Rehabilitating hobbies

Now that the days are drawing in and everything looks so gloomy, it's a good time to think about taking up a hobby.

We've had a bit of a rant before about how boozing seems to have become the hobby of choice for so many people and that the concept of hobbies has become corny and nerdish, which is a great pity.  >> Has drinking replaced hobbies?

So Make it and Mend it is going on the campaign trail for the rehabilitation of hobbies! Or maybe it's not so much hobbies themselves that need rehabilitating, rather the word hobby? It's been the subject of too many curled lips and rolled eyes - let's make it cool again!

Why do we need hobbies? When you have a hobby, you never need to be bored. As well as the pleasure of the activity itself, the sense of achievement that making things can give you is both lasting and self-affirming.

It was Laurence Stern in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy who first coined the term hobby - or hobby horse. His usage was not exactly positive though - being something the idle rich indulged in to the point of boring the pants off other people! Hobbies as we know them really took off in the years following the second world war - and it seems to have been the cynical go-getting 1980s that marginalised them.

There's  lots of evidence that having hobbies helps reduce stress. This is particularly important for those whose work can be all consuming. Doing something completely different helps takes the mind off your worries and can provide a bit of space and calm. Hobbies can improve self-esteem - as well as self-efficacy: the belief in your own ability to achieve a certain goal.

Hobbies can give people the opportunity to have more personal control over something when this is denied to them in everyday life or work and so it can be very self-affirming.

Hobbies can also be opportunities to fulfill our otherwise thwarted personal aspirations - hence the popularity of amateur dramatics, Karaoke and talent contests for wannabe "slebs".

So this is a call to action! Let's celebrate hobbies and make them sexy again!

Please let me know what hobbies you have and how long you've been doing them. Have you rediscovered a childhood passion? Taken up a long cherished dream? Is it related to your work or completely different? Do you do it alone or with others?

Either post a comment here or drop me an email to claref@makeitandmendit.com Sphere: Related Content

It's National Baking Week - so I had a go

I was amazed at the lip-smacking descriptions of the cakes baked by members of our Facebook page and so was inspired to have a go at baking myself.

I haven't creamed any butter or beaten any eggs since I was a girl - being single it always seemed to much of an indulgence and then if I have people to tea it's easy to nip out and buy a cake, so it's never seemed worthwhile going to the trouble to make one.

Remembering that I'd had a Damascene conversion on the jam-making front after a lot of scepticism, I decided to see if baking could work it's magic too. I got the food mixer out of the cupboard and set to work, while listening to the X Factor on Saturday night. A couple of people in the Facebook thread mentioned lemon drizzle cake - and I happened to have plenty of lemons. There's something so sensual about the word drizzle that had me licking my lips before I'd even broken the eggs!

Readers I loved it! It was so easy. It was so satisfying. The kitchen smelled heavenly. The sponge rose beautifully. The lemon drizzled oozily. And it tasted absolutely scrumptious.

The only problems - I forgot to take a photograph - the one here is not mine (thanks to pudontour on Flickr - I picked it as it looks the most like mine). And I scoffed the lot - so I don't think I dare risk doing this again until I have people round to share it or I'll be turning into a sweet-toothed Tellytubby. So... if anyone fancies coming for tea next Sunday afternoon?

Clare Flynn

>> I used this recipe from Woman's Hour
>> Confessions of a reluctant jam-maker
>> Our Facebook Page
>> National Baking Week Sphere: Related Content

Blog action day - hang your washing out!

It's Blog Action Day for climate change and we're getting behind it at Make it and Mend it. Check out the main website for our piece on Climate Change and your Kitchen.

We've also been lending a bit of support to our US friends at Project Laundry List, who are campaigning to encourage Americans to hang their clothes on the lines instead of always using the dryer.

Our highlighting of their efforts has piqued a lot of interest from our UK readers and Facebook fans, many of whom have expressed amazement about the fact that 50 million US homes are actually banned from using dryers and line-drying is seen as a potential dampener on property values (yes - didn't you know - all those sub-prime mortgages and greedy bankers had nothing to do with it - it was the few brave citizens who dared to hang their sheets outside!).

To stop all us Brits from feeling too smug, I thought we'd share a few facts about tumble-drying over here in these fair isles. It may not be banned by law and the practice of hanging your smalls out is not generally viewed as scandalous, but an awful lot of us are still very attached to our dryers.

• We spend £1.1million a day on electricity for tumble drying. That's equivalent to the amount of electricity needed to run 2650 (dryer-free!) homes for a whole year.
• Dryers use about 60% more electricity than washing machines.
  
• The average tumble drying family could save themselves £70 a year if they switched to line drying.
• The average dryer is responsible for emissions of 310kgs of CO2: avoiding this is roughly equivalent to draught-proofing the average UK house.

If you're feeling coy about hanging your undies on the line, then hang these on a rack or airer indoors and save the washing line for sheets, towels and pillow cases.

And don't use the lousy British weather as an excuse. We got by perfectly well before dryers were around! You can always dry indoors on bad days, or don't do a wash if you know it's going to rain - or you can even buy covered washing lines to protect the clothes from the elements.

Even if you can't give the dryer up completely, please do give line drying a try on a dry day (it doesn't have to be sunny!). You'll love the smell of air dried clothes - there's nothing like it.

I've never owned a dryer myself - apart from a brief flirtation with a combi washer-dryer that was so useless I never bothered to use the dryer function. I do have a confession to make though! 25 years ago I worked on the UK launch of dryer fabric conditioning sheets. I spent my days beavering away trying to come up with ways to swell the tiny numbers of dryer owners here in Britain. It sometimes seemed an impossible task - if only it had proved to be!

Clare F

>> Read our original post in support of Project Laundry List
>> Check out the debate on our Facebook Page
>> Project Laundry List

Versaline Washing Line Eco friendly washing lines for inside and out. save money and help reduce CO2

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Tell us about your tins! - well, how you cook with them

It doesn’t matter what sort of culinary whizz you may be in the kitchen you still need a few cans in the back of the cupboard for emergencies and mid-week dinner staples. However, my confidence did fail me when I was confronted with this picture in a recent copy of the UK Times.

What you’re looking at is a ‘Mock crown roast’ from a 1949 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. It was sent in by a Times reader as their contribution to the World’s Worst Recipe Competition.

The central ingredient is four tins of luncheon meat, smeared with marmalade and then roasted in the oven; served here with tinned potatoes, tinned asparagus and tinned pineapple decorated with strawberries.

>> Read the full article here

Even this concoction couldn’t put me off tins for good. So to rectify the canned goods good / bad balance I want your recipes that include something in a can as part of the ingredients.

'Chilli con carne made with tinned kidney beans' you say – ‘Who has time to soak and boil them these days?’ But I think that’s a bit too obvious. The more inventive the better and, unlike the Mock crown roast, it has to be something totally delicious.

Send your recipes to info@makeitandmendit.com

We’ll publish the best of them and may even offer a prize for the winner. Would a tin of luncheon meat do?

Anne Caborne. Make it and Mend it Sphere: Related Content

Have you entered our knitting photo comp yet?

We're giving away 5 copies of Debbie Bliss' fab new knitting book Tips for Knitters - plus an exclusive free download of a section of the book and 25% discount off the price of the book. Check it out here

Here are some of the entries we've had so far - first of the 5 winners will be announced this weekend. So get those photos in - the competition ends on 31st October 2009. Sphere: Related Content

Stain-busting guide to the rescue in the ‘nick’ of time

OurMake it and Mend it Stain Guide (a free e-book, written by the Guardian's Stephanie Zia, for everyone who joins our main website) was the source of a solution to what could have been a very tricky problem... in a young offenders’ prison.

One of our subscribers was working at the prison, running a workshop with a number of the young inmates, all expected to maintain best behaviour in order to keep the privilege of attending these workshops.

Part of the session involved using pastel crayons. All was calm and fine until ‘the problem’ was noticed. One young man had used his bright red pastel crayon in a less constructive fashion and inscribed an unrepeatable piece of graffiti onto the face of one of the blue hessian-covered chairs in the meeting room.

In prison terms, this is a punishable offence. Keen not see the boy’s previous good behaviour go to waste our subscriber quickly ran a mental checklist through the Stephanie Zia Easy No-nonsense Stain Guide she’d just downloaded and read.

With nothing to hand (prisons only allow you minimal belongings when you work on the inside), our heroine knew the only way to keep this young teenager out of more trouble was to find a way of getting him to solve the problem himself. She had it! She needed washing-up liquid to remove the offending words and in the absence of that, hand-wash from the ladies' toilets.

Back with a plastic cup full of the stuff, the lad set to work, literally with his bare hands, scrubbing offence off the surface of the chair until, after 15 minutes, it was completely gone! Apparently our boy was brimming with pride at his achievement and relieved he would not be going on report.

And one of the most satisfying things, apart from us all learning how to clean pastel crayon off hessian, was that the Stain Guide let someone learn what are the consequences of thoughtless graffiti : someone has to find a way of cleaning it off.
>> Get our Free Stain Guide now Sphere: Related Content

Autumnal blues?

A couple of days ago I walked along a sunlit River Thames, light dappling through the trees and onto the water, geese and herons paddling on the edges and rowers cutting through the still clear water. Now the sky is grey, the wind is howling, it's forecast to rain and I'm shivering my socks off indoors and switching on the heating.

Yes folks, after our Indian Summer, Autumn is well and truly here! Meanwhile our friends Downunder are hitting the beaches - and the trouble with Facebook is you get to hear all about it and see the photographs.

Looking out of the window into the gloom of the garden, the plants are also looking rather down in the dumps, with frazzled leaves and dying flowerheads. Apart from the dash of colour from the pink sedum, it's all starting to look a bit depressing and rather sorry for itself.

Rather than start indulging my SAD syndrome (Seasonal Affective Disorder) - or as the Italians call it "cambio della stagione" I'm going to console myself by planning the garden for next year. Now is a good time for taking stock of what worked and what didn't. For thinking about next year's display and for ringing the changes by introducing some plants for the winter.

If you're going to be growing vegetables - and if you haven't tried then give it a go - it's so rewarding - there's a fantastic offer from the lovely people at GrowVeg - a 30 day free trial of their really useful software for planning your vegetable planting. It enables you to make a scale drawing of your vegetable plot or allotment and populate it with the vegetables you want to grow. It even shows you how much space each plant needs, which plants go together and how to rotate crops.
>> Take a free trial

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Amazing, inspiring, recycled houses

You must take a look at this photo collection from the New York Times featuring the houses made by Texas builder, Dan Phillips. His firm, Phoenix Commotion, builds low income housing from entirely recycled materials. Dan builds the homes on donated plots using 80% salvaged materials, including wine bottle corks, old sidings, cattle bones, and shards of glass, mostly saved from refuse or found abandoned at the roadside.

Dan requires the future owner of each home to help with its construction. We love this idea, as not only will they have a huge emotional stake in their home, but helping to create it boosts an individual's sense of pride, purpose, self-esteem and self-efficacy. This can be particularly important for people struggling financially. Dan Phillips says:

"I think mobile homes are a blight on the planet. Attractive, affordable housing is possible and I'm out to prove it."

Please take a look as it is a great source of ideas and inspiration.
>> New York Times photo slideshow

Clare F Sphere: Related Content

Lakeland adds product demos

Little by little, lovely Lakeland seems to be improving how it markets itself online. It has at last added video to its website and now has a number of product demonstrations available. >> Here's the video section

As so many of their products are one-offs (and some even a bit bizarre - see my post of a few months ago >> Lakeland - Love it or hate it?) it makes eminent and overdue sense to exploit the medium of video. I just watched one for their Flame Grill and was tempted to order one on the spot. I think it was the sight of the bacon and eggs cooking - you don't get that in the catalogue!

While some of the Lakeland products seem indulgences more appropriate to the slightly barmy Innovations Catalogue, the bulk of their stuff is absolutely cracking - they seem to have the perfect tool for every job.

>> For much more making and mending ideas and inspiration, visit our main website Makeitandmendit.com Sphere: Related Content

Help innocent help old people

In the UK, 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 are malnourished. If you'd like to help, smoothie maker innocent is joining forces with with supermarket group Sainsbury’s to raise over £250,000 to support charities Age Concern and Help the Aged with healthy eating and healthy living projects during the winter.

They want as many people as possible to knit 'bottle hats'. For every behatted smoothie sold, innocent and Sainsbury’s will give 35p to Age Concern and Help the Aged. The monies raised will then be used to fund projects and advice centres offering information on healthy eating as well as cooking clubs and get-togethers where older people can sit down and enjoy a meal and company.

>> For knitting tips, patterns and pictures go to http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/thebigknit/?Page=how_to_knit

And when you’re done knitting, just send finished hats to:

The innocent Big Knit, Fruit Towers, 1 The Goldhawk Estate, Brackenbury Road, London W6 0BA, including your name, address and number of hats you've knitted.

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Has drinking replaced hobbies?

I was talking to a friend who's living in Manila and he was telling me that the drinking culture there is even more dramatic than in the UK. Incredibly cheap "drink as much as you can before 9pm" offers abound and all everyone seems to do is hit the bars and drink themselves silly.

I'd just been telling him about what we're trying to do with Make it and Mend it and how our intent is not just to help people combat recession and live more thriftily, but to share and encourage the more positive psychological aspects of making stuff and mending it (see our blog post below on the difference between making and mending and making do and mending )

He then pointed out that the growth in drinking over recent years has been accompanied by a decline in hobbies. It's almost as though drinking has become the new hobby for millions of people (and I'm not ruling myself out !). That hadn't occurred to me before, but I think he has a point.

Once upon a time everyone had hobbies and it was a normal thing to ask "What are your hobbies?", when you met someone rather than "What do you do?". Then it became a bit of a no-no as an expression, conjuring up visions of saddos with no mates bent over an Airfix kit and a stamp collection - or dashing off to Girl Guides to earn a badge in brass rubbing.

But why did we get so cynical about hobbies? Were they swept aside in Thatcher's Britain with the 80's emphasis on career and money? Indeed the received wisdom used to be not to put too much on the interest section of your CV in case a prospective employer might wonder whether you were reluctant to offer less than your whole soul to their company. On the other hand, going out and getting bladdered after a long day's cutting and thrusting on the corporate battlefield was seen as suitably macho, especially in the City.

At the other end of the economic scale, the growing underclass and disaffected leave school with nothing much more than an endless capacity for boredom and no means of sating it except through a bottle or even a needle.

The recent increase in the uptake of crafts such as knitting and the burgeoning passion for vegetable growing have been heralded as reactions to recession. That may be true but maybe they are also signs of a reawakening of interest in hobbies for their own sake and hopefully an erosion of the cynicism about them and about clubs and societies. The Scouts and Brownies are supposed to be on the up, as is the Women's Institute. I've never been one for joining things myself - but I certainly don't feel cynical and sneery about those who do - even though I'm ashamed to say I once used to be!

Maybe if more of us had hobbies we wouldn't all feel we had to drink so much? If our kids did too it might set them on a path to a more interesting and fulfilling life. What do you think?

Clare F Sphere: Related Content

Make do and Mend

Well this week things have really taken off on the thrifty living front.

We had The Observer this weekend with an extract from the fabulously useful Mend It! 400 Easy Repairs by Sian Berry.

Then this morning, BBC Radio 4's Today programme featured the soon-to-be-published modern version of Make Do and Mend from John Lewis and asked listeners to share their own ideas for thrifty living. Here at Make it and Mend it Towers we've risen to the challenge and have been busy on Twitter, tweeting our own tips and suggestions in response. Here's one of our tweets:

r4today RT @makeitandmendit: clean dark wood floors with water that five tea bags have been soaked in. Polishes beautifully and darkens scuff marks

It seems every time we open a magazine, a newspaper or turn on the TV or the radio there's something about living more frugally and thriftily. It definitely seems we've reached a tipping point in the public consciousness.

All of this is great, but there's a much more positive side to making and mending. You may start off down this path because your short of a bob or two but most people find they actually like it! It's not so much about sacrifice, compromise or "making do" but more about the sense of achievement and self-efficacy that comes from making your own stuff rather than flashing a credit card.

When the recession eventually ends, you may have more cash in your pocket and security in your job, but we're sure once you've tried your hand at making and mending you'll find it becomes pretty addictive!
Clare Flynn Sphere: Related Content