Okay I've done crafts of all sorts over the years, woodworking to needlepoint, painting, and sewing, used to make all my own clothes from my own patterns even that I sketched out. But my left and dominant hand is quickly giving up the ghost on functioning. The little needles for hand stitching are quite literally slipping through my finger tips. My three year old granddaughter could color better within the lines than me by now and probably work a crochet hook better too. Naturally I am staying far away from our lathe lest I become an episode on some ER show for having a chisel lodged in my skull. And my right hand has spent 37 years as just an accessory to make me look even, like most righties are with their left hands. I can no longer pick at the strings of a guitar, maneuver my violin bow, or depress the keys on my clarinet, or piano.

So I am now growing ever more desperate for a hobby. The work arounds I've been using to try to keep my hobbies have all but failed, 3 fingers are completely numb, the pinky to the middle and the other two only have partial feeling. My poor brain is going crazy from lack of use and I can feel myself growing depressed and frustrated with myself. But the only hobbies I can think of aside from reading excessively as I already do, require the coordinated use of at least one hand.

I can still operate my sewing machine, but require someone else to make all the cuts . I lost sports in my early twenties, lost my education in my early thirties, and now here I am just a few years later and it's taken away my music and my arts. And about 6 months out of the year for my gardening as well... mostly because it's just tooo hot to tend to the garden all the very loooooong summer we have in GA. Even my bread making days are over, and any fancy baking, I can still manage a few chocolate chip cookies on a good day, but forget about shortbreads or windowpanes, or any kind of decoration on cakes and such.

I'm just getting fat dumb and lazy it seems. I mean if you're in the mood for cake and you make cute dainty little confections that look almost too good to eat you've one spent a lot of calories making them, but also you slowly savor one of the poor little things and leave the rest alone for the day or fob them off on friends and family where your little baby can be consumed without your knowledge. Versus making a batch of chocolate chip cookies with a stand mixer, you spent next to nothing in calories to make it, and half your cookies are gone before they even touch the cooling rack. And geez I have never in my life eaten as much fast and convenience food as I have this past year... I think you could total all years before and still come up with less than this past year combined.

I need something to do, something more stimulating than playing on the iPad or reading through encyclopedias and really any books, papers or whatnot I can get my hands on. But also something I can do that won't suffer a clear failure, or worse result in personal injury or accidental death. Even writing which I used to love to do, is fading quickly as my dyslexia and memory issues become more pronounced (thank god for spell check). I'm feelings very much like the antagonist from the Conquer Worm or maybe just wishing I were.

I sure wish I could give you some suggestions but I don't have a creative bone in my body. My daughter does but I have no idea where she got that from...lol

I always enjoy reading your posts. They always make me 'think' a little deeper than I normally would. I myself am just a silly 55 year old woman but what you are going through is not being lazy my friend.

You have done so much in your life. The list is amazing to me.

Hopefully someone will come along with some really good suggestions for you.

And you are sooooo right about these Georgia summers. They are LONG and HOT. My favorite time is when I can open the whole house up and have a light breeze come through. Those days are so few here

Take care

Debi in Georgia

My mom has vision loss, she had to give up her sewing, gardening for the most part, still can cook & bake w/ special magnifier for recipes..
We are trying to think of activities she can do at home too, it is hard to come up with ideas..

Hmmmm.... such a tricky thing, when it comes to vision loss... it's harder to aquire new skills when you can't see well enough to read the directions and when working with something unfamiliar. If it was the eyes going on me rather than the hands, I could still play my instruments, or knit and crochet and some hand embroidery, like sashiko that's done in repetition more on feel than staring it down, but only because of how long I've been doing it. I couldn't imagine trying to learn a new craft without being able to see what I'm doing. Not that one couldn't learn, there's plenty of blind people out there who can sew, knit and crochet, even paint but it's been my experience that the ones who have an easier time of it were either born blind or lost their vision very early in life, once we gain that dependency on sight it becomes our all.

I suppose I should be glad it's the hands and not the eyes all the same... I can still read as much as I like to at least keep my brain from going completely idle, and I'm sure with that reading I'll eventually come across some sort of solution to my current predicament.... speaking of which I wonder how deft your hands must be to do bobbin lace? I've never tried it before, but I can tie my shoes with my right hand only because of the number of times I've injured the left and a general despising of slip on or velcroed shoes, just need to be able to get the pins into the pillow or board, and print out my patterns rather than drawing them... I don't really care for lace on the whole, but I do have a GD who would probably be able to put it to good use. Now is it worth the $40 for bobbins to find out?

Ahhh... better still, before spending the money I could probably fashion a close enough proximity to a bobbin from some old pencils and rubber bands. Yiiippppeeee a project!!!

Have you tried paracord braiding?

I know you're having problems with your hands, but so was I when I started trying out paracord braiding. I was basically using it as a physical therapy.

It's kind of like macrame...actually, it is macrame, just on a smaller scale. You can use just about any thickness of cord you want. The thicker cords might be easier for numb fingers to maneuver.

linky 1

linky 2

youtube linky

Wow that really takes me back to the totally 80's friendship bracelets Gosh I must have made thousands out of embroidery thread back when I was a kid. And the 90's hemp bracelets and necklaces... but I never thought of doing it out of paracording before.... what do you do with them when you're done though? Untie and try another knotting? Make a rug? Dog collars? I can't picture tying paracord around my wrist or neck, though I believe I have some left over from my camping days to play with.

I'll have to hunt it up tomorrow afternoon, sort of fighting with the DH tonight so I'm naturally suffering the effects of insomnia while he's blissfully asleep. Hot day, had to go food shopping and my wheelchair had a flat tire, I didn't want to use the store chair, silly of me I know but I despise the motorized carts especially when I have tunnel vision and poor coordination now, and he had a bad day because his work kept bothering him even though he was off and we both just basically got snippy with each other. Which even carried over when we got back home and he criticized my attempts at putting groceries away which was really just succeeding in throwing half of them on the floor because left hand kept reaching to grab stuff though it can't hold anything. And he thought I was throwing them on purpose thinking I was still mad at him... honestly I was ready to bean him by the end of it.

Hot, tired, sore and my left hand refused to listen to me and stop picking things up, while my right hand just sat idly by, not even trying to help. But then to I was rushing to get things put up because I was hot, tired and hurting and wanting nothing more than to hop in a nice cold shower and lay down, so I wasn't focusing enough on which hand was doing the work till the bread when skittering across the floor, followed by the DH's soda, the cats food, the DH's chips and when I reached for the meats he stopped me and kicked me out of the kitchen. And from there we've been in the silently seething at each other point of our argument and to which tomorrow afternoon he'll call me to apologize while he's at work and I'll feel guilty for having never once in 17 years of marriage being the first one to apologize and after dinner tomorrow we'll be cuddled up on the couch together like the whole day never happened, and once more I won't have learned my lesson to simply say I'm sorry first so I can get a good nights rest, because he always lets me win any argument... sooooo infuriating.

This is why I need hobbies!!! I need challenges and conflicts... better they occur by paint brush or thread than my poor DH, who agrees that a bored me is a very very stubborn and ever so much a *^%#~ me.

Hi Starz! Finding things to occupy our time is tough some days. You are very creative and innovative so I'm sure you will be able to figure something out so you can continue some of your hobbies. Check out some of the assistive things online, like grabber gloves, as you may be able to purchase them or get ideas on making your own.

Have you tried clay or plastering? You can make it as easy or as hard as you want. It can be inexpensive or expensive and everything in between. Making your own would be an inexpensive way to try it out. Pinterest has lots of recipes besides the standard salt dough. You can purchase silicone candy molds to press the dough into. You can color the clay so you don't have to paint it. You can make a bunch as Christmas ornaments and give them away or sell them at a bizarre, craft fair, or even a garage sale.

You also may be able to do some paper crafts/scrapbooking. YouTube has a ton of videos you can view to see if you think you would be able to do some. Paper is cheap! Plus, there's all sorts of paper trimmers, scorers, and rotary cutters that you may be able to safely use.

Those are just a couple of things I thought of right now. If I think if more I'll let you know.

I've always wanted to take up birdwatching or photography. Those would be pretty easy to get into.

I spend a lot of time in my garden when it's not hot as well. I like to take photos of my flowers. If you can have raised garden beds it's easier to maintain them as well.

I do love gardening and have some nice raised beds as well as just regular beds throughout my garden but it just get sooooooooo hot down here, that I really can only care for the garden in early spring and late fall through the winter... good thing is snow doesn't cover everything down here in the winter and some plants will still grow so I don't have to worry about things to do come winter normally. I also have a great dsrl camera my DH got me, but once again the heat kills me in the summer so the camera sits on the shelf throughout the summer months unless I make a trip to NH.

I will have to look into playing with some pottery though... I used to do a lot of pottery when I was younger, heck my mom had a whole China cabinet filled with my works before we moved from NH to GA, then unfortunately like so many other things we had they we sold off to help pay for the move , bankruptcy bites let me tell you... but I hadn't really played around with it since the move over 20 years ago, short of salt dough ornaments with the GB last Christmas and i think one school project after we moved... though thinking of it... that was before the move.... anatomical figure of a bottlenosed dolphin easiest A I ever got... it was erosion and stream patterns down here dirt was free.

But yeah, I could see giving pottery another whirl (both figuratively and literally ) and if the cheaper doughs work out, I can always have the DH build me a nice little wood burning kiln... we always have plenty of brush to burn why let the energy of burning it go to waste... and I would like some new dishes, we just have the simple white Corneille ones right now, and there's tons of different dip dyes out there for ceramics along with different stamps for making patterns in the wet clay...ok creative mind is churning up a storm now and excitement is building over possibly making my own dinnerware again. THANKS

Oh the poor DH, he's not going to be thrilled with me for a bit... got to thinking about the gardening dilemma down here and now trying to convince him to build me a garden on my kitchen wall lol. I've seen a few different ideas like using mason jars that would be water tight so as to not flood my kitchen every time the plants need water to setting up water tight boxes and attaching them too the wall.

A nice plant light (which they make in LED form now) overtop the "wall" of plants and I can grow everything from strawberries to lettuce bug and heat free and all throughout the year... another option is turning the aquarium in our living room into a hydroponic garden wouldn't even need to worry about fertilizer with the little fishies keeping the plants well fed while the plants keep the tank clean. And all the while the plants can help keep the air in the house nice and fresh too.

Plus if I get into pottery again, I can make my own planters too... poor DH is going to have quite the little projects ahead for him, now I just wonder if I can bring him over to my side of it being a good idea by telling him I'll stop asking for an addition window in our kitchen and we'll make the plant wall where I wanted the window to go lol. Though I might have to offer more compromises if I want my garden to be rotating (pulley like system so I can move the plants on top down to a place easy to reach to tend to them)

I think a locking bicycle chain and gear would work for that... maybe even find some old peddles so it can be hand wheeled to rotate the garden around as I need to and hang the whole thing from the ceiling almost against the wall... hmmm need to work out the particulars still... but I'm thinking this could work... providing the DH is willing to put in the initial grunt work... failing fancy gear works, I suppose my mom and I could just make something and put it up and "surprise" him when he gets home one day lol.

What is it they say, easier to seek forgiveness than permission?