powerlifting – Page 3

January 22, 2024 by Tien Chiu 8 Comments

Painted warps and meet prep

My next class at the Handweaving Academy is going to be Designing Painted Warps. So of course I have a painted warp on Grace, and have been weaving samples in lots of structures, stripe patterns, and so forth. The nice thing about a jacquard loom is that you can weave any structure you like in any sett you like (up to the maximum sett for your configuration), without having to rethread or resley.

This vastly speeds up sampling. So far I’ve woven something like 25 samples, all in different structures and/or at different setts. On a shaft loom, that would probably have taken me 1-2 weeks at least. I did it in two days. Go Grace!!

Most of the samples are intended to be instructional rather than pretty, but here’s a quick snapshot of my favorite:

I’ve still got another 7-8 yards of warp left – I may not weave the rest, though, as I may have enough to demonstrate my points already.

I am still replacing pistons on Grace, and have arrived at a dreadful conclusion. I have (surprisingly – what’s this common sense thing??) realized that perching on a stepladder, leaning way over into the loom, and doing fiddly stuff with both hands while trying to stay stable on the stepladder might not be the wisest thing to do. It’s certainly difficult and uncomfortable.

The more ergonomic and safer thing to do would be to remove the heddle kits from the loom, put the heddles on a table, and do all the fiddly piston-replacing stuff at my leisure, while seated in a nice, comfy position.

The only catch is: removing the heddle kits means rethreading. And I loathe rethreading. With the blazing fury of a thousand exploding suns. (Ask me how I really feel….)

On the other hand, not falling off a stepladder, contorting my body into cramped positions, or ruining my wrists does have a certain attractiveness.

So I’ve decided to remove the heddle kits from the loom, change out the pistons, and rethread. It will take time but it will also be (literally!) less painful than trying to change the pistons with everything in place.

For reasons too tedious to mention, that also means redoing the velvet warp from start to finish. I’m not wildly enthused about that but it does give me the opportunity to get the colors right, and maybe change some details of the configuration. C’est la vie.

Sometimes it feels like I’m taking two steps forward and eighteen steps back. But, as I keep telling myself, if you’re on an epic journey into uncharted territory, you have to expect to get lost in a swamp, fight off orcs and goblins, and eat frogs and lizards to survive the rougher bits. So cheer up! At least there are no orcs (yet!), and the food’s good, too. Onward ho!

Powerlifting-wise, I’m in the final stages of prep for my second-ever meet, which is this coming Saturday (January 27th). Last week was my last heavy-lifting week, lifting 290 pounds in squat, 145 in bench press, and 295 pounds in deadlift. Today and tomorrow are some super light weights, just to keep my muscles moving – 185 pounds for squats and 90 pounds for bench press (no deadlift). And then I do absolutely NO lifting for three days. That way I’ll be fully recovered, rested, and at full power going into the meet.

Interestingly, the California state record for women in my age/weight class (50-54, 181-198 pounds) is only 292 pounds for the squat. My personal record is 310 pounds, so breaking that record should be quite feasible as long as I don’t screw up. Fingers crossed!

I am still debating between two T-shirts to wear when not lifting:

orange and yellow tie-dye T-shirt with "I Powerlift Like a Girl" and lots and lots of rhinestones

T-shirt with "OLD LADIES LIFT" and the slogan "Age is inevitable - Weakness is not."

You gotta admit, it’s a tough choice. Which do you like best?

January 7, 2024 by Tien Chiu 6 Comments

A brand-new year of weaving (and cats!)

Happy New Year, everyone!

After a bunch of errors too tedious to mention, I’ve got Grace up and weaving. So far it’s just the painted warp, but I’m working on the other one, too.

Here are the 880 knots in this warp. I didn’t lose a single knot while pulling through, which is amazing. Score one (more) for the knotter!

Here’s the new warp. I’m using this one to weave samples for an upcoming class:

The samples I’m weaving right now are illustrating the effects of weft color choices, weft size, and thread density (sett). They’re pretty simple, but I’ll be progressing towards more complex ones soon.

The velvet warp is not going so smoothly. It is fully tied on (thank you, knotter!), but I did something not-entirely-smart when I started pulling through, and as a result am having to pull each thread through individually – twice. All 1,320 of them.

So of course I barged ahead. But after doing about 200 of them, I started getting tendinitis/irritation from the repeated pinch-and-pull motion. I have a powerlifting meet coming up in just under three weeks, and I am NOT going to miss it with an arm injury! So I have stopped work on the velvet warp until things are completely healed, and am going to be careful afterwards. And doing massage, stretching, flossing, etc. (lots of etc.) to help it heal quicker.

On the powerlifting front, my wrestling singlet has arrived. This is mandatory wear for powerlifting meets, probably meant as an equalizer – wearing one makes EVERYONE look terrible! They are one-piece, skin-tight Spandex from the mid-thigh up. Unless you’re Chris Hemsworth playing the young Thor (yum!), it will make you look fat and lumpy. BUT, powerlifting (unlike bodybuilding) isn’t about looks, but about strength. The singlet enables the judges to determine more easily whether a lift is legal, so there you go.

Of course, I’ve elected to customize mine. For some *cough* strange reason, nobody sells 100% cotton wrestling singlets intended for dyeing. (Can you believe that???) But you can get custom print jobs, so this is the singlet I’ll be competing in:

I do need to get it shortened, though – it was clearly designed for someone much taller than me, so instead of mid-thigh, it comes down to my knees! That’s not legal for competition, so a friend is helping me shorten it tomorrow.

I’m super excited about this upcoming meet. It will be my second powerlifting meet ever, and it’s hosted by the gym I train at, so it will be on familiar ground. I have two goals for this meet:

lift as much as I can (a new PR – personal record – would be nice, but not necessary)
qualify for USPA Drug-Tested Nationals 2024, to be held in Las Vegas June 24-29.

Qualifying for Nationals isn’t going to be hard, assuming I don’t fall completely on my face. To qualify for Nationals, I’d only have to total 634 pounds between squat, bench press, and deadlift. My personal bests currently total 780 pounds. So as long as I don’t bomb out completely, I should qualify.

Since you get three tries at each lift, I’m planning to start with something very conservative, then go to match my personal bests, and if I get that lift, I’ll try to set some new personal records for myself.

One of the nice things about being over 50 is that nobody is watching you. All the intense scrutiny is on the 20- and 30-somethings lifting 600+ pounds (and may I say that Stefi Cohen is AMAZING?? There’s nothing more compellingly attractive than a woman who can lift 4.5x her body weight!). So, no pressure, just the chance to have fun and set some personal records.

(OK, I DO want to set some national records, but that probably won’t happen for a few years, at least.)

That’s it for now, but I’ll leave you with the Best Cat Photo of 2023: Fritz and Tigress demonstrating the lost art of Yin-Yang napping!

December 19, 2023 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Setbacks in the search for velvet

I finally gave up rinsing, though I got enough of the blue out that the rinse water was only tinted. Then I beamed the warp onto the loom:

The trick of “crocheting” around the warp before dyeing seems to have helped. Despite a zillion rinses, the warp went on smoothly with a minimum of tangling and very few loose threads. Much better than other painted warps I’ve done before.

The warp is not perfect. As you can see in the photo, there are some undyed white bits where the warp stuck together and didn’t take the dye. They’re sprinkled throughout the warp, a few here and there, just enough to be truly irritating (and ruin perfection).

I’m pretty sure that the problem was too short a presoak, and/or not scouring (washing) the yarn prior to dyeing. I dumped it straight into a soda ash solution and painted it twelve hours later; the yarn clumped together and never got entirely wet. Because it was still dry in places, the dye didn’t absorb properly despite my best efforts. I should have known better; that’s what comes of rushing.

Now, the choice: leave the flawed warp on, or spend another week winding and dyeing a replacement?

If I were to weave this warp off, I’d have to either fix or cover up any white bits while weaving, which would be time-consuming and produce a less-than-perfect result.

If I were to discard it, I’d lose a week’s work and all the trouble that went into winding, dyeing, and endless rinsing. Plus the effort of putting the warp onto the loom!

Regret over lost time and effort, however, is not the best way to make decisions. Economists call this the “sunk-cost fallacy,” and it generally leads to throwing good resources (time, energy, money) after bad. We develop attachment to anything we’ve spent a lot of time and energy on, so often we waste MORE time and energy trying to “rescue” a failing project when walking away and starting over would make much more sense.

This applies to many things beyond weaving projects. For example, someone who got a law degree but then realized they hate practicing law, might feel they “ought” to stay in law because they spent a lot of time and effort getting that degree. And then spend the next 10-15 years as a lawyer, hating their job. Better to get out as soon as possible, so you aren’t suffering for more years or decades because you made a wrong decision earlier.

Seth Godin has an excellent method for overcoming the sunk-cost fallacy. Instead of thinking about the time and effort you’ve already put in, think of whatever you have now as a gift, freely given, from your past self. You can accept that gift…or say “Thank you, it’s not for me.”

So. Past Self gave me (thank you!) a warp that is dyed and on the loom, but which has flaws. Do I keep the gift, and spend another 200 hours working with it? Or do I politely decline, and start over?

I spent a couple days mulling this and decided to start over. The amount of time I’d spend twiddling with fixes is far greater than the cost of creating a new warp. I politely thanked Past Self for the gift, though. It was thoughtful of her to get the process started, even if her gift isn’t what I need right now.

So the new warp is wound, PROPERLY dyed, and in the rinse cycle. Hopefully the cycle won’t be endless this time!

Meanwhile, I have finished rinsing another warp. This one is destined to be samples (in many different colorways) for a class about painted warps. It’s 17 yards long, so that is a lot of weaving to do!

On the powerlifting front, some major successes. I’m testing my 1RMs this week. The 1RM is short for “one-rep max,” which is the most weight you can lift, just once. In August, my squat 1RM was 300 pounds. Today, I lifted 310! That is ten pounds of progress in just four months – that is amazing for someone who’s been lifting as long as I have. I LOVE my coach!

I had to fight like heck for this one, though. You can actually hear me say “nope” about halfway through to signal my spotters that I was not going to be able to lift it. Of course, as soon as I did, the weight FINALLY started moving. I’m glad they didn’t believe me!

310 pounds, of course, is 1,240 weasels, for those who remember my first powerlifting post in 2018. I was measuring weights in Standard Weasels (aka four ounces), and my long-term goal was just 700 weasels.

And now? The USPA national record for my age/weight class is only 325 pounds (1,300 weasels). I’d need to beat it by at least 5 pounds to set a new record, so my goal is 330 pounds, or 1,320 weasels.

By Keven Law (originally posted to Flickr as On the lookout...) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons — photo by Keven Law

November 25, 2023 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Adventures in velvet weaving

I’ve wanted to weave velvet for years. I fell in love with it when I took Barbara Setsu-Pickett’s velvet class at Convergence, back in 2018, where I wove this spiffy sample:

The sample shows a few of the things that can be done with velvet: cut loops, uncut loops, tall pile, short pile, different fibers (orange rayon embroidery thread center, cotton in the purple and green sections), etc. (It was also a ton of fun to weave!)

However, on my return home, I was daunted by the equipment requirements, especially for the number of velvet pile warps needed for weaving on the jacquard loom. I also emphatically did not have space for a velvet cantra (the frame that holds the bobbins for the pile warps) in the garage. Nor did I have the time to study velvet or set up the loom.

But times change. This time the catalyst was selling Maryam. Yep, I’m down to “just” one TC-2. I hadn’t used Maryam pretty much since I got her, and she was taking up a LOT of space in the garage. I had bought her because I thought you could only do one project at a time on the jacquard loom, in which case two looms made sense so I could weave samples on one loom and a personal project on the other.

However, I discovered that you can have multiple projects on one TC-2! You can’t do that on a wooden loom (because the wood will flex, you always want to center your warp), but the TC-2 has steel beams that won’t deflect at all if the warp is beamed to one side. Since my loom is three modules wide, that means I can potentially have three different projects on the same loom, as long as I don’t mind weaving relatively narrow (14.5 inch in the reed) projects (and purchasing some extra warp beams).

That means I can weave velvet, samples, and another personal project and switch between them, quickly and easily, on just one jacquard loom.

So I had been considering selling Maryam for a while, but wasn’t willing to put forth the effort to make it happen. Then I was contacted by a textiles professor at University of Georgia who was seeking a used TC-2 for his lab. We struck a deal, and Maryam left for her new home three days ago. Here’s a pic of her as she was loaded into the truck, headed for her new home:

I’m pretty sure she’ll be well-treated there. The plan is to use her to weave electronic textiles, which sounds much more interesting for her than sitting around in my garage.

Anyway, Maryam’s departure freed up a tremendous amount of space in the garage, including space for that velvet cantra.

So I’m back to working on velvet. The design possibilities are AMAZING. Even with solid velvet in a single color (which can be woven on a 4-shaft loom!), there are so many design choices:

cut vs. uncut loops – the uncut loops are typically much lighter and more lustrous than cut ends, though it depends on the fiber
Pile fiber (silk is shiny where it’s uncut, but is much darker and plush when cut; linen produces a stiff pile; unmercerized cotton produces a matte pile)
height of pile – shorter pile tends to produce a plusher result, while taller pile stands, well, taller; you can outline tall pile with a border of shorter pile, etc.

You can also do velvet where the pile appears in some places but not others, creating figured or voided velvet. You can cover the “blank” (non-pile) areas with brocading weft or another layer of cloth in a different weave structure.

And then if you want to get even fancier, you can do polychrome velvet, and have two or more pile warps going simultaneously. Then you have four options for design: no pile warp up, Color A up, Color B up, and both Colors A and Color B up. This allows you to do designs in Color A, Color B, AND the blends between them. The possibilities are endless.

I was fortunate enough to chat with Wendy Landry yesterday. She wrote the definitive book on velvet, Velvet on My Mind, Velvet on my Loom – and patiently answered all of my zillion questions. I have another friend who’s good at woodworking, and who will help me build the velvet cantra. I am also armed and dangerous with five hundred Style M bobbins (meant for sewing machines, but good for velvet pile, too), an automatic sewing-machine-bobbin winder, and one hundred sixty-two 5500-yard cones of rayon embroidery thread (mostly full) in 97 colors. This is going to be FUN!

The current plan is to weave velvet at a density of 90 ends per inch, using 20/2 mercerized cotton for the foundation warp, and putting on a polychrome (two sets of colors) pile warp. One of the polychrome pile warps will be solid black, 60/2 silk; the other will be a symmetric color gradient in shimmering rayon machine embroidery thread. That should allow me to create a nearly infinite array of designs.

Because I’m weaving only 14.5 inches wide, I’ll have to put on “only” 1,320 warp threads. That’s a lot, but not infeasible. I’m really looking forward to this project, and have already started winding the warp for the foundation cloth.

WHEE!!

Meanwhile, I have been keeping up with the powerlifting. We recently tested my max lifts, and I’m pleased to say that I can now:

squat 305 pounds:

deadlift 315 pounds:

and bench press 155 pounds (sorry – forgot to video that one!)

That totals 775 pounds. I only need 703 pounds to qualify for USPA Nationals next June, so my goal is to do a meet in January to get an “official” number, and register for the national-level competition as soon as possible afterwards. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that it doesn’t fill up before I can register.

Because, as you know…

June 24, 2023 by Tien Chiu 2 Comments

The joys of summer: weaving and tomatoes!

It’s been a while, but here’s an update!

Two big things have happened recently: I’m back to weaving AND to tomato breeding!

I’ve been weaving on Grace (one of my two TC-2 jacquard looms), on a warp that’s set up for color samples. I spent a long time a few years ago agonizing over exactly what color combinations to put together for which samples – and never actually got around to weaving any of the samples. And I’ve long since forgotten what colors I dyed. (I suppose I could go look it up, but where’s the fun in that? 🙂 ) So now I’ve got probably about 15-17 yards of warp left, with a surprise color change every 1.5-3 yards. It’s a double weave warp – one layer is solid color and the other layer is divided into three sections, each a different color.

I plan to weave color samples with whatever colors happen to be on the loom when I need the sample. That probably sounds weird, but since I can use many different colors to illustrate color mixing principles, I think it will work pretty well.

I chose double weave because it allows me to play with two-color stripe patterns easily (jacquard magic!). But recently I’ve just been weaving with solid warp colors, in two separate layers. Like this:

The top and bottom layers are weaving different patterns, but they’re all illustrating a principle of color blending: the smaller the patches of color in your fabric, the more color blending you get.

In this swatch, the same colors are used, but the size of each color block increases left to right and top to bottom. As the patches of color get bigger, they blend together less and less.

And here is another set of samples, that explore the effects of color choices in the same patterning.

Color mixing samples in different colors

Why am I weaving these on a jacquard loom when all of these samples could be woven on just 8 shafts?

It’s because the jacquard can pivot from one structure to another in the blink of an eye. So I save a LOT of time because I don’t have to put on a new warp, or rethread an existing warp, every time I want to weave a different pattern. That allows me to weave a wide array of samples on just one warp, with no rethreading. Whee!

It is nice to be weaving again; it’s been a really long hiatus.

The other thing I’ve started working on again, after a similarly long hiatus, is tomato breeding. I rescued two nearly-lost varieties bred by Tim Peters: Fruity Fix and Fuzzy Mix. Fruity Mix, which has fabulous flavor, was relatively easy to stabilize and reintroduce, via Wild Boar Farms, where it’s available as Tim’s Taste of Paradise.

But Fuzzy Mix hasn’t been perfected, and it’s a much harder “sell” because it isn’t releasable in its current form. It is fascinatingly furry, compact, heavy-bearing, and pretty drought-resistant – all good. However, the fruit tastes like diluted battery acid!

Here’s a pic of Fuzzy Mix that I took this morning. There’s a “normal” tomato plant in the top right, and two Fuzzy Mix plants, one in the center and one in bottom center.

Fuzzy not only has very woolly leaves, but it has very thick, leathery leaves, making it quite drought-resistant. A few years ago I left the area for ten days and the gardener turned off the water to my tomato pots; I returned to find the regular tomatoes dramatically wilted, and Fuzzy Mix fat, happy, and totally unbothered. This seems like an excellent trait for a tomato (especially these days with drought everywhere), and I’d like to get other people working with its genes.

You’re probably wondering about the red ribbons and the blue tape. These are my tomato crosses. To cross-breed tomatoes, you find a flower that’s about to open, and cut off everything except the stigma (female part of the flower). Then you collect some pollen from the male parent, by putting a piece of plastic or glass under a mature flower and then vibrating the flower stalk with an electric toothbrush (!) to shake out the pollen.

After you have the pollen and the bare stigma, you simply drag the stigma through the pollen to cross-pollinate it. Do this for a few days to make sure the cross “took,” and voila! You are on your way to a new tomato variety.

Of course, you need to document your crosses, so that’s what the ribbon and blue-tape labels are for.

Since Fruity Mix (which is the variety I rescued and arranged to reintroduce) is the best-flavored tomato I know, and since I’m also quite sentimental about its history, I’m breeding it to Fuzzy Mix in an attempt to get a good-tasting AND fuzzy/drought resistant tomato. I’m also trying a cross with The One, which is a variety that William Schlegel is developing out of some varieties in the Open Source Seed Initiative.

My other “project” is getting other breeders interested in Fuzzy Mix. As I mentioned earlier, it has a lot of characteristics that might be useful in a tomato plant, especially as climate change continues. Drought resistance, yes, but furry tomato plants often have better pest resistance too (the fuzz can deter insects). And because Tim Peters bred Fuzzy Mix out of a bunch of wild varieties, there may be genes for disease resistance coming along for the ride. So it has a lot of potential.

I’m currently one of only a handful of people with seeds for Fuzzy, so I really want to interest other people in it so it doesn’t get lost again. (If you – or anyone else you know – want to try breeding with it, email me!)

But in the interim, I’m going to do some breeding work myself. This year I’m just cross-pollinating things, but next year I’ll likely plant one bed entirely to the (probably inedible) Fuzzy Mix crosses. I’ll grow a few tomatoes for eating fresh, but I’ll focus on my tomato breeding work next year, I think.

The fun part is that tomato breeding really doesn’t take that much time (if you’re already planning to grow tomatoes, that is). I spent about an hour this morning cross-pollinating a bunch of flowers, and that’s very likely all the breeding work I’m going to need to do this year. Next year I’ll probably grow out 16-20 plants from the cross-bred fruits, selecting for fuzziness initially, and then flavor.

20 tomato plants sounds like a lot, but it’s really not a ton when you consider all the genetic diversity available! If I had double the gardening space I could do a lot more work with them. (On the other hand, let’s face it – if I had double the gardening space I’d just start working with more breeding projects!)

Oh, and the powerlifting?

Here’s me setting a new one-rep max on bench press: 70 kg! That’s 154 pounds (616 weasels), which is 20 lbs more than I could do last year.