It has been said that many people have found new, or rediscovered crafts and hobbies. I started experimenting with watercolours at the start of being isolated. I painted a portrait of a gr grandaughter which I was quite happy with but didn't have much motivation. Since then I have found the love of painting dog portraits which although still learning I get so much satisfaction from. I am being asked to paint for money but I 'm not interested as that will take the leisure away. I have given some away as a thank you to people who have helped me with my hospital visits
What about other laners. Have you found a new interest and if so, what?

I haven't really found any new hobby. I would love to garden more, but am physically unable so to do. Knitting is now out, after knitting since a child, and sewing is the same, the latter due to eyesight, and the inability to use a needle threader, or hold material for any length of time.
I zoom and facetime nowadays, but can't really call that a new hobby, just a means of communication.
Well done you June!

I have exactly the same problems as you Spreckly. I have been an avid gardener for years but back pain won't let me. It still looks pretty but am leaving weeds for wildlife I can knit but the start of macular degeneration stops me sewing. Luckily I can knit but reserve this for the evenings. Doing the painting seems to have given the enthusiasm back for every day living. x

I haven't started any new hobbies but recently have been digging into my family history again and tried to find the people missing in my earlier searches. I posted in the Family history result topic about my 4x ggrandfather Alexander Stewart (Scottish ancestor) on the 7th April. Since then I finally realised that another family line had been incorrectly recorded - Collier (clearly written in a marriage record) from Colling (census and baptism records) which was also occasionally referred to as Collins! I've now managed to trace this family back to the 1600s and tracked their migration from Oldham to Bury, then Ainsworth on to Little Lever which is near my home town Farnworth (near Bolton)
Although it can be frustrating at times, I think what I get out of tracing my family history is not only learning who they are and when they were born (surnames I'd never heard of) but where they came from and how or why they migrated, and thinking about the historical events of the time. For example, matching their occupations to the periods of interest - like canal boatmen in the late 1700s/early 1800s (moving coal from the mines to the towns and cities like Manchester), or plate-layers in the 1840s/1850s (I had to look that up and it was the laying of the first railway lines) Being born in a cotton town, you'd think I'd have a string of ancestors working in mills and although there were some, I've been very surprised to find that many actually worked in the coal mines.
And even more surprising were the number of illegitimate children across many of the family lines. One or two have made me smile - a marriage then three months later a baptism. Some seem to have many children (up to about 18!) but so many died in infancy or in their teens - one family had 16 children but only 2 survived to adulthood (obviously one was my 2x great grandmother and the other her sister) which makes you realise just how tough it must have been in those days and how sad it must have been for the parents. One of my 4x ggrandfathers died in his early 20s just a few years after marriage (my 3x ggrandfather was only 4 years old) and his widow remarried. I wasn't going to bother trying to find out much about the step father as I didn't think it relevant if he wasn't a blood relative, but then my 3x ggrandfather married and the surname of the spouse was the same ... seems my 3x ggrandmother was the niece of the stepfather so although I'm not a direct descendant, his parents are my 5x ggrandparents!
The other thing I noticed in my research was the coal mining community - so many married into other coal mining families, and in one family, the brothers and sisters of one family married the brothers and sisters of another family! I even found 2 cousins had married (I was sure the same surname of both spouses in the marriage record was a mistake but after digging around, was confirmed as true when I noticed they shared the same grandparents!)
Even the different denominations is interesting - not all were baptised or married in the Church of England (before civil marriages from 1836) One family followed the United Methodist church, another called the New Jerusalamite. I even found a Quaker baptism (or at least a record marking it as I don't think they have baptisms / christenings familiar to other churches)
I find spending time on the family history is like being a detective - so many clues which don't mean a thing but when it comes together, it's like a eureka moment and you finally see a story there. It's hard to believe that this all started off during the Remembrance weekend of 2014 to mark the centenary of the First World War and some of the online ancestry sites were offering a free pass to access records (to learn more about military ancestors which wasn't helpful in my case as both my parents and grandparents were children during the 2 great wars) I think I've learned a lot since then, and with subscribing to one of the sites, have even made contact with distant relatives to find out how we are related and have shared photos and information.

I bought a new camera, a Canon with an exceptionally good zoom. I am now looking for interesting subjects to photograph. It's making me look at my surroundings more closely. As I walk a lot I am finding trees that make good photographs. It's good for making videos as well. I can zoom in as I walk around with it.
ilona

Ilona, well done! I have Ted's camera, which I haven't a clue how to use. He used to download pictures onto the internet. It is sitting on the shelf and I so wish I could find out how to use it properly. I seem to remember that there are pages and pages of instructions on the internet.

Spreckly wrote: ↑ 06 Jun 2021, 09:41 Ilona, well done! I have Ted's camera, which I haven't a clue how to use. He used to download pictures onto the internet. It is sitting on the shelf and I so wish I could find out how to use it properly. I seem to remember that there are pages and pages of instructions on the internet.

My camera has a lot more functions than I need. I tend to leave it on Auto, I don't understand all the ins and outs of focussing and lighting. Last night I walked around the village in the near dark. I wanted to put the flash on. Couldn't find how to do that will have to look it up on the manual which is on my computer. A lot of my photo's are experimental, I discard a lot of them.
Will this work?

ilona