MrSpud casually reminded me last night that, 2 years ago, he told me I was hard to buy presents for because I didn’t have any hobbies (um, what? doesn’t diamond collecting count? OK….). Oh how times change!

Since October 2008, a smidge under 2 years ago, I have taken up photography, started blogging, learnt to crochet, bought a sewing machine and sewed a few bits and, recently, started cycling. Given my slightly obsessive personality type I have thrown myself in to all of them with huge enthusiasm (apart from sewing but that’s a space issue which will be resolved). I barely have time to breathe these days, since my days are consumed with my many hobbies.

As well as the hobbies I have to squeeeeeeze in working part-time, being the sole carer for the Megaboys during the week and being the usual washer woman/ironer/home administrator/wife/friend/daughter type thing. Stuff I don’t do (in the interests of full disclosure): clean, cook or garden. Recently I started going to the cinema every other week with a friend (Mummy Film Club), I’ve joined a choir (rehearsals start the week after next, hoorah), a 6 week cycling course starts in 3 weeks and I’m doing a monthly ‘women only’ bike ride. Oh and I’m a keen reader and like to snaffle my way through a novel or two a week.

Life is pretty full. So why, why, WHY am I consumed with the need…the overwhelming longing…to learn the lute. Yes the lute. Not the flute (I already play that). The lute.

We recently visited the wonderful Mistley Quay Workshops in search of lunch at the cafe. While we waited for our food I wandered around and peered in to the windows of the workshops….and there they were…LUTES..in the making. Beautiful lutes in every stage of development. And right there, right then the longing overwhelmed me. I have to play the lute.

I can’t think why I haven’t considered this before. I’m an avid admirer of early music, especially 17th century English music and John Dowland is right up there as one of my favourites.  In ‘theory’ lute playing shouldn’t be horribly painful for me as I play the classical guitar (although very rusty) and tablature is not a mystery to me as a result. So…the music of the golden age for lute music is my best favourite….thus learning the lute shouldn’t be an appalling trial for me. What am I waiting for?

Well cost is an issue as lutes are seriously pricey. I’m getting around that by claiming one as my fast approaching 40th birthday present. But do I have the time? Seriously, can I find the time? My life is full, really full. And wonderful! I love all my hobbies, I love all the different people it brings me in to contact with. I feel like I have a perfect work/life balance. Learning a new instrument could seriously upset the balance and something will have to give to make time for it, but what? Considers ebaying Megaboys…

I know exactly how time consuming it is to learn an instrument. If I take up the lute it will be instrument number 10 for me, actually possibly 11. That’s a whole lot of lessons and scales and exams I’ve done. I even read music at university so I really do know what I’m letting myself in for. Hmmm.

Head says “no”. Heart says “yes”.

How many hobbies are too many?

]]> http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/08/how-many-hobbies-are-too-many/feed/ 14 http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/08/the-gallery-a-photo-i-am-proud-of/ http://www.spudballoo.com/2010/08/the-gallery-a-photo-i-am-proud-of/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:58:01 +0000 spudballoo http://www.spudballoo.com/?p=1752

I swear Tara of Sticky Fingers is making the weekly themes harder not easier. This week, ‘A Photo I am Proud Of’. Well there are photos that I love, that mean a lot, that captured a memory…but a photo I am proud of. Now that’s a tough one.  And, of course, I can’t pick just one…

The one above is Bertie, climbing the scallop on Aldeburgh beach. I’m proud of this because I took it with my Lensbaby ‘Composer’ lens on. I really struggled to get to grips with that lens, a selective focus lens, and was about to throw in the towel before The Wife gave me a lesson and all was saved. Now I’m really feeling the love for the Lensbaby. So I’m proud of the shot above because I used the lens correctly, and I love the moody, gritty nature of the shot and the processing.

I’m proud of the poppies because I think it’s quite hard to shoot a field of poppies without it just looking like a big red sea. I think isolating one or two flowers helps to strengthen the composition, but it was tough to find a flower in the right place, that wasn’t windblown, with the right backdrop. And the processing was tough too, for some reason I struggle to process the colour red accurately. See this one, the red of the poppies is ‘too’ red:

So  I cheated with a desaturated look which, actually, I prefer. So this was a tough shot all round, and would have been easier with tripod which (natch) I didn’t have with me. Handholding the beastly big D700 is hard, camera/mirror shake is hard to avoid at the best of times AND it was a windy day. So I’m proud of how this one turned out.

Continuing with poppies, I’m proud of this one because I managed to process it in Photoshop (normally a disaster area for me) and even added a texture to it. Get me!

Finally, I’m proud of this recent shot of my boys as it’s SO hard to get a photo of the two of them together. I love how cosy they look, and the light is beautiful. And the subjects ain’t bad either ;-)

Gone Camping, originally uploaded by *spudballoo*.

I am not here. I am there. Or here. Depending on your viewpoint.

I am eschewing bricks and mortar for canvas and the charms of cooking over a camp fire.

No electricity, no TV, no laptop. No stress, nowhere to be, no timetable. Just me and my boys hanging out. Reading, playing out late, beachlife, walking, chatting, singing made up songs and pottering about.

I might not come back. Just sayin’.

Toptastic Day Trip with the Megaboys and pal Gus. We wore them out, we wore them down. They they wore US out and that wasn’t really the point at all. We play dated at Gus’ house…then we beached it…and some of our number wore centurian helmets to be on the safe side…invaders from Felixstowe could attack without warning…

Others pretended to be models. Moody models…

And then we skipped off to a nearby nature reserve and OH MY what a hidden secret. Suffolk keeps surprising me with its hidden treasures, and long may that continue…

Skippy days. x

This was my entry. I will enjoy re-reading it whilst gorging myself to the point of sickness on fine chocolate. YUM!

Ooof I think the themes for Tara’s The Gallery are getting harder not easier. I was so sure this week’s theme ‘nature’ would be a breeze. Drag out a photo or two of some pretty flowers from the archive and be done with it, I thought. But actually none of the flowers were really doing it for me. Instead, it seems I am a tree hugger.

I love the shot above, taken in one shot in the pouring rain after rain stopped play during a trip to Framlingham Castle. The sky blackened, the rain fell in balls not drops…we rounded a corner and I spotted the scene above in the passenger wing mirror. “STOP THE CAR!” I shrieked. Out I dashed and risked camera cardiac arrest in the rain for what is one of my Top 10 favourite shots of mine.

Fast forward 6 months and here I am, yet again, taking moody bleak photos of trees. Actually this was taken at sunset, and it was a glorious red/orange/yellow kind of affair. But by the magic of photo processing I made it look like the End of the World is Nigh. If you listen v…e…r…y carefully you can just hear the clip clop of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse….

Then there was that whole ‘rows of trees in a line’ thing, as above. But here is favourite tree, and this is my favourite shot of it:

I love that shot, it’s up there in my Top 5 photos. Partly I love it because it’s a beautiful scene and I think I managed to capture it, and the processing enhances it. But mostly I love it because the subject, the horse chestnut in the field in front of our house, was the thing that inspired me to take up photography as a hobby. On 15 October 2008 I looked out of our kitchen window and saw the mist hanging in the sunlight of the branches of that tree. I grabbed MrSpud’s ‘big camera’, shoved it on auto, stuck my wellies over my PJs and marched out and snapped the scene. It wasn’t a brilliant shot and I didn’t process it because I didn’t know how. But I loved how it turned out, and how I’d captured a moment.

In that second I was smitten. A hobby and a passion was thrust upon me and I finally got to reclaim a tiny bit of ‘me’ time each day. I wasn’t just ‘being a Mummy’ or working. I was a ‘keen amateur photographer’. There I was…saving myself…one picture at a time.

So this one is my shot for The Gallery. It’s not my best, or my favourite. But it’s the one that started me off and it will always be precious to me for that. Thank you tree mwah mwah xx

A new one for me…a local sunflower field. I’ve never seen sunflowers en masse before, not in Real Life anyway. It’s really quite a sight to behold..poppies tick…sunflowers tick…just need a lavender field and I’ve done the Holy Trinity of Flowers.

Rain rain rain rain rain. It’s raining. It’s raining as a warm up to next week when we are going camping when the rain will turn from constant to torrential for 5 days. We will then return home at which point a heat wave will arrive.

True story.

Tara’s theme this week is ‘Playtime’ which is a whole lot easier than previous Gallery themes. A quick trawl through my archive unearthed a million shots of the Megaboys in the park having a ball and yet, curiously, not one of me chewing my own arm off out of boredom. Curious, since that is how I spend pretty much every trip to the swings because….sssshhh….I absolutely HATE the swings and always have done. It’s my least favourite Mummy Chore I think. All that hanging around and ‘look at me!’ and ‘will you push me?’ blah blah. It’s better now that both boys can confidently climb up anything, but in that past there was that boring ‘hovering’ that had to be done in the hope of avoiding a trip to A&E.

A friend of mine with older children described to me, with great glee, the moment when her youngest learnt how to swing without help. She said it was like one of the Great Shackles of Parenthood being lifted from her shoulders. Roll on that day, I say.

I think my lack of love for the park shows in the way I process my swings shot. Kind of moody huh?

But, take me out of the park environment, and Playtime starts to look a whole lot more vibrant!

Ah, lovely Bea! I shot a Christening on Sunday and here is the younger of the two little misses…Beatrice. Big sister Grace was mostly MUCH too busy for photos.

Poor Bea was awake for most of the night before her special day, full of cold and clearly rather poorly. She was very calm and sweet natured about the whole thing, although there were notably less smiles than usual. Poor baby girl!

Here she is with Mama having a special cuddle post dunking. xx

I’d love to say this is a photo of my new bike. It isn’t. It’s MrSpud’s bike, mid clean/service/general male tinkering.

We made a 2 hour round trip to be measured and order a bike that the shop told me they could get in in 24 hours. Wrong. They can’t get it any time soon as there aren’t any in the country. So that was nice.

This is the kind of incompetent ‘service’ which turns me in to Victor Meldrew. I knew there was a supply issue which is why I confirmed, and reconfirmed, that they had access to stock. “Yes, we have 17 in stock in our other stores and can get one here for you in 24 hours.” Scream.

Bertie, Digby and Imo in Colin the Caravan who is looking VERY splendid mid refit. Can’t wait to see him finished!

Kind of 70s, sunshiney processing. Kind of 70s sunshiney kind of day. That is all.