Other hobbies you have enjoyed are still enjoying now.......

I am back into koi again. Just finished building a 5K gallon pond with a good filtration system. Just started to stock it with koi. BonsaiNut told me about an internet auction koi dealer from Hawaii and I promptly bought some koi there. They came in yesterday. I did nothing yesterday but look at my koi. Here are the 4 showa I got yesterday. They are about 15.5 inches long. They are very skinny and with bad conformation, but they are still young (1 year old) , so hopefully they can still develop.
 

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Si, I know nothing of koi, except I love to look at them. They look good to me for young fish... Perhaps they can get confirmed after the baptism...:D:D:D
 
JudyB said:
Si, I know nothing of koi, except I love to look at them. They look good to me for young fish... Perhaps they can get confirmed after the baptism...:D:D:D
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Good one Judy! :D:D:D. Seriously, this reminds me to get a priest in here to bless my pond, and my house. I did that with my last house.
 
Very attractive Nishikigoi, they should give you years of enjoyment. I have delt with the drealer you describe, nice people.

Harry
 
I rebuild muscle cars, that started with a love for Corvairs and branched out. Currently I'm into Pro Touring styled cars. I'm also into salt water aquariums and have a new addition to Mid Century Modern Furniture.
 
ah....hobbies, the things I have done to make me "too busy to do housework".... I think bonsai came first and has been a constant thread throughout my adult life. Raising exotic birds ran along side that for about 10 years. Custom leather tooling, you know, belts, purses, wallets, etc.... Breeding and showing English Bulldogs and Bullmastiffs for around 10 years. Stained glass followed that, with bonsai still weaving in and out of all these other things. I really thought I'd found my permanent niche with the glass until woodcarving came along. That really took over and nearly everything else went by the wayside after that. I've been a woodcarver since 1992.... My mother was a woodcarver too. I still dabble in bonsai. I did sell off most of my collection this past July, to lessen the load of stuff that needs cared for. I kept a few favorites, one of which I started from a cutting over 30 years ago, and recently purchased a couple of large Squamata Prostrata (sp?) junipers as they are extremely forgiving. The largest one is in a 7 gallon container and has a pretty massive trunk for the variety. Probably 30 years old. A good 3-5 year project. I bought it from my old friend, Clif Pottberg, over in Dade City and it was well worth the $125. We barely got the thing into the back of my Prius. LOL. Anyhow, I will always dabble in bonsai but am pretty much a full time woodcarver now....at least until the next thing comes along. I can't seem me doing anything else, but then I thought that about the glass, so you never know.
 
I'm into whitewater kayaking , obsessed as my wife says...lol. Just haven't gotten out much this year. We start as soon as the rivers/creeks open up and stop when they freeze over. Basically March >Dec. Been paddling since 01'. Also do a lot smoked bbq, been doing that since 04'. Have a Weber smoker. And pretty much anything that invovles the outdoors, hiking etc. There's this marsh not too far from me where I just love to go and sit to watch and listen to the wildlife.
 
Thomas, your photo's are outstanding. Photography has been a hobby of mine since I was 15 or16 years old and I am 51 now. I resisted the move to digital until finally it was futile. i now use Nikon equipment and iPhoto and Aperture on my MacBook to organize, catalogue and fix things when I screw up. I recently went back to film though finding medium format cameras and lenses are very inexpensive now. I am experimenting with b&w for the first time and morn the loss of Kodacrome. The medium format is heavy especially combined with my digital gear, but I go out and shoot things i find interesting. I have found that photographing ones bonsai trees is not as easy as one might imagine. I also photograph my wife's orchid blooms.

Hobbies that I was once passionate about but have moved on include quail hunting and owning dogs and walking horses. There was a time when I rode daily and ran my dogs, but have scaled back to hosting one field trial a year on my plantation in Alabama.

Through my wife I have become interested in orchids having a preference for the species, small and exotic. I am no where nearly as passionate about orchids as she is though.

One thing we have picked up in the past couple of years is pool. When i was growing up in the '60's pool halls were not somewhere you were supposed to go, but today it is solidly middle class with nice facilities and we have improved tremendously. We play several nights a week and play on two different league teams - Mondays and Wednesdays.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but i have held the floor quite long enough. Thanks for listening, Phillip Cß
 
Bonsai Nut said:
dragon.jpg


I'm not sure anyone will even know what this is :)
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Was this a comic book adaptation of Leiber's "Fafrd and the Grey Mouser" books?
 
grog said:
Was this a comic book adaptation of Leiber's "Fafrd and the Grey Mouser" books?
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It is copy #1 of Dragon Magazine - the official magazine of Dungeons & Dragons. Issue #1 is from June, 1976. It IS related somewhat when you consider that Fafrd and the Grey Mouser featured in the issue, and were also on the cover of issue #18 :) After a run of 350 issues, Dragon Magazine is no more... but people still collect them. I just like the older copies.
 
wow, issue #1! i started collecting dragon magazine from around issue #40 thru #120 (never did play much D&D tho, haha). if i ever found issue #1 at a rummage sale, i'd pick it up in a heartbeat! i have the first five anthologies too.
 
View attachment 19786

Sorry for the blur on the first pic:p

Here's another hobby that I've done for a number of years, but got away from. So, I've planned to get reaquainted with some old friends and bring them to life.

These are military miniatures. They vary in size from 25mm or so for things such as wargaming to much larger pieces such as the one shown below which is 80mm. This one represents a Prussian standard bearer from the time of Frederick the Great (18th century). I think I may have muddied him a bit much, but I've always been a stickler for realism. You figure he's on campaign, so the good looks of the parade ground go to pot. He's far from finished since the paint needs retouching, details established and put him back together.

View attachment 19783

The head is sitting on my blue jeans, the face is about 1/2 the size of the finger nail on the pinkie.

View attachment 19784

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Taking pics of this guy is a pain in the a@#. Sorry for the lack of quality, but I think that a good part of the detail emerges. As a standard bearer, he would carry the regimental flag into battle and serve, when necessary, as a rallying point for faltering troops. When you purchase thses in the raw, they are the color of a shiny lead since they are made of a soft metal alloy. A lot of times you have to do work before you can even start to paint due to defects, but that's just par for the course.

I got a bunch of others still in their boxes that should keep me busy to somewhere in my mid 80s.
 
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John Ruger said:
View attachment 19786

Sorry for the blur on the first pic:p

Here's another hobby that I've done for a number of years, but got away from. So, I've planned to get reaquainted with some old friends and bring them to life.

These are military miniatures. They vary in size from 25mm or so for things such as wargaming to much larger pieces such as the one shown below which is 80mm. This one represents a Prussian standard bearer from the time of Frederick the Great (18th century). I think I may have muddied him a bit much, but I've always been a stickler for realism. You figure he's on campaign, so the good looks of the parade ground go to pot. He's far from finished since the paint needs retouching, details established and put him back together.

View attachment 19783

The head is sitting on my blue jeans, the face is about 1/2 the size of the finger nail on the pinkie.

View attachment 19784

View attachment 19785

Taking pics of this guy is a pain in the a@#. Sorry for the lack of quality, but I think that a good part of the detail emerges. As a standard bearer, he would carry the regimental flag into battle and serve, when necessary, as a rallying point for faltering troops. When you purchase thses in the raw, they are the color of a shiny lead since they are made of a soft metal alloy. A lot of times you have to do work before you can even start to paint due to defects, but that's just par for the course.

I got a bunch of others still in their boxes that should keep me busy to somewhere in my mid 80s.
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Hobbies are part of life. I may not share yours or you mine, but the things that keep life interesting for all of us. My hobbies change from time to time, but I try to leave one better than I found it. The best part of hobbies are the people that we meet along the way. Friendships we can keep for a lifetime.

Harry
 
My other hobby?

I custom build vivariums, and keep poison dart frogs. Which means I also culture bugs.
Yep, I have three tubs full of springtails (100's of thousands), and four cultures of isopods, and a dozen or so cultures of flightless fruitflies going at any given time.
Mini trees and mini bugs. Who'da thunk it?

-Troy
 
Two Fender Strats and a Fender acoustic are my latest interests competing for my bonsai time and photography. I used to be in a rock band back in my high school days in the late 60s and stopped playing a few years later. With You Tube and all the different types of guitar playing teachers out there, I'm doing better now than I was back then.:)
 

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Hey Thomas. How's the neck on that acoustic? Any warping?

Bob.
 
Hey Thomas. How's the neck on that acoustic? Any warping?
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No, none that I can tell. All of the guitars shown except the natural ash Strat are new. Hopefully there won't be any warping. Why do you ask, have you had this problem?:)

By the way the acoustic is an electric acoustic and sounds fantastic hooked up to an acoustic amp.:cool:
 
When you said you were in a band in the '60's I thought that the guitars were all from that time and just wondered how the acoustic held up.

When My oldest was born in '87 I bought an Ovation (electric-acoustic) that has held up very well. When my middle girl came along in '90 I got an American Strat, also in great shape. When My third daughter came along, no spare cash for guitars so I owe her one.

I'm in my 50's so it's cool to see another geezer keeping up with the hobby! Right now I'm working on learning the acoustic versions of "Black Hole Sun" and "Like a Stone" It's amazing how sometimes your fingers can feel like toes.


bob
 
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