For example, I’m sure the average joe doesn’t know just how expensive calligraphy pens can be, or how deep the rabbit hole goes on video game speedruns.
Maybe not as expensive as the others, but crochet/knitting/sewing all start off fairly cheap, and then the next thing you know you’re offering to service old men behind a Joann’s fabric because you need this particular fabric and you need an entire bolt of it, and it’s the one fabric in the entire fucking store that isn’t on their amazing buy one get 73 free sale for the week.
Nothing like spending $100 and 80 hours on a pair of socks for yourself because they don’t sell the ones you want.
Those are gorgeous though. I don’t have the skill to do anything like that yet. I’m mainly stuck on sleep masks and warshrags. Haha. That cabling looks amazing
I feel like there’s a collision of fetishes here about to start paying for your yarn habit.
Do you have a link to this pattern? I like the heel here and I don’t love the one I currently use.
Pattern? No, I never use patterns. The heal is a standard “afterthought heal”. You can find instructions on YouTube and other sites. It is my favorite heal and the easiest to darn when the time comes.
When doing socks I do a test swatch to figure out my stitches per in for rows and columns. Then the rest is all math. Once I finished the first I just started cabling the top of the foot. When I got to the ankle I started cabling all the way around. I kept going until they were as high as I wanted them.
When I learned to knit my instructor was pissed by the end of the fist days lessons because I had knitted several things with no patterns. “How do you know what to do?” “Math.”
Thank you so much for the name of it! I’m a beginner and only knit the same socks over and over again. I have been experimenting with different sock patterns without a guide, but not the heel construction.
Wow, these look amazing! Great job :)
Those are gorgeous!!
I just started crocheting this week 🥲
It’s a wonderful habit! Don’t listen to me. Haha. Fiber crafts are seriously awesome. I’m a total novice at crochet, an intermediate knitter (Portuguese style), and I sew half way well. It’s so much fun, and so worth it. … Just read your coupons carefully.
After one project I’m already feeling that about the coupons 🙃 But it’s really fun and I enjoy it a lot! I can’t wait to dive deeper into it
Its so good. I’d recommend you get cotton yarn. It tends to fray less than acrylic and easier to get your hook in and see stitches. Also, amigurumi for making toys is really cool.
There’s so many options for amigurumi I don’t know where to start! I just need to pick something and go with it haha
The problem is not the price of the yarn, the problem is that none of us have self control and will hoard thousands of dolars in yarn in a closet and not use it because “it’s too pretty I need the perfect project for it”.
…and then we go out and buy more yarn
I do not appreciate you spying on me and posting about it. Rude.
3D printing! You can start out cheap but you can get STUPID expensive, and it’s the biggest most meandering rabbit hole I know of
It’s expensive, but it’s also expensive in lots of different avenues. It’s not like you can just go “well I’ll never buy a big pre-built proprietary printer then I’ll just make it myself! Open source forever!” Because that’s the road to leads to sourcing and building your own voron from scratch and spending a thousand dollars on parts
Because that’s the road to leads to sourcing and building your own voron from scratch and spending a thousand dollars on parts
Looks at my 2.4 sitting on my workbench.
Can confirm, that’s exactly how it happened. 😬
I’ve been amazed at how cheap it’s become since I built my first few printers. I spent thousands building printers that aren’t half as good as a $300 printer today.
I just bought an elegoo neptune 4 pro and thought about buying more filament already. Hopefully it will only be filament and not more machines or something
And getting consistent prints at a decent speed can be challenging! (Slow and good vs fast and unreliable is a common choice.)
I can highly recommend the Klipper firmware if you haven’t already, I can print at much higher speeds than marlin firmware and the print quality is actually better
But I NEED all the different filament colors @___@
3D printing can be expensive, but I disagree that it is stupid expensive.
3D printing really isn’t expensive, especially since you can create a lot of stuff for cents. I’m considering a new extruder for my Ender 3 (Looking at the LDO orbiter v2) and that’s €70, which sounds expensive for the printer, but compared to any other hobby that’s peanuts
It can get expensive - especially if you start looking into high-end / commercial quality printers.
…or if you burn through 3 reels of TPU just to get one goddamn wrist rest to print. 😩
A bambu x1 Carbon is like €1000 right? That sounds expensive, but with the amount of money spent on my car, I could have had multiple of those
Sure, but if you wanna get crazy, you can spend car-levels of money on something like this
Sure, but it’s definitely not a hobby at that point
Yeah, €70 is not much for an upgrade for a hobby. That’s the price of a mid-range chain for a mountain bike and chains are not upgrades, they’re consumables, which you buy at least once a year, lol.
Gymnastics. The skill part is obvious but monetarily its more than i expected. I thought it would be like going to a regular gym but its usually much more expensive to use the gyms and thats if you can find a time slot where adult males can train.
Magic: the gathering.
There’s several different styles of play known as “formats”.
The Cheapest being “Standard”. Which is the latest 3-5 sets released. The deck of 75 card deck can cost upwards of £500.
Then the most popular format, modern, which is the last 20ish years of release. The average deck there can be upwards of £1,500.
Then there’s legacy and vintage where decks are in the high 4 figures and some even in the 5 figures.
Don’t forget commander, which a lot of places claim is now the most popular format. Pre-constructed commander decks can cost as little as $20-40 and competitive commander decks can easily go into the thousands.
The game also has a very high skill ceiling. I think that’s one of the main reasons why magic has such a broad age range to its player base. There’s plenty of weird lines of play, from strange card / rule interactions to weird deck themes no one else would think of.
Isn’t “pauper” cheaper than standard?
Also don’t forget that when the meta changes that expensive deck’s value can change (usually for the worse)
I quit playing in 1996. It wasn’t too rare to have a $2000 to $3000 deck even back then. And that’s when every card store had a Black Lotus for sale without having to notify their insurance company.
I always felt like Modern was cheaper in the long run than Standard. Spending hundreds of dollars every few months on a new set didn’t speak to me. Whereas I could buy a few cards here and there to upgrade me modern decks.
I’d assume a lot of people sell/trade as the next set rotation is coming around no? I’m not sure how card economy works in magic but in yugioh today’s meta is tomorrow’s budget, surely there’s people that want to buy in play in non rotating formats
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DSLRs start at like $400-500. Bought a Nikon D5300 years ago and the part that makes the biggest difference is the lens.
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EOS RP (full frame) with the starter lens is only (lol) about $1300
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But there is a low entry point with this one. I bought a used Canon Powershot that has a 50x optical zoom. Only stores JPG. Can’t swap out the lense. But it was $200 and now I can zoom in on birds. Since it’s digital I don’t have to pay for film or prints.
That phenomenon is known as GAS, Gear Aqcuisition Syndrome. I sold all my shit and just have a 1" sensor compact now. I take a lot more pictures ironically.
The old adage I learned when I first got into photography (that I’ve only just started following) is that if you have $5000 to spend, spend $1000 on camera gear and $4000 on plane tickets. You’ll end up with my better photos that way.
What is challenging in photography? Point and shoot.
What is challenging in art? Just put a pencil on paper and move it around.
What is challenging in photography?
To get the shoot you want it to be in the best possible quality.
My semi professional advice would be to point and shoot.
I have some pictures of my kids that I love, you should absolutely listen to me.
Some people prefer accidental strokes of luck, others enjoy planned projects. 😎
composition
Warhammer 40k
Comparably, Gunpla also goes hard on costs (though imo its more for associated materials like paint then the models themselves, which can be pricy but tend not to be.) and the quality of some of what folks put out there is staggering, as shown in the 10th Gunpla Builders World Cup
I appreciate that link, thanks. I have built a few, haven’t even painted though. I just like building stuff I don’t need glue for.
Those builds remind me of a guy I worked with that back in the day would be a model builder for cars that the model companies hired to build the model for the box covers before they mostly started using photos of real cars. He was just so talented. Even bashed some kits so they could be molded to create new models for some companies. One of them was when they wanted an old woody station wagon so he basically took 10 different kits and created it for their mold.
I am still amazed about how much money you can spend on making coffee at home. 300€ for a manual grinder - “that’s the cheao chinese stuff” wtf
I’ve got a £1000 espresso machine and that the cheap one. We also have all the pour over shite - scales, grinder, gooseneck kettle, Hario… It adds up quickly.
And when you invite a bunch people over and tell them yeah we’re into coffee and they ask you for coffee and you’re like… Ok I am incapable of making coffee for more than 2 people in under 15 minutes, I need to pull out the senseo pad machine.
Absolutely… someone at work was like, grab a coffee, see you in 5. Dude, it takes at least 15 minutes to make a coffee in this house.
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We have a ROK and my husband once did 3 espressos for guests in a row, it did break his soul a little bit.
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Thank you xD
You know what the most painful part is? When your guests try the coffee and are like “aaah wow yeah that’s… nice! It’s really, uhm, intense” because they are so used to their crap coffee and don’t get the flowery berry fresh aroma of specialty coffee and you’re just smiling and dying inside. I mean I would have hated this kind of coffee 10 years ago myself so I get it but man…
This is why I still have a senseo pad machine. I’m not wasting my time, energy and coffee to make fancy hand filter coffee or manual espressos for people who really don’t care (unless they ask for it, in that case, waste away).
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Love coffee as a hobby for this reason. You can start with $20 to get simple pour over equipment or even nicer venas but you can go far and high with it eventually or stop at the $20
Probably more well known but with the whole ‘live edge’ fad from a couple years ago now, some people don’t realize you can spend upwards of 20-30k on a single piece of some types of raw lumber.
I feel like woodworking is one of those traditional “this hobby is expensive” things, but I was shocked by just how hard it is to do some things (like hollow out a bowl-shaped divot in a piece of wood) without the proper tools. And the proper tool is sometimes a single hook knife that’s $89 dollars.
You can get 8 foot of pine from any hardware store for $10, but if you want to do anything other than cross cut that pine to different lengths, you’re going to need to drop some cash.
Of course, the skill ceiling for woodworking is enormous.
Woodworking can get crazy expensive, but like most hobbies, you can get into it gradually for relatively low cost. I started with a cordless drill and a circular saw, then gradually bought used tools and restored them. If I were to buy everything new in my shop, it would easily be $15-20k, but I’ve spent maybe $2k over 5 years. The most I’ve spent on any one tool was a $400 miter saw a few months ago on sale, almost everything else has been stuff that’s older than me or inexpensive tools that work just as well as pricier options.
Good hardwood is fucking expensive though. I found a local mill where I can get cherry for $4/bdft or walnut for $5.50/bdft (bdft = board foot, volumetric measurement equivalent to 12"x12"x1"). Somewhere like Woodcraft charges $15-18/bdft for walnut, which is $60+ for a 6" wide, 8ft long, 1" thick board.
ETA: It does annoy me when every woodworking video comment section is bombarded with complaints about how expensive tools are. Yes, Sawstop and Powermatic are obscenely expensive. A DeWalt job site table saw is more than enough for most hobbyists starting out. So is a used saw you can get for $100 or less. It’s very easy to blow through $20k outfitting a shop, but it’s also very easy to outfit a shop with old, quality tools for a fraction of that price. This is what I’ve spent over five years
- 6" Jet jointer from 1973: $240
- 12" Parks planer from 1943-1986 (no idea on exact date): $200. Used a 13" Woodtek lunchbox planer for a few years before this. I got that for free because they don’t make linkage gears for it anymore, and I was able to 3D print replacements.
- DeWalt job site table saw, new in 2018: $325
- Wen drill press, new in 2019: $70
- Wen scroll saw, new in 2019: $60
- harbor freight miter saw, used: $80 (fuck this thing, would never cut square no matter how much I tried to tune it)
- DeWalt compound sliding miter saw, new 2023: $400
- Harbor freight lathe, new 2020: $150-200 (don’t remember exactly)
- shaper from 1978 + $2k in tooling: $40 at auction
- 7-10 various hand planes, all used from eBay or marketplace: $80
- knockoff 14" delta bandsaw from late 80s: $40
- harbor freight dust collector, new 2023 (gift): ~$250-300
- slow speed bench grinder, new 2021: $90
- various hand saws, 2016-2023: probably $100
- various chisels, new 2016-2023: ~$120
All in, $2,100 over 5 years. I sold ~$1,500 worth of random projects in that time, and gained a ton of enjoyment from it.
Even if you do go big and spend a lot of money on tools, as long as you have disposable income and you’re not forgoing your/your family’s basic needs, there’s nothing wrong with spending money on things you enjoy. It’s ok to enjoy things.
I hear you on lumber prices. Woodcraft near me ended up having a sale on some exotics around the holidays and I bought as much of it as I could afford. I justified it by making basically everyone I knew salt boxes as gifts.
Otherwise, it’s hard to get ahold of gorgeous lumber without having a huge bankroll.
It’s hard man. I was living in Alaska when I really got into woodworking, and I had one overpriced option for a really limited selection of hardwood. I managed to get some old maple flooring from a guy that was contracted to replace a basketball court, and got some old redwood from a water tower that was taken down, but otherwise I just used pine for everything for the first few years.
Best advice I can offer is to find a local mill. Facebook groups are good for finding local people that just do it on the side and/or don’t have a website. Ideally, find someone with a kiln, or be prepared to wait for months to years for it to dry. You can also find some good deals at auctions and sometimes on FB marketplace
The only wood I buy at Woodcraft nowadays is for small lathe projects when they have blanks on sale
I’ve never gone to a mill or even a lumberyard (only some speciality stores from time to time), but I think I’m going to take your advice and look around.
I tend to use the ol’ pine and plywood for most of my projects, but I want to get more into making furniture and getting a source now ain’t a bad idea.
They’re generally a great experience. It’s way different than Lowe’s/HD, and generally better selection for cheaper than places like Woodcraft or Rockler. There’s typically a wide range in widths/thicknesses, so have a rough idea of what you need and be ready to mentally adapt your build if they don’t have as many wide boards as you need. Some places will have a minimum purchase requirement, but the few I’ve gone to don’t. Typically, I spend $200-400 for a trip, which covers a few projects for me.
Added bonus of going to a mill instead of a distributor, sometimes they’ll have waste you can take for free/really cheap! Great for small projects or lathe stuff
There’s a YouTube channel I saw a while back where the guy films the process of cutting slabs. When you take into consideration the sheer size of trees that have to be used to make a slab, and then the size of the equipment that has to be used, and the weight, it’s easy to see how the cost of even a clean grained slab can be through the roof, not to mention something that has artistic or desirable figuring in the grain.
I feel like games workshop table top games(e.g. Warhammer 40k) would fit in to this description if an individual had never heard of table top wargaming, or their reputation.
They’re made of plastic? It can’t cost that much right!?!?
but the rules, they can’t be too complicated? It’s just game !?!?
Oh you wanted to understand the story? Well let me show you a library on the first ten thousand years after the dawn of time to get you started
1page rules!
Model trains. Sure, you can have a lot of fun with a 100 dollar toy train, but those brass engines are very shiny and very expensive.
Seen a couple basement setups in my time though tbh never saw an especially impressive one. Most tend to just emulate rural routes and small towns. Always thought more fanastic scenery (Surely there has to be at least one person out there who does D&D figure stuff and trains.) would be great, but I suppose that it would detract from the star of the show.
Surpringly not, no model train manufacturer does fantasy stuff. Best you can get is custom stuff.
I’ll do the reverse - I think most people would expect homebrewing beer to be quite hard to get started with, but for $50 you can get everything you need to start making a really quite good beer, and save money at the same time (homebrewed beer is usually much cheaper than store bought)
If you want to get started search for “brew in a bag” and buy a kit beer mix. You’ll need a handful of equipment like a brew bag and fermenter, but that stuff is really cheap.
Then you can indeed go down a massive rabbit hole of refinements, but it just amazed me that the first beer you make will already be a good one.
From my experience, it’s not that much cheaper, especially after considering time cost. One issue with it though is that you get a lot of the same type of beer, which isn’t totally bad but also somewhat puts a stopper on trying new beer. It’s great if you’ve got plenty of people to share it with though, but I don’t have enough that enjoy beer.
Sim racing. An entry level wheel cost 100, an okay one 300 and the most expensive I’ve seen is 100,000
https://www.f1authentics.com/products/red-bull-simulator-championship-edition
Same thing with flight sims
If you can buy a decent car for the cost of your sim racing rig, it’s time to evaluate.
I know people with real race cars, it’s lots of breaking down and hitting things for big money.
A full sim rig with VR and motion is probably cheaper with the same brain chemicals, and you can just do it whenever.
I don’t think the average Joe would know how expensive Warhammer 40k or model trains are.
Is it cheaper if you 3d print your own minis?
I’m not sure if that’s viable for 40k. You might not be welcomed to play with fake minis. You could surely do that with friends though.
My understanding is that you’re only allowed to play what you own, no stand ins.
So literally pay to win?
Well, more pay to play.
But if you want to participate in a battle with a large army, you need to have that army.
Onepagerule is cheaper.
Rock climbing. To start out you basically just need $150 worth of shoes and some $5 chalk. Trad climbing or big wall climbing can be 5 figures and a dozen years worth of experience. And the skill ceiling is probably obvious, but it’s become an Olympic sport for a reason.
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“ice climbing” “screwed” Oh youuu
This is how a friend of mine got into ice climbing. They went to work as a glacier guide and got a avalanche training for free. They work to find their ice climbing hobby.
Bouldering here in the Netherlands can start pretty easily:
- € 10-15 entry
- € 5 to rent shoes, although you can bring any clean sport shoes yourself
And that’s it!
You can look into buying shoes and memberships if you’re really into it, but even then € 150 for shoes and € 40-60 a month for a membership is cheaper than my idea of an expensive hobby, like Magic the Gathering or PC building and gaming.
Playing music has basically no skill ceiling.
Also no spending ceiling
Gear Acquisition Syndrome is very real.
And you can get by without a lot of equipment. Though a used audio interface and an old laptop at least is nice to have.
True. But also equally true if you do buy equipment and indulge in every temptation. There is absolutely egregiously expensive gear in all shapes and forms.
The last synth on my “really really want” list is hovering around $15k right now. I’ll probably never get one :(
Ah yeah the gear goblins are real I swear. They keep telling me I absolutely need a 6-string fretless to get good and I think they might actually be right you know, it just makes so much sense. Why waste time limiting myself to 4-strings. But they also think I’m too dumb and will have to get a 5 string before, I really need to take baby steps after all… Ahh well, it’s not like I needed that 5k anyway.
Oh you don’t need to tell me that 😔
