It was a spring evening earlier this year. I was at home, not up to much.

You know those group chats that no one ever leaves, and also no one remembers joining? Mine was called sauna club and it was a chat with around 20 people out of which I only knew 2. I never showed up to sauna club. They were always on Monday evenings, when I had volleyball practise. I felt estranged from the club, being the only one who never showed, but I stayed in the chat anyway.

On this evening I happened to look at my phone and see the (muted) chat flickering with new messages. It wasn’t Monday, but of course, they do write about other things than the sauna as well. Curious, I opened it:

Movits was one of the people in the chat I had actually met, briefly. I like Movits. I was intrigued by his lack of context and called the provided number. He picked up.

And that’s the start of one of my newest hobbies.

STEP 1 - say yes to trying something new

A new hobby does not have to begin with intention. I honestly think they rarely do. They begin in the spontaneous moments when something catches your attention and you let it pull you along. It might be a message or a sound or even a smell. Anything that says come see what I am and you say yes.

So I just showed up. It was a carving club1 located in a cellar woodworking studio on one of those narrow, cobble-stoned, Södermalm streets. Going there felt like an adventure. The studio was full of people chopping away with carving axes and moraknivar in silence. No formal instruction. Just a calm crowd of strangers making spoons and butter knives. Movits was making a sauna ladle. I found a branch of birch (approximately 7 cm in width) on the floor and started carving away using the provided tools.

developed by the owner of the studio, Julia Kalthoff. she is very nice and creates beautiful wooden bears (as well as awesome carving axes of course)
Hattifnatt

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I chose to let the wood decide what it wanted to become as I was carving it. Very quickly it became… well, unmistakably phallic. oh no - actually I will decide then. I steered it toward the direction of a hattifnatt (slender, ghostlike, electric creatures from the Moomin world). It would be a nice addition to stand by my Moomin cup collection at home.

I honestly didn’t get very far on my hattifnatt that evening. Just the body and a rough shapeless blob that was supposed to be the first hand.

It was ugly.

I loved it.

It didn’t matter what it looked like, and this was very important. No one was watching. No one cared if I was “good” at carving. I was honestly so green at this that I wasn’t even sure what good would mean. There was no critique, no comparison, no one scrutinizing my technique. Which brings me to:

STEP 2 - be terrible at it

It’s gonna happen anyway, so just lean into it. The first time you try something can’t be about prestige. You are an adult; no one is grading you. You don’t even have to present your results. Learn to have fun while being bad. You’re allowed to make something terrible and keep it just because it made you laugh. Or you could b u r n i t . Whatever. That’s the point: you’re just doing.2

Tragic magic. That night I walked home with a sad wooden cucumber in my hand, and a big goofy smile on my face.

I continued carving throughout the rest of the spring and summer. The hattifnatt grew hands. I painted it. Finished.

My friend Wille told me he had no butter knife at home. Knives are easy. I found a good piece of wood in the forest that was already almost knife-shaped. I carved it down. is it done? Tested it. it sucks. Carved the curvature of the blade down a bit more. Now it smears butter nicely. Finished (and now Wille has a butter knife - yay!)

Then I rescued a (very rough-looking) wooden man while visiting Konstfack, in a container where students had dumped unfinished pieces from this year’s semester. Continued carving on it for about a month. The arms were looking wayyy off. Leaning into the alienness of it, I let the arms stay long enough to reach the floor. It looked intentionally weird. Finished.

Inspired by my long-limbed creature, I wanted to make another sculpture. This time with two of the creatures hugging so that their long arms wrap multiple times around each other. I’m still finishing the sanding of this piece.3

Over the past half year I have thus finished two and a half sculptures and one butter knife. It’s not much, but it’s also not little. And I don’t know the types of wood I use. And I cut myself too often. And when I showed up to my second carving night at the studio this September, long-limbed-hugging-sculpture in hand, I was complimented for it by almost everyone there.

So, step three?

STEP 3 - let it stay what it wants to be

There is no rush to turn it into a lifestyle or a side hustle or even a Pinterest board. Let it stay small. Let it stay weird. Do it when the light is good, or when you remember. Skip weeks. Forget tools. You are free to invent your own way of pursuing your hobby. We have them for fun, so the only metric for it to be successful is joy.

The compliments are nice, but what’s better is the soft scraping sound of knife against wood. The hours in the grass, surrounded by shavings. These hours have all been well spent. Not because I’ve produced good carvings, but because I still find joy in the process. I still delight in the idea of one of these October days being warm enough to go outside and finish the last piece of the season. I still lose track of time when I carve.

And that’s how I know this new hobby is now mine.

  1. Check it out here. ↩

  2. This kind of openness has a name in Zen Buddhism: shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” Roughly, the idea is that when you approach something without expectation or the intention to impress, you’re more likely to enjoy (and actually learn) it. ↩

  3. To see my finished carvings, visit this link. ↩