1%

I’m toying around with joining the less than one-percent.

No, I’m not buying into a get rich quick scheme involving illusionary money (all money is illusionary, but that’s a topic for a different post). Or joining an “Outlaw” bikers club.

The preamble here is that I have been looking for something different in terms of a hobby to take up my creative and spare time.

While I will always write (although not always publish online what I write), there are days that I need a break from it. I know, sorry to get the hopes up of those less convinced that I should be doing any writing, let alone publishing it for consumption.

Making music is not “different” enough to me as it flows from the same brain patterns for me. And so, I tend to slip to reading (which is passive writing in many ways) or playing video games (which does use different brain centers, but I’ve not been enjoying the games I’ve been playing as much as I did ten years ago).

I used to weave, but I got frustrated so much with the material from my last project (natural wool is not as consistent as synthetics or cotton), that I have a hard time getting my head into doing it anymore (plus there is a lot of set-up time before you can get into the groove).

The other day I had mentioned off-hand that I wish I could get over whatever mental block I have about crocheting as it seems like something you can just pick up and do. Of course, tariffs on imported yarn are cutting into it being a less-expensive hobby, so maybe it isn’t such a great idea. And, no, I can’t explain what my mental block is. And my attempts at knitting were worse.

Not that fabric is any better when it comes to being impacted by tariffs, but someone suggested that I think about picking up quilting. I have a sewing machine I really should learn to use, it was pointed out. And there are tons of fabric sources if you include recycled fabric (old clothes, linens, etc.).

My first reaction was… mmm… I dunno. I mean… I think quilts and I think granny-floral star patterns that can be found anywhere. Or community-building square projects. And there are only so many quilts you can have in your home before people are buried in blankets. And the rest of the family too…

But I got to thinking about it and looked at the denim jacket I’ve been meaning to decorate and started coming up with ways that it might actually be a good idea to pick up quilting: it allows me to work with patterns and geometric designs, not all of which are about symmetry; quilting will give me the skills needed if I ever get into making my own hoodie, or clothes like I have threatened to do when I can’t find something that suits my personality to wear; quilting potentially has that Palov hand-eye coordination dopamine reward that gaming gives me (i.e., quick results from pattern matching); and there is quite a bit of a vast array of what can be done after learning basics. Because quilting is not limited to simple repetition, like some hobbies, I can go as deep or as shallow as my skills and desires take me.

And… To be honest… Discovering that there is almost no “dark academia” styled or gothic-themed quilting being made on a significant scale is a prospect that makes me slightly excited about the matter.

The jacket? After I pick up some basic skills (if I do this), I plan to quilt a raven with the sun symbol used as the icon for this site into a panel to sew onto the back of the jacket. Well, maybe just the raven… I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

The one-percent? As I was looking into it, I was curious if there were any men’s groups out there for quilting. Sometimes you need a boost when you start something that has a distinct gender bias to who participates in a given hobby. I stumbled onto a statistic that put men as being only 1% of a total estimated US quilting hobbyists of up to 8 million. At best. That seems like a very oddly strong gender bias. The rebel in me shrugs and says, that makes me more, not less, interested in seeing if I have the chops to quilt.