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There's something uniquely satisfying about making something weirdly specific that only exists because you made it
100%. There’s quite a few things I’ve got now which would be thousands of dollars to have someone else make for me but cost very little to make myself. Just requiring a few weekends of work. Stuff that feels quite luxury to own.
While I'm very open-minded to knitting, also consider picking up a musical instrument. Guitar, ukulele, keyboard. There are apps that'll teach you, and it's immensely gratifying -- if like me you obsess over certain songs -- to then be able to work towards playing those.
I agree, musical instruments also have the benefit of a much higher skill ceiling. That can also be a downside though, since it can make it frustrating to learn
I guess my point is you can get some good sounds out of the guitar very quickly, which can be very intrinsically motivating.
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This was probably my issue as well. I grew up seeing my grandma crochet. She’d do it while watching TV (though I’m not sure if she was actually watching or just in proximity to others watching), and she was quick. I have a couple afghans she made. She probably made a couple dozen. The learning curve was higher than I expected, especially without someone to be there showing me stuff. I just tried watching some YouTube…
My mom also knits while watching TV, and she is super fast. I think one secret ingredient is that she doesn't care about making mistakes. Tinier mistakes she just ignores (even if they are visible in the end [I don't like that, so that's something I try to avoid, which adds pressure and slows me down]) and she doesn't mind backtracking and re-doing several rows if she really fucks up.
I find woodworking fun for basically all the same reasons. Plus there's still the math of adding up things to predict cut layouts, and you end up with a new shelf or box or table. I'm not sure I would use anything I knitted.
I find woodworking extremely alluring. I'd love to do woodworking, but that requires space for an environment which I don't have. I like to think that in a parallel universe I build guitars and restore old wooden furniture.
I have this problem. I did three things. First, I joined a makerspace that had a woodshop. This seems like it should cure all your problems but it won't. There's limited storage, unpredictable tool availability, the motivational issues of driving to a new place to work, etc.
Second, I joined another makerspace out of town! Redundancy and the availability of friends in the area to work with helps. Plus, supporting makerspaces feels good and the cost is not much compared to other hobbies.
Finally, there are some very basic, not large tools that can get you through 90% of projects, including very nice looking bookshelves, desks, cabinets, etc:
* Circle saw + track guide for rip cuts
* Saw horses for adhoc tables
* Power drill (+ you'll want one for all kinds of useful things anyway)
* Nice drill bit set
* Pocket hole jig (saves you time and assembly space)
* Drill block (takes the place of a drill press in a pinch)
* Painting blankets to put stain / glue-ups on
All of the above can fit in a small area of a closet, available when motivation strikes. Far and away the biggest storage headache is wood, which you'll have to get creative about, but for restoration or even modification, you won't need much. And for smaller projects you'll probably use most of what you buy on the same day if you plan it out.
Upgrades (which a makerspace would provide anyway):
* If you have a little space (like a desktop), you can get a chop/miter saw which makes repeated precise cuts much easier
* A router + bit set (esp keyhole bit! This makes hanging this much easier)
* Shopvac for dust (+ shopvacs are super useful anyway)
That's really it. You can do almost all the projects you'd want with just those, from the living room, patio, backyard, driveway, garage, or a parking spot out front.
What I get from the makerspace is access to drill presses, router tables, and table saws. Table saws are a game changer and are the best way to level up your precision and cut accuracy, but require so much space that I could never justify it at home (and small portable table saws are not the same).
I'm definitely still learning, but the main lessons are that good wood ($), precise cuts, adding layers from trim / recessed boards, hiding screws, and tons of sanding will make anything look really, really nice.
EDIT: One last thing: You can easily practice woodworking fundamentals without space by making joints, practicing stain matching (try to get veneer plywood to match a stained board), or practicing right-angle, precise cuts.
The thing knitting taught me is that you can have something beautiful and useful even tho literally every part of the piece is a single point of failure. No redundancy, no backstop. If any of the stitches gets cut, the entire piece can unravel completely. We're so used to redundancy, but sometimes you just need to get things done, and it's ok if it's all a deck of cards.
The idea of sitting and quietly knitting is appealing but whenever I look at knitted goods I think there's no way I would spend hours making some rubbish tea towel/sweater etc
I seem to have an intuitive competency at it but the combination of figuring out the layout, getting the measurements down and preparing the materials (I'll usually use basic card and style the individual pieces of card to match what I need e.g. making a card of floor-boarding for the wooden floor base) gives a huge amount of repetitive work that can be done while watching something.
The obvious next step is to invest time getting into origami so I can do more complex layouts.
There are a small number of knitting techniques - knit, purl, a few increases and decreases etc. Knitting patterns give you sequences to apply these primitives and at the end you have a complex, useful item, potentially in 3D.
You're doing a few simple things repeatedly and you end up with complex behaviour. That's a CPU!
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I agree, musical instruments also have the benefit of a much higher skill ceiling. That can also be a downside though, since it can make it frustrating to learn
I came back to guitar after being self-taught and not very good, and was pleasantly surprised that the Trinity Guitar Initial Grade (eg the first book you'd start a kid on) had some awesome music that you could make the melodies of very quickly. Like, 2-3 hours of practice and you can slowly pick out the melody from Runaway Train, Orange Crush, and Where did you sleep last night. I guess my point is you can get some…