[Closed] What hobby for wet winter nights?

What’s left?

Ballroom Dancing and Baking. Live stream it from the kitchen so you Mrs can watch you on the living room TV

Or Taxidermy and Drone flying. Some sort of flying monkey corpse maybe.

Musical instrument? Timpani are good.

One of them sets where you burn words or pics into wood?
Snooker/pool?
Driving range?

Are you confined to the house or are other venues available?

Off the top of my head

Learn guitar
Learn drums
Learn another language
Painting snd drawing
Low light photography
Animation
Ceramics
Origami
Woodworking
Astronomy
Novel writing
Meditation/yoga
Model-making
Robotics
Web design
Compose and create electronic music
Puppet-making
Singing
Cooking (specialised in a certain country/region)
Geo-guessing

Build a retrobike? Anything from yesteryear you hankered after?

Specialist interest magazines?

Whittling? I often sit in front of our fire in the winter whittling spoons etc
Good fun to do, plus something usable at the end.

Airfix?

C&H

Golf is a nice one, hours at the driving range smacking the heck out of the things!

plus something usable at the end.

Kindling 🙂

Weight doping and ANT+ bot riding in Zwift races. 😉

Hibernate.

One of these?

https://www.model-dockyard.com/acatalog/Motor-Torpedo-and-Motor-Gun-Boats.html

If you like building stuff then why not get into Airfix models and stuff ^^

Wheelbuilding. It's what fly tying is to fisherpersons.

I’m learning to draw at the moment. Always been meaning to and finally putting pen to paper (pun intended I’m afraid). Really enjoying it - with so many decent tutorials on YouTube it’s proving less challenging than I thought it would too. Having an iPad and Apple Pencil makes it very easy to just experiment and try stuff out.

Other options; get well into a decent computer game or two, model building is always a good shout (I’ve always fancied building a wooden sailing ship with the proper planks on the the hill and all the rigging), I’m also quite into my radio (shortwave and scanning) but can see why others can’t think off anything more boring), learn to code and finally porn.

Explanatory mime

Explanatory mime

the first rule of explanatory mime club is...

Expressive whistling

Welding, don’t let anybody tell you that welding isn’t fun.

...... I’ve yet to find a weekly welding club though 🤨

Coke and hookers?

Staring

Or the all time favourite male solo activity but introduce some danger? How about in the Co-op or the fish n chip shop or whilst cycling?

Start up a Mock Bike Frame company, make a few t-shirts with some outlandish graphics and logos “fo’ da’ shits, n’ giggles” emblazoned on them, Insta da **** out of it, sell billions of t-shirts and promise bits of welded metal..

And retire to a shingle beachfront condo 🤷‍♂️

Dude.

If you can find someone to play with how about a game of squash? I LOVE squash but you need to have someone at a similar or slightly better level to make it any good. If someones too good they won't want to play with you as it'll be pointless for them and barely worth their energy. I tried to play with a mate of mine and he spent half the time hitting the ceiling, I haven't tried again.

Cor, plenty to go at there. Some good suggestions too.

Really needs to be something I can do in the house in not much space for an hour or so here and there - something like squash might be fun, but if I have time for that I'll probably go down the climbing wall.

Learning to draw is a good shout, I used to be ok but I've not done anything for ages. I have a stack of sketchbooks too.

I've been writing about three novels for years... I really should finish one of them instead of just making more and more notes in tons of notebooks. So that's a good idea too.

I do a fair bit of photography already, but I prefer being outside taking photos of buildings to indoor stuff. Just not really my thing. Possibly cos I did it for a job for two years.

Animation I have a degree in... Every now and then I dive back into 3ds Max and start relearning that, then just when I start getting the hang of it I get bored and do something else. I think maybe I need to work on my perseverance. I'd ideally like something where I can chat to the Mrs while she's watching telly, and the big computer is upstairs.

Not sure about Airfix kits. The build is kind of appealing, the painting less so (and the inevitable stuck together fingers). I quite fancy building an RC car but I'm not sure how complex the build would be. Having something to play with at the end is tempting though.

Electronic music is a good idea. I used to dabble, and I reckon I could probably make a start on my iPad. Though it is pretty old, which might give me an excuse to buy a new one. Learning a real instrument would be great but with MiniMonkey asleep upstairs in a small house might not work so well.

Welding and wheel building I would love to do, but not sure how well it would go down in the living room. Actually I am sure. Not very well.

Whittling might be fun actually. Though we already have a lot of spoons. Maybe I could make spears for hunting rats in the approaching post Brexit wastelands.

Robotics is something I've thought of. I have a Raspberry Pi currently running an arcade ROM and doing nothing, so that could maybe be combined with some Lego and some motors and sensors to build something fun. That probably covers coding too.

Or I could just indulge in the classic C&H every week.

Wheel building is pretty clean and innocuous.
I get slated for most bikes in the house stuff but wheel building in front of TV is more or less acceptable.

Cat Herding.

Write a short story or two. I keep thinking of decent ideas and should, at some point, get them onto paper. At least that way I can free up the space in my head as I flesh out the story.

I'd second whittling thing. I've made a couple of spoons and a few butter knives, It's quite relaxing. Just remember to cut away from you.

On the subject of wheelbuilding....what are the basics required? Clearly some form of jig but then a spoke tension-ometer thing? I have hubs and rims that need repurposing and its something i would like to be able to do.

Wet winter nights you say?

Watersports?

Clearly some form of jig but then a spoke tension-ometer thing?

I bought those things cheap on ebay - work fine.
Dish tool - made mine out of some old shelving.
Nipple driver is quite useful (expensive, so I made my own)
Jig can be an old frame? Depends on the hubs -
I did have to buy a 10mm axle adapter to fit the rear wheel properly into the jig.
..and of course, the spoke key.

Spoke tension is easily gauged from the ping noise when you twang a spoke.

Quite therapeutic to keep iterating round a wheel build, gradually pulling it all into shape and tension. And quite clean. The pinging noises might irritate casual observers though. Takes me about an hour to do a single wheel.

Anyone suggested [url= https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/any-beekeepers-in/ ]THIS![/url]

[i]Spoke tension is easily gauged from the ping noise when you twang a spoke.[/i]
Maybe you'd trust that on your first build, but I wouldn't.

Learn to DJ??

Get yourself a pioneer Weego DJ4, plug in your ipad, download dejay2 and off you go.,...

It's such a cool bit of kit...i'm learning to scratch at the mo!!

Che..che...check me out....

DrP

3D printing + designing stuff at the same time.
You can get a printer for <£200 and plenty of free design software, if you have a laptop.

Bmx at the indoor skatepark

I used to DJ with proper records back in the day. Never learnt to scratch properly though.

I was looking at 3D printers actually. Thought I could combine one with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino and build an awesome robot.

*edit* the indoor skatepark closed, sadly.

It’s what fly tying is to fisherpersons

In fact, its probably worth starting to fly-fish so you can tie flies. A very rewarding winter pastime... I miss it as much as the actual fishing now I no longer do it. Not convinced my wife misses the random bits of animal fur turning up in the post though!

flyingmonkeycorps

Member
I used to DJ with proper records back in the day. Never learnt to scratch properly though.

I was looking at 3D printers actually. Thought I could combine one with a Raspberry Pi or Arduino and build an awesome robot.

This looks like fun...Something I want to get round to fiddling with soon...

https://vorpal-robotics-store.myshopify.com/products/vorpal-the-hexapod-opts

You could try to build a barbeque in the style of a 'Dalek'.

If it was on castors, it would be easy to wheel around the patio and would also serve as a conversation starter.

You'd always have the tongs within easy reach.

The very top part could be used to defrost meat.

Below that, you'd have the grill.

Below that, in the base, you could store your barbeque coals.

(I'd design this so that your kids wouldn't climb inside and get CO poisoning. And I'd use locking castors to stop it careening around at 300 degrees centigrade.

Now you can use your iPad to sketch out the preliminary blueprints:)

There are plenty more pictures on Pinterest, but you'll have to log-in to their website;)

Work on your slow-cooker recipes and cram the fruit in...

The Modern Tagine Cookbook: Delicious recipes for Moroccan one-pot meals https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1788791436/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_16INDbPHN7T8F

Personally, I'm too clumsy to be let near a proper tahini or anything ceramic, so I get-by with these...

Msr Alpine Stowaway Pot 1.6 L https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000FBWSRW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_f-INDb7DB9A6Q

It helps to add some table salt to the soapy suds when hand washing these, as these pots can contain a strong residue of metal polish.

Another option is the Zebra brand stainless steel billy-can (ditch the plastic clips!)

You can get various levels of difficulty of RC car and assuming you know which way round to hold an Allen key, and have some mechanical sympathy, you shouldn't have much trouble putting a kit together.

If you fancy learning an instrument don't forget that if you get an electric one you can use headphones with it to avoid waking MiniMonkey up.

You mentioned climbing - what about building your own mini bouldering wall? If you've got a conservatory it probably isn't used much during the winter so could be used for the wall.

Volunteer at a local Scout Group.

napping is my hobby of choice at this time of year. Wheel building and whittling sound like great ideas. How about calligraphy?

Try out the local climbing wall?

.... didnt notice this had been mentioned

Thoroughly recommended!

Floyd's Great Curries https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1844032043/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_h04NDbC1GR3N6

I've just bought a new SSD for the PC so I should probably use that... So CGI or music production is probably go. What's good music software for a complete gomper? I used to use Octamed on the Amiga back in the day, and I think I used Acid a bit but that was a long while ago. I'll probably be making dirty drum and bass if anything...

I'd love to build a bouldering wall, it's on the list for our next house. But in a diddy terrace it's not really practical. Not indoors anyway. Weekly trips to the wall will have to suffice.

I'll have a look into RC cars. More complex would be better tbh, it's the making I'll enjoy the most.

Reckon I'm also gonna have a go at making a Lego robot.

*edit* MrsMonkey loves cooking, and I'm generally not that fussed so I'm happy to leave her to it. I do like a good curry though...

Have you considered children? Yours or someone elses? With one of those you’ll have bog all time and the years will fly past

Zwift?

We have a MiniMonkey. That's why it needs to be something that can fit into hourish chunks of time.

I've nowhere to put a turbo, plus I'd sooner go out and run in the rain or climb if I don't fancy riding.

Have you considered night MTBing? With appropriate clothes?

Wheel building is pretty clean and innocuous.
I get slated for most bikes in the house stuff but wheel building in front of TV is more or less acceptable.

Last time i built a wheel in the living room i got told to move over so she could have a go! Still going strong on her bike.

Tried that. Great idea in theory, in practice the only trails in range are made of horrific chalky clay and are basically unrideable in winter 🙁