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I started sewing when I was in my late twenties. I gave up smoking and the resultant anxiety led me to find new ways to keep my hands busy and my mind active in the long hours between sleep and work and keep me away from those horribly attractive cigarettes. It wasn’t long before a new addiction was firmly entrenched.
There are now many sewing classes and hobby groups that cater to young women wanting to learn to make their own clothes and crafts. Schools no longer teach sewing, I’ve heard, which is a real pity as this is an incredibly useful skill. The ability to handle a sewing machine opens up a world of creativity, going far beyond being able to sew on a button or, heaven forbid, darn a sock.
South African retailers are notorious for their inability to cater to the African market. Mass produced Chinese clothes are tiny, and mainstream fashion can be uninspiring. I use my sewing skills to create clothes, mostly dresses and tank tops, from local African fabrics like Java print or shweshwe, that I wear to work and out and about.
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Over time I have refined my skills, taken on more ambitious projects and discovered an increase in local interest in the craft. My sewing hobby is now a huge part of my creative identity.
This lead me to consider what other hobbies women are pursuing when our stress levels are at an all-time high - well in the US at least. I asked around and was amazed to discover a range of millennial hobbies:
Adult colouring
There appears to be two main adult colouring groups on Facebook, with a combined following of close to 2000 members. These super-fans share their recent artwork, detailing colours, brands, types of pens and more on posts of images of their creations.
There seem to be several factions, with some preferring black and white, some creating images from scratch and others making use of the wide range of adult colouring books available at major retailers such Exclusive Books and Takealot. Women even gather in organised groups to colour together.
READ MORE: Colouring-in may benefit your mental health
Kelly Rogers, admin of Adult Colouring South Africa on Facebook, also believes it is therapeutic. “When I sit down to colour a page it relaxes me and breaks me away from reality for a shortly while. I am sure it is the same for many people” she says. “You can also quickly sit down colour in a page and you have had your "creativity fix" whereas other creative hobbies take a lot of setting up before hand and cleaning up afterwards. It also brings out your inner child.”
This hobby seems to attract not only those with an artistic
bent, but those who are in need of mental peace. Therapists are suggesting that
patients take up the hobby to ease anxiety, to focus and to relax. Mel, local
author of My Anxiety Companion, tells how she was at first sceptical, but now
says colouring is one of the best
therapies that she has experienced and she’s so glad she got into it.
Another new and increasingly popular way to manage stress is
to keep a bullet journal:
Bullet Journaling
Pegged as a ‘fun and creative way to create a tailor-made format for keeping yourself organised’, bullet journaling has taken off in SA in the past year or so. The website bulletjournal.com calls it the ‘analog system for the digital age’ and inventor Ryder Carroll claims he spent 20 years perfecting a method that helped him to overcome his learning disabilities.
Nasheeta Petersen, owner of Nash Boutique, says she was drawn to the flexibility of it, how journals are structured yet artsy. She enjoys that she doesn’t have to follow a format and is in control of her own journal. Bullet journalists also collect stickers and washi tape, and master creative handwriting techniques to create beautifully rendered to-do lists, journal entries, notes, reminders, goals and more.
READ MORE: I tried 6 techniques to help ease my anxiety before bedtime
Which lead me to discover that sticker collecting is still alive and well in adult women:
Sticker collecting
I spoke to Tammy, content producer at W24, who collects stickers. Another hobby more commonly associated with childhood, sticker collecting seems to be on the up right now.
Tammy tells how her sticker hobby actually started when she was quite young. “I think most little girls aged 6 to 7 went through a phase where we had those sticker books and collected stickers like mad to complete their collection. Years passed and I forgot about my hobby until about 2011 when I signed up for an international pen pal site where you connect with people online but write each other hand-written letters.”
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Tammy connected with people from places like the US, Germany, Austria, to mention but a few: “Of course, with the letter writing I immediately realised that I don’t only want to write letters but I want to make the letters beautiful – and so my obsession with pretty stationery and stickers was brought to life again.”
Tammy spends time at PNA, CNA, craft and art shops to get her hands on as many stickers as she can. “I like using them for my to-do notebook as well – at the end of every page, if all the tasks on that list have been completed, I paste a sticker on that page.” Tammy also told me about her figurine collecting hobby, which led me to another modern hobby I’d never heard of:
Figurine collecting
Not a cheap hobby, this one involves buying and displaying collectable toy figurines (yes, the trend really seems to be towards reliving childhood experiences, except perhaps this time with more money and more control). Figurines are based on characters from pop culture favourites, “think Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones and Disney” Tammy says, and are priced between R140 and R250 each, with some highly sought-after characters fetching much higher prices.
Several brands compete for buyers but Funko Pop figures are Tammy’s favourite. She explained that the geek and pop culture crowd are the biggest fans, and that there are several dedicated Instagram accounts, curated by collectors. An Instagram search for #funkopop returned over 3,021,170 posts in March – it’s clearly a popular hobby.
What other modern hobbies are popular now? What are you
into? Mail us chatback@w24.co.za
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