I have daggy hobbies, but there are some you should seriously never adopt

Not many people know this, but I’m obsessed with tapestry. By day, I’m a normal person interested in five-ingredient dinner ideas and stories on whatever happened to Boz Scaggs. By night, I spend hours with needle in hand, stitching away on canvases of cats wearing Elizabethan ruffs.

In bad tapestry light, I use a camping head torch. Browsing tapestry sites is my guilty pleasure. I have a fabulous professional crafter in Sydney called Mrs Morris who turns my canvases into cushions. If you’re getting married or having a birthday ending in zero, expect to unwrap a tapestry of an artichoke or peacock.

Tapestry can be a satisfying hobby.Credit: Brock Perks

It’s the latest in a long line of hobbies, which, on paper, mostly mark me out as either an early settler or a massive dag.

All of which means I’m loving the viral TikTok discussion claiming happiness comes from four types of hobbies – the “Four Cs”: create (painting, gardening); consume (reading, learning); cavort (physical activity); and commune (connecting with others).

Are you vibing this? Hopefully yes, while you practise group sound therapy with Tibetan bells, hand-make ricotta, plough through a written history of the world, or risk vertigo doing handstands for the first time since grade 6.

My hobbies started early. Macrame and collecting swap cards were followed by writing poems in the manner of Pam Ayres. Then Spirograph drawing, which I broke up with when Hobbytex painting came along.

Years – and all my pocket money – were spent on paint tubes and a carousel. I did a tablecloth covered in bluebells. A poster-sized rendering of farmers scything wheat. A big-eyed girl on a velvet background. When Hobbytexed horses started appearing on any soft surface, Mum sent me outside for an extended stint. I took up synchronised trampolining and at age 13 was carried to a Tassie open title by my much better partner, Pip Wing.

Eventually, I lost my nerve for double-back somersaults with just Jiffy slippers and a leotard for protection, and it was back to safer hobby ground. Since then, I’ve learned Italian on Duolingo, scored at least 100,000 every day since 1992 playing Tetris on an original Game Boy Advance, and knitted and crocheted myriad blankets.

Hobbies. How good. Especially if done just for the joy of it all and to give your brain a break from tasks. And especially if you accept that the daggy side of many hobbies makes them cooler than Fonzie jumping the shark on water-skis.

My daughter once took up making displays of mixed dried beans and legumes in glass jars. My friend Amanda did courses in balloon animal making and psychic connections with pets before finding enamel earring-making. In his late teens, my husband had motorbikes and Sydney’s Kings Cross as hobbies. Now he has a Space Shuttle Lego kit and rings up ABC Radio’s bird expert to discuss the kamikaze habits of spotted pardalotes.

Please – share yours.

While scientific research tells us hobbies are mood lifters and stress reducers in chaotic lives, let me save you time – and possibly dignity – by flagging a few where reality hits differently.

Soap making. Literally nobody wants your weird bars of Rustic Citrus Lavender Mist soap. Ditto for deodorant.

Beekeeping. Ignore royal wives Kate and Meghan, both seen recently in amateur apiarist guise, and just buy honey from professionals who will collect it without questioning their life choices.

DIY home renos. Painting a wall? Sure. Tiling the bathroom floor because it looked easy on an Insta reel? Not so much, my friend. Think about the three trips to Bunnings and creeping existential dread when your grout won’t set.

Indoor plants as a personality trait. I love a good fiddle leaf fig as much as the next midlife woman embracing her “earthy goddess” era, but owning 47 plants with different watering schedules and sunlight angles is unpaid emotional labour, not a hobby.

The trick is, hobbies should be fun. Or just something different. They’re not auditions for a lifestyle show. Not set in stone. I can recommend tapestry as a jumping-off point if you can’t get your hands on Hobbytex.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.