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3 hour ride

Mike and I biked around San Francisco today, almost literally: first we biked west to the ocean, then north and east around the coastline past the Presidio, the Ferry Plaza Building, and AT&T Park before turning south to go home.  We live in the southeast part of the city, so if we didn’t actually circumnavigate San Francisco we took a pretty good stab at it.  It took us about three hours.

I don’t really like biking in the city – too much traffic, too many stop signs, and too many bloody little hills.  They aren’t even fun hills, either – normally the reward for going up a hill is getting to whiz down it, but with stop signs every block and the possibility of oncoming traffic at every intersection, it’s inch up, inch down, all ride long.  Plus lots of stop signs, traffic lights, etc.  It wound up taking us about 3 hours to go 24 miles, which is the slowest ride I’ve ever done.  But the scenery along the shoreline was beautiful.

I am going to start dyeing my skeins of yarn today.  So far I have 12 of the 24 skeins skeined up, and plan to skein up the remaining 12 today while waiting for the first batch to finish dyeing.

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Live-weight tensioned warp

This morning I rode the Tour de Max with Mike – 40 surprisingly hilly miles.  Mike finished nearly an hour before I did and was getting worried about me when I finally showed up, about four hours after starting.  I averaged nearly 12 mph over the course, which is not bad (for me) on a hilly course, so I’m satisfied.

On the way back, we stopped and picked up a new bolt for the warping wheel, which I have now assembled.  Haven’t tried using it yet – that comes after I finish weaving up the current warp.  Looking forward to playing with, er, using it, though.

I have also converted my AVL loom’s brake from a static brake to a live-weight tensioned brake.  Here’s a photo:

Live weight brake on my AVL Workshop Dobby Loom
Live weight brake on my AVL Workshop Dobby Loom

I have wrapped a cord two full times around the brake-band cylinder on the back beam (so there are actually three layers of cord on top where the cords overlap, two on the bottom).  On the left side is a small weight to keep enough tension on the cord that it doesn’t slip.  On the right side is two sets of ankle weights from the gym (which I had lying around from my old physical-therapy days).  The ankle weights are pulling down on the warp beam, adding tension to the warp (since the warp is now supporting the weights).  The amount of tension on the warp is proportional to the weight of the ankle weights – which is handy, since the ankle weights are designed to be adjustable.  Each one contains ten 1-pound steel bars that slip into a little pouch, so I can easily calibrate the tension on the warp.

The theory here (which, incidentally, comes from Kati Reeder Meek’s excellent pamphlet Warp With a Trapeze and Dance With Your Loom – I recommend it highly) is that the tension is now kept continuous and even, rather than jerky as it would be with a traditional brake.  As the warp advances, the weights rise further up (keeping the same tension the entire way); when the counterweight hits the floor, the cord slackens and the weights slide down until the counterweight comes off the floor and puts friction on the cord again.  At all times an even tension is maintained.

At least, that’s the theory.  I don’t know yet whether the cord will slip correctly once the counterweight hits the floor, but I suppose I’ll find out soon.  🙂

I believe this is actually how AVL tensions all its “regular” looms, so I’m a bit mystified why the live-weight tensioning isn’t done for the AVL workshop dobby loom.  It might just be because I have an earlier model – I notice that the current brochure for the AVL WDL says it uses the automatic warp tensioning device.  I might call AVL up and ask if they have a conversion kit.

At any rate, if you have a loom with a traditional brake, you might consider trying this.  I’ve tested out advancing the warp and it works great!  Perfect, even tension, no jerkiness.

And now, off to dye the yarns.  I have 16 skeins to dye, which will be done in two batches in quart canning jars in the canning kettle.  In between dyeing the skeins I will probably cook ribeye steak (grass-fed, dry-aged beef from Prather Ranch – the best meat I’ve ever tasted) and some sort of vegetable for dinner, and do a little bit of weaving, enough to test the live-weight tensioning.  I don’t know if I will get to the tomatoes tonight – it might have to wait for tomorrow.  Or I might be able to manage them in between the second batch of dyeing.

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82 miles over the weekend

Went out riding with Mike on Saturday and Sunday – 30 miles on Saturday and a 52-mile round-trip to Los Gatos on Sunday (Mike’s first half-century!). Mike is training to do a century ride in October, and I’ve been going out on training rides to keep him company. (I really don’t seem to be very good at staying off the bike, do I?) At this rate I might as well sign up for AIDS Lifecycle again; I’m already putting in the training miles all summer. What’s another six months after that?

Actually I’m trying to talk Mike into doing ALC with me. But that’s another story…

Anyway, riding with Mike is much more fun than riding on my own – he is faster than me and so challenges me to ride faster, which (curiously) I’m finding I enjoy more than I thought I would. Don’t know if it would motivate me when I’m on my own, but it is much more interesting than doing long rides by myself.

The downside is that (once again) riding is taking up all my weekends. I did manage to get to a bead store before it closed on Sunday, but it was one of the worst-organized shops I have ever seen, so I didn’t manage to find all the beads I needed. I looked online at Fire Mountain Gems, but they had such a dizzying array of beads that I got hopelessly confused. I really need a way to look at beads, compare them, and then decide what I’m using. Which brings me back to the physical bead shop. I think today I will leave work a little early and go to Baubles & Beads in Berkeley, which has an excellent reputation.

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Back in the saddle

Mike and I went out for a short, ~2 hour ride this afternoon, up and over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, then down the bike path for a couple of flat, beautiful miles.  Back up over the Sausalito hill (which wasn’t nearly as difficult as I remembered), and back over the bridge.  It was a nice, easy ride.

I enjoyed it!  It was fun to be out cycling with him, and fun to be doing some less-familiar routes.  Mike says he’s going to look for some good 2-3 hour rides starting from where we live (in San Francisco), and we can go riding together on weekends.  This is much more fun than spending all day on the bike by myself.

I’m not saying I’m going to sign up again for the ride next year, but I’m enjoying cycling again, and that’s really important to me.  I don’t want to burn out on it again.

Otherwise, I’ve been feeling pretty depressed and stressed-out today, which is making me a trifle worried.  I attribute it mostly to post-Ride letdown, plus the fact that I’ve been putting in eleven-hour days at work this past week, then coming home and working on my AIDS Lifecycle photo collection, getting them sorted and posted.  (I expect to finish adding them to my website this weekend.)  Between sewing costumes for the Ride, bicycling 550 miles in 7 days, and then catching up on two jobs while trying to post photos of the Ride, I’ve been way too busy for the past three weeks.  Not enough time for me.

And I’ve still got a bit more craziness to go, getting the photos posted and cleaning up the apartment (there seems to have been an explosion in the tutu factory 🙂 ) – but hopefully by next weekend things will have calmed down a bit.  I have lots of stamina and piles of energy, but even I have limits somewhere.

Tomorrow I plan to play around some with networked satin patterns, hoping to find a nice threading to use with the warp I so painfully wound onto the loom last month.  It’s basically ruined as far as making shawls or any form of yardage is concerned – the pale spots are too obvious, even covered up with magic marker – but I think I can sew some clothing out of it, so it won’t be a total loss.  And it will be interesting to play with networked satin on a painted warp.