Hello friends,
I'm curious how the pandemic has affected your interest in/time for this hobby of ours. Personally, I've found myself with more time than money. I'm a professional musician and college music educator. My performing life has been cut back to very little, and my income has seen a large drop as a result. I still realize I'm more fortunate than many, many people, so I'm not complaining.

As a result of more free evenings and weekends, I've been spending more time here and more time reading about medieval things. I've had more time to watch some of the good YouTube channels related to this hobby. That's been fun. :)

How has it been for you?

On one level I'm lucky in that my work situation is not only stable despite the ongoing crisis, buissness is actually booming. On the other hand I'm quite exposed to the risk of infection at work and we have strict quarantine rules in place, even mild symptoms gets you ordered into quarantine at home and while we get sick pay during that period it is still a loss of 20-25% of your income. And it is my "hobby budget" that bears the brunt of that income loss.

Covid has also pretty effectivly killed all reenactment events, workshops and meetings last year as well as effectivly wrecking a series of research trips I had planned to Germany and the Czech republic to go through archives and document 17th C battlefields. Still waiting for refunds from some of the airlines. At the moment 2021 does not look a lot better so I wonder how much will survive until things get back to normal.

Long hours and the general level of stress at work took a toll of my energy to read or do crafts until things eased up in the autumn. Some good Youtube channels have help keep the interest alive and my mind of the current unpleasantness and I've even found my self branching out to periods outside my main area of interest. (Which is late 15th to late 17th C). Have still piled up backlog of books to read once things get a bit less hectic.

I was classified as essential as was my wife. With less ability to do anything I might be able to spend more, but the uncertainty of near everything makes big commitments for this hobby hard to justify. So, occasional smaller things here and there as we hit milestones, but mostly work and sleep at this point.

The farcical response has been a detriment to my own livelihood and my industry. Ready for it to be over, but I have a feeling it will get worse for a while yet. As for the concept of an "essential job": every job is essential to the person that has it.

I am new to this hobby, but if not for the pandemic I would have joined a hema club. I would have found which categories and schools I like best, and probably would have bought a decent sword.

Instead I have bought a lot of books, read every sword related article online I can find, and watched way way too many youtube videos about swords.

My biggest problem is that the fencing club suspended all trainings.
I partially remedy that by plastic bottle cutting in my backyard. :)
But it's not the same and social interactions have reduced quite a bit.

The job situation is fine, fortunately enough. Quite close to normal actually, but with some additional social distancing and/or rapid tests and/or facemask wearing. Annoying but not a big problem.

I was going to be taking online classes and looking after my father anyway. Mostly I've just begun to feel more anxious about tooling up and working on stuff that I've had on the back burner for years, so I've bought some supplies and miniature shop equipment, but the rate of completing projects remains as slow as ever.

Thanks for all the replies so far. I'm glad people seem to be weathering this pretty well. One thing I forgot to mention is that I did some very basic leather working last summer to replace some sheaths for a couple of my father in law's hunting knives that passed into my care. My own efforts were extremely basic (so much that I hesitate to show them here) and of course not historic, but it started to give me a lot more appreciation for folks that really do it well. :) It's made me think of making new/different sheaths for a couple daggers I have, but I haven't taken the plunge on that yet. I had to buy a decent amount of basic tools for what I did last summer. All I really lack is more leather and more courage. :)

So what does it take to get you leather? For the most part I seem to just be buying Scotch.

I'm fortunate to have a steady job that I can (mostly) do at home, at least for a while, while my physical office is shut down. That said, I figure the best thing I can do for the Artists in our community is to keep purchasing their products. I no longer participate in any clubs, so that's not a factor. Regarding time, with my youngest kids home 7 of the last 11 months, there has been little time left over for hobbies. One just collapses at the end of the day.

It made me realize that I never really play around with my collection even when I'm stuck home for months, also what motivated me to shrink the old collection down to around two short items just in case of moving. The swords and polearm are just not gonna fit into a box and are difficult to move.

I retired 15 months ago, moved to a 55-acre estate out in the mountains, and started building a new 2,000-square foot workshop to expand and improve my skills.

Then the pandemic hit. And since then, it has been very difficult to find contractors to complete the construction. My shop has been under construction for 11 months. I have 4 walls, a roof, and a concrete floor. Still no electricity, no doors, no insulation, no lights, no heat, and no air-conditioning.

I had hoped to spend this pandemic in my shop playing with toys, but instead I have sat at my front window looking into the woods.

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I'm extremely fortunate in that I get to work my day job from home since last March, thereby saving about 2 hours per day in commute time. Result = 7 crossbows built, with two more on the way, plus sundry wooden stuff. I can't complain.

What i don understand - and please, i dont want to be too nitpicky - is why everybody, sometimes even some media, refer to the pandemic virus as "Covid" or "Covid-19". Thats is not correct; "Covid/Covid-19" is the lung disease you can develop after being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus; that's the correct naming. Not everybody, or better thank the gods only quite few people develop the cruel Covid-19 complication... bad enough. Well, i am in a safe position - for now. I am unemployed and suffer 24/7 from a chronically rheumatic disease; but i was smart enough to get an "unable to work" insurance in my younger years. So i have a small but stable income, and we get along with the money my lady earns. We drive no big car and have no other expensive hobbies or addictions besides the infamous "rusting crack" - and from time to time there is room for some fix! So we consider ourselves quite lucky.

I've noticed that prices being achieved on online antique auctions have gone up - presumably due to the increased concentration of demand in the virtual space in the absence of physical sales venues such as arms fairs, estate sales and antiques stores etc.

To deal with the pandemic I've started collecting whiskey (whisky)! Scotch is my emerging favorite. Its the peat! And the sea! And the Band-Aids! Anyway, I have some nice enough Bourbons but not really my ideal I think. I'm working on giving the Irish a fair shake now! Anyway, I find that about four tall shots in I feel much better about everything! Unfortunately this is diverting some funds...