself turning more to non-bookish hobbies.  I also think this post is a fun way for you to get to know a little more about me!

So, here are my top ten non-bookish hobbies, and for fun, I’m posting them in reverse order: –

 

Logic Puzzles

From classic puzzle books, Sudoku, codebreakers and hanjie are puzzles I really enjoy trying to decode. Classic games like Minesweeper are fun too. I think it’s fair to say that I don’t have a particular bias towards numbers, words or pictures when it comes to employing logic to solve a puzzle – I just enjoy the challenge of using the clues I’m given to complete a puzzle.

I haven’t done a logic grid puzzle in a long time, but those are good too! Half the battle with those is reading the word clues very carefully to make sure you got all the information out of them.

 

Watch documentaries

I don’t watch much TV, but lately, I’ve taken to watching documentaries. I’ve watched nearly3 series’ of Blowing Up History over the past couple of months, as well as David Attenborough’s The Galapagos Islands docu-series. I’m sure I watched these years ago, but I enjoyed it again! I also enjoy TV mystery/thrillers and dramas, but I haven’t watched so many of those lately.

 

Watching YouTube

From instructional videos to watching people play games like Minecraft, I enjoy watching a video or two on YouTube… especially when I’m eating.

 

Play Minecraft

Playing Minecraft is something I also enjoy, although I haven’t logged on for a little while now. The last time I went to play I discovered my wireless mouse was broken. That was the end of August. I tend to play Minecraft for a bit and then stop, but then get back into it again. I haven’t played all that much since the Nether update went live, so maybe that’s my excuse to get back into it again! The next update has just been announced and sounds great, so I’ll definitely be getting back into it again when that’s released!

 

Listening to music

I almost forgot to add this to my list even though it’s something I do every day. That’s precisely the reason I overlooked it – it’s an ingrained habit. I love music across a variety of genres. From some of the more modern music to singer/songwriter, musical tracks and even soundtracks (I’m sure you’ll be REALLY surprised to know I have all the Game of Thrones soundtracks downloaded… NOT!) I really enjoy a variety of music. It depends on my mood as to what I listen to.

 

Writing

It’s hard to think of writing and blogging as separate to reading given that the two have gone so hand-in-hand for such a long time. But, they are technically different hobbies. I like taking the time to share my thoughts on something, whether it’s a book, an idea – you name it… I’ll have an opinion on it! Taking the time to write several times a week over the course of a few years stacks up and consequently, I find it a lot easier to write now than I did when I started blogging in 2017.

 

Knitting

Knitting is a new hobby I’ve taken up in the last month or two and I’m enjoying the challenge of it. I learned the very basics of knitting as a child, so I’m not completely new to it. I think my knowledge of it only went so far as learning the garter stitch and figuring out (the hard way) how not to add or drop stitches. That first ‘scarf’ I made, was awful. I can still picture that first section I did in brown, full of holes and scruffy as anything. In hindsight, the colour choice was a premonition for how it was going to turn out…

I still make plenty of mistakes now, but I’m also taking on more stitches and more complicated patterns… so that’s my excuse.

 

Crochet

I’ve been crocheting longer than knitting; however, I love the two just as much!! Ironically, crochet is the more complicated of the two crafts (in my opinion) as there are more stitch types and combinations etc but I found that easier to learn than knitting.

A little weird fact for you – I learned how to do these crafts at different times and in different ways, so I knit right-handed but crochet left-handed.

 

Learn new things

I guess you have probably figured out from some of the entries here that a lot of my ‘motivation’ behind them is learning new things. More than anything, I love to learn – whether it is picking up a new skill or just finding out something I didn’t know yesterday. I enjoyed going to school (for the most part) and so I try to make everyday a school day!

 

Spend time with friends/family

Above all these things, my friends and family mean the most to me and so spending time with them is the thing I look forward to most. I am very lucky to be close to my family and we see each other a lot! I also have a close-knit circle of friends that are great fun to spend time with. You see a lot of jokes about readers and avoiding socialising in favour of staying home and reading. I’m really not like that at all. I do enjoy socialising and I’m grateful for the wonderful people I have in my life. I’d give up every hobby in this list for them if I had to, so of course they take the top spot on this list!

 

What are your hobbies? Let’s chat and get to know each other!

 

 

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