I am easilly restless these days. I can’t sit still and not be doing anything.
At the moment I relieve this by going for a drive. But that can get expensive and on an island 30x15 in dimensions it can soon get boring.
I have photography but it’s possible to over-saturate myself with that. I take so many pictures they stay on my camera for weeks/months. I’ll probably spend one (just one) busy day sorting through, picking ones I like, sending them off to be printed.
What can a male man do that’s repetitive, but also theraputic?
Knitting use to be a man’s job, really. It wasn’t until the last 200 years or so that it shifted to being the woman’s domain before falling out of favor by both sexes in the last 50 years due to advancement in knitwear machinery and women working outside the home. It is affordable, portable, theraputic, social and can be as complicated or simple as you desire. It is a much younger demographic that is knitting like loons out there and it is no longer your grandma’s knitting. ( Penis cosy, anyone?)
The ratio of male knitters to female knitters is about 1: 1,000,000,000. ( give or take about 3.)
If I were a guy and wanted to pick up chicks, I’d take up knitting.
Give knitting another chance. If it were truly a difficult thing to do, it wouldn’t have survived all these years. It does take a patience in the beginning, but knitting will always wait for you.
In the meantime: Men who Knit
I haven’t knitted since high school (where I was fairly ok at it). I suspect I’d be able to pick it up fairly quickly.
I do remember a soreness associated with pulling wool through your hands during the process.
So I guess the answer is not very much… but still, I’d like to see what else there is out there to pass the time. And I’d like something to show for it that isn’t a misshapen wooly thing.
Maybe a misshapen wooden thing or a misshapen drawn thing.
Chainmail (assuming you make the rings in advance), has all the mindlessnes and portability of knitting. One bag of rings and a tool in each hand is all you need. I bring my projects to class all the time, and my boyfriends makes chainmail on the train.
And it’s easy. I could teach you the basics in five minutes, probably (sadly, not over the internett.).
We had an “arts and crafts” class back in 6th-8th grade and some of the stuff the guys liked included painting on glass, decorated mirrors (you draw the inverted picture of the mirror, then peel it off with a pin and paint on it) and leatherworking. I know some of the guys in my brothers’ years really took a liking for macramé. Years later, the bride of one of them was very surprised when her husband-to-be saw her looking at some macramé curtains and said “hm… I think I can get those right…” - she had absolutely no idea. While it’s most often “sold” to women (like so many craftsy stuff in Spain), lifting the biggest pieces is a lot easier if you’re 6’0" than 5’3".
Oh man… Dad made the two small rugs in Mom’s bedroom (well it used to be his too, but he’s dead) and later the big one in the living room. That last one was a bit too big, by the end he was cussin’ it heartily, but never in a loud voice because of Us Kids. I think stories about the evil eye were born when someone noticed you can curse with your eyes!
Nava, is there something particularly Spanish about that mirror craft? I had to make one of those the year I went to high school in Spain, but can’t remember seeing it anywhere else, ever.
I would add origami to the list of potential crafts.
My husband spends eons on train and flight simulators. On the train sim the guys design huge virtual layouts for the train. He would spend hours populating landscapes with trees. It has mindless going for it, but no tangible result.
Within the realms of wood and metal crafts, people craft various types of puzzles. Those look pretty cool. Make jewelry or jewelry boxes and you’ll be a hit with the ladies.
Woodworking. To keep your costs down, and your footprint small, research woodworking with hand tools. You don’t need thousands of dollars of equipment to putter with scraps of wood.
I’ll echo that and add some: I do have the shopful of expensive machinery, but I also have a more-than-adequate selection of hand tools. Sometimes I build small boxes (jewelry boxes and such) just using hand tools. It’s challenging, soothing and very rewarding. It forces me to focus my attention on the work, which is a great escape from the day’s cares.