I don’t really have too much in the way of hobbies. You are looking at the major one, gardening. And other than that one, I seem to turn every hobby I have into a money making scheme, as Jeff calls them. I can’t help it. But the problem with making profits off your hobbies is that you then turn them into work. And it is just not healthy for a person to work all the time.

In the spring, summer and fall, I have gardening to take my mind off working. But in the winter, I have nothing. And winters here in Cleveland are very long affairs. I get a bit irritable and so finally Jeff said I needed a winter hobby. A real hobby that I could in no way make money off of. And I agreed.

So I headed to Pat Catan’s (which is an awsome store. They make all the craft stuff that the other craft stores sell so you get great prices on everything) to find myself a hobby. I was not coming home until I had a hobby.

Here is the problem. I have no artistic talent and I am a bit of a perfectionist. Not a total perfectionist, but I do not enjoy doing things that I am not good at. And I wandered around the store for a good hour till I came upon the Sculpey aisle

I have used Sculpey a few times before for Halloween costumes. They make those really cool (but way overpriced) horns at ren fests with them. So we use Sculpey at Halloween to make horns and that sort of thing for costumes.

I stood there looking at the clay and decided that I would make some garden decorations with Sculpey. That way my winter hobby would tie in with my gardening.

It just so happened that shortly after that there was a craft exchage proposed on YouGrowGirl and I thought I would try my hand.

I made these two decorations for the swap:

I went back to Catan’s the other day and found this flexible Sculpey that allows you to create something that bends, so I made these two little “wrappers” to wrap around my potted plants .

So I am no Michelangelo, but I think they are not too bad and it’s for my garden, right?