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Chautona Havig

Chautona Havig

Using story to connect YOU to the Master Storyteller

Hobbies? You Mean There’s Life Outside Writing?

by Chautona Havig · 2 Comments

What?

Broomstick lace hobby
Image found on Pinterest, but led only to wordpress.com in general. Thank you to the person who photographed it!

When I was five, I made a purse.  That sucker was hideous, but I made it. Sometime around that same age, my mom taught me to make “broomstick lace” by crocheting onto a broom handle.  And yeah, we used a real broom handle.  We were thrifty in those days.  Sure wish that idea had rooted deeper.

I digress.  Broomstick lace. I don’t know how many actual rows I did, but I do recall at about age eight, I graduated to granny squares.  Hated those suckers. I thought they were ugly.  Crochet as a hobby?  Fail.  Didn’t enjoy.

hobbies

(note: links in this post may be affiliate links which will give me a small commission at no additional cost to you!)

I liked coloring.  I did.  Every time I went to Grandma’s house, I’d walk down to the Skaggs on 7th and Osborn in Phoenix and buy a coloring book and a box of 64 crayons. Colored for hours. Who knew that years later, this would be a skill I’d need? Not me!

But sometime around 1981, when I was eleven, I reread all of the Nancy Drew books.  Yes. ALL of them. Every one they had out then. For the record, I didn’t like the very latest ones.  You could tell they were written by a different person, and Stratemeyer really blew it with whoever they got to do it after about book 28-30. But I fell in love with Nancy Drew’s clothes.  those late ’50s, early ’60s styles appealed to me.  I wanted them.

So I learned to sew.

Yep, hobby #1 is sewing. By the time I was thirteen, I made almost all my clothes. By fifteen, I loved sewing so much that I actually hand-sewed all my clothes (except my school uniforms) since we didn’t have electricity. In fact, I hand-sewed my graduation dress!  Then the satin started fraying, so I ended up having to zig-zag it on a friend’s mom’s sewing machine so it wouldn’t fall apart on me during graduation  How embarrassing!

That sewing bug never went away. In fact, fellow author Cathe Swanson (go over and enter her giveaway!) and I used to create custom boutique outfits and sold them on eBay a decade and a half ago!  Just today, #7 daughter found the bag of fabric we purchased for her Easter dress last year.  Note the word “fabric”.  Yeah.  It didn’t get made.  So, I’m going to do it this year.  I already promised to cut out the dress on March 22.  So… do hold me to that!

Is Sewing My Only Hobby?

Not hardly.  In the years since I’ve been married (almost 30 of those suckers), in my life I’ve…

  • knitted
  • quilted
  • smocked (this is not the same as SMOKED)
  • embroidered
  • decorative painted (signs and wood furniture)
  • made porcelain dolls
  • made rag dolls
  • beaded
  • remade dolls (love turning Bratz dolls into CUTE ones–gotta finish those…)
  • digital and paper scrapbooked
  • paper crafted (primarily cardmaking)

These days, if I have a few minutes of free time OR if I need a different outlet to wake up my creative synapses, I’m most likely to turn to card making.

card making hobbiesBut even that tends to head into my books sometimes.  Like this one I did a couple of years ago!

Read that word up there at the top?  Yep, it’s a WYNNEWOOD stamp!  I also have dragon stamps like that one down there in the corner.  EEEP!  (Not all my cards look like they were chewed up and spit out by a dragon.  I just thought this one should).

But only one “hobby” has made it through all the years of my life.

Reading

read hobbiesI value it more today than I ever did.  As a kid, I inhaled words. As a new mom, I escaped the clamor of dirty dishes and floors by reading how to be a better wife and mom.  Yeah.  The irony did not escape me–not even then.

I’m a FAST reader.  Always have been. I used to take home two brown paper bags FULL of books from the library and bring them back a week later.  During the school year.  I read a lot.  I read fast.  And I don’t even want to THINK about how much GARBAGE I read.  And, there’s a bit of non-irony in the fact that  spent a lot of time reading about different hobbies…

These days, I don’t get to read much. In fact, it’s why I joined the CelebrateLit blogging team (watch for a review on Monday.  Amish fiction… in the eighteenth century!).  Because I knew it would FORCE me not only to read more but also to branch out and see what new authors are coming up.  I tend to stick with tried and true authors, and you miss a lot of GREAT stuff that way.

So there they are—my hobbies

I doubt I’ll make it to eighty without adding a few new ones and others becoming less prominent in my life, but then again, I’m becoming rather set in my ways.  So who knows?

This week’s blog post from #MFRWAuthor was all about my hobbies when I’m not writing.  And there you have it.  But I’m curious about you?  What are your hobbies?  Is there something I should add?  And who wants to take guesses on how many I’ve left out?  *blush*

Oh, and PSST!  Don’t forget to enter the drawing for the Ultimate Reader’s Valentine’s Gift Box. The giveaway ends TONIGHT!  So go on over to the BLOG post and get that entry in!

I Heart You Giveaway

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Comments

  1. Melanie Stinson says

    February 10, 2017 at 12:37 pm

    I agree that various hobbies are great, but I LOVE to read. 🙂 I can’t wait until I finish my master’s degree so that I can get back to scrapbooking instead of just reading and working on class work.

    Reply
  2. Deb Jones says

    February 10, 2017 at 7:55 am

    My main hobby is reading. I’m a very fast reader too. I used to go through bags of books like you. Now I buy or borrow digital books and read them. The problem. The good authors I really like (like you) can’t write their books fast enough. Sigh!

    My other hobbies are scrapbooking (mostly card making) and coloring. I buy coloring books but I also buy scrapbook papers that you color and cut into pieces and use on cards or just to give someone just for encouragement.

    Reply

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Episode 163: A Chat with Naomi Craig about Ezekiel's Song
byChautona Havig

Before I began the interview with Naomi Craig about Ezekiel’s Song, I kind of went crazy and left it in to give you a chuckle. But Naomi and I chat about her upcoming release, why she chose to write about Ezekiel, and what areas she focused on. Listen in and hear her heart for the Word and for stimulating readers to love it and live it.

Oh, and that song I couldn’t remember? Well, I found it after a BUNCH of hunting on YouTube. Here you go!

Note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.

Has Ezekiel Always Confused You? How about a Little Fictional Clarity?

There’s SO much to write about in Ezekiel, but after talking to Naomi Craig, I feel like I got a pretty good grasp of where she’s taking this book without feeling like I don’t need to read it now that we chatted, and that’s always great. Naomi shows service in the temple, how Ezekiel could have had a mentorish relationship under Jeremiah, and even what kind of woman his wife might have been.

Personally, I love the “Darcy-ish” meeting where he totally insults her and accuses her of being an idolatress. Let me tell you something. I cannot wait to read that! Seriously!

God had Ezekiel do a lot of weird things, and I always wondered how he managed some of it, but Naomi brings out possibilities by focusing on this wife that we don’t know much (anything) about. How cool is that?

Naomi also gave us a couple of glimpses into what’s coming next!

She’s #TeamBlue in the Keeping Christmas novella collections, writing about Herod’s palace and the wise men’s appearance looking for “the King of the Jews.”  And… from a scribe’s perspective!  How cool is that?

Also… next up is a book about a woman in Ephriam’s lineage who built three cities. A woman credited with the building of these cities!  I cannot wait! I love how Naomi focuses on how strong Biblical women were. So often we think of them as downtrodden and little more than cattle, but God shows how much He loves His daughters in the Word, and He definitely allows them to shine. We saw that in Naomi’s debut novel Rahab’s Courage.

Ezekiel’s Song by Naomi Craig

A prophet’s heart broken, a woman’s joy gone. What does Yahweh have planned for His people?

On the brink of Jerusalem’s demise, devoted priest, Ezekiel, sees the insincerity of Judah’s worship. Despite his efforts to call the people back to true worship of Yahweh, priests, artisans, valiant warriors, and royals are exiled to Babylon. When God gives him messages of continued judgment for the people in his homeland, his heart breaks. How can he minister to the people from so far away?

The presence of the Lord is tangible when Shiriel sings in the temple, and her voice prepares the hearts of many to worship. When she is exiled to Babylon, her faith is shaken. Does the Lord’s presence extend beyond Jerusalem and His holy temple?

Ezekiel is struck mute and paralyzed as he begins his prophetic ministry, and Shiriel devises a plan to get the Lord’s message back to the unfaithful people of Judah. Shiriel struggles with discontentment as serving the Lord looks nothing like she’d imagined. Can she provide for her family and carry out her husband’s ministry when her joy is gone, and her own dreams are placed on hold?

How will Yahweh save His people from themselves? Find out in Ezekiel’s Song!

Ezekiel’s Song is available at 30% off paperback and at a discount for Kindle, too through release week, so visit Naomi’s WEBSITE for more information.

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young—except the ones who destroy her beloved books. You could say she doesn’t have a very nice 
“book-side manner.” 
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save this bookstore?
Twice Sold Tales: the first full-length novel in the Bookstrings Series releases on November 2, 
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