powerlifting

June 24, 2023 by Tien Chiu

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.

October 6, 2018 by Tien Chiu

More than my weight in weasels

101 days ago, I was a couch potato. Today?

That’s me squatting 780 weasels (195 pounds) – more than my body weight!

And here’s me at 99 days, deadlifting 700 weasels (175 pounds):

That kind of improvement exceeds my wildest expectations – in fact, it sounds like something you hear about in an ad on late-night TV. You know, “I was a 48-year old couch potato…but after 101 days of Weasel-Power! Boot Camp, I was squatting over 780 weasels!” That would totally have me going out and buying their Weasel-Power video series and their “Weasel-Flex” exercise widget! (For the more gently minded, of course, there would also be “Weasel Yoga – Make yourself supple as a weasel!”. Or – for you digital folks – the electronic game with social media leaderboards, “Wea-Fit”.)

But the amazing part (to me) is that I’ve made this massive improvement without a single injury. I’ve had plenty of muscle soreness, and I’ve tweaked my wrist, shoulder, etc. a few times, but no major injuries and no soreness lasting more than a few days. This kind of improvement isn’t my expertise and certainly isn’t luck: it’s having an excellent trainer. Touissant has done a fantastic job of encouraging me to push as hard as I can without going beyond my physical limits (general or from minor injuries), and helping me improve my form so I can lift more efficiently while staying safer.

Just as importantly, working with Touissant has gradually enabled me to trust that I’m not going to hurt myself lifting, which has enabled me to put everything I’ve got into the workout, rather than worrying about whether I’m going to hurt myself this time. I have a long history of overdoing it exercising and then losing months to injuries – now that I can trust him to watch out for me, I don’t have to unconsciously limit myself and can put everything I’ve got into the task at hand.

Another thing that’s made rapid progress possible is that Mike and I are working out together. We get fewer exercises done total, but it’s more fun to be able to work out with a friend and partner, so I’m more comfortable working out and more motivated to show up.

All of which has made me realize how important having a mentor and a peer group is to learning/doing anything new. People have asked me how I learn each new medium with lightning speed. I’ve always said, “Because I focus obsessively on things and I read a lot,” but I’ve also realized it’s because I reflexively seek out mentors and social groups that can answer my questions, encourage me, and keep me from getting frustrated when I tackle my super-over-ambitious projects.

I think this is true for others as well. So the online course I’m developing will offer both direct mentoring (from me, of course) plus a forum where students can interact, encourage each other, discuss the exercises and their current work, etc. Because, especially for people who are nervous about a new topic, having someone to guide, encourage, and support you makes learning much easier (sometimes it’s what makes learning possible at all!), and having a peer group to work with helps you put that learning into practice once class is over.

Speaking of the class…I’ve been pretty quiet about my teaching business for the last few months, mostly because I’ve been hard at work on it! But I’m getting closer to releasing my class. Close enough that I’m comfortable divulging a few details.

The class is going to cover the essentials of color in handweaving. The first part will cover basic color theory: the fundamental properties of color (hue, value, and saturation), how colors interact when interlaced in cloth, and a brief discussion of color mixing.

The second part talks about design: How to set the mood of a handwoven project by controlling drama, energy, and ambiance with color.

And the third part walks you through the design process: Choosing and using a warp color, weft color, and draft to achieve the mood you want.

The class will be offered in two formats. One will be a 1-2 hour streaming video plus handouts. That will (cross fingers) be released in November.

The other class option will be a full online course, with a discussion forum, exercises, feedback from the instructor (me!), etc. I’m planning to open registration in mid to late November, with the first session starting in January.

Here are two slides from the section on the design process:

Designing with Color - design process slide #2 — Designing with Color – design process slide #2

Designing with Color - design process slide #3 — Designing with Color – design process slide #3

I hope that, once my course is released, my students will be making weaselly fast progress with color!

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 — By Keven Law, via Wikimedia Commons

August 30, 2018 by Tien Chiu

Why self-discipline doesn’t work: Weaseling my way into fitness

I have decided that henceforth, the mascot for my fitness goals will be a weasel. Like this fellow:

If you’re wondering why I think a weasel will help me meet my fitness goals – read on.

For the last fifteen years, I’ve been a couch potato. Like many people, I’d try to get into an exercise routine, do it for a couple weeks, and then drift off into quitting. I wasted a lot of time kicking myself for lack of discipline, but I couldn’t get anything to change. Finally, things became critical. Over the last ten years, I gained 40 pounds (helped liberally along by a medication side effect of which I knew nothing). My blood sugar jumped, and I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about two months ago. Clearly, I needed to make some changes, fast.

But how to do that? I knew I could get (and stay) fit, since I’d done it in the past. In fact, I’d been a hard-core endurance cyclist fifteen years ago, doing crazy stuff like the Davis Double Century – riding 200 miles in one day – and cycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles, 585 miles in 7 days, with AIDS Lifecycle. Four times.

Obviously something had changed. I spent a few days thinking about it, and finally realized that my problem wasn’t self-discipline. In fact, I realized that self-discipline, while it works short-term, isn’t effective for long-term changes, especially big ones. In fact, it can be actively self-destructive when you try to use it to make long-term changes. Because self-discipline is a conversation between your conscious mind and your subconscious, that goes like this:

Conscious mind: “Doing X will be good for us! We should do X!”

Subconscious: “But I don’t want to do X! X is no fun!”

Conscious mind: “Tough noogies. X makes sense, and I control the body, so we’re doing X. Besides, I’m sure that if I make you do X long enough, you’ll start liking it.”

Subconscious: “Ah, I see. So the beatings will continue until morale improves?”

The subconscious, of course, hates being forced into things as much as anyone else. So it drags its heels, glowers, and waits until the conscious mind is distracted by some other problem. Then it grabs its chance, sabotages your motivation, and bam! You’ve quit doing X. Subconscious 1, conscious mind 0.

Practically speaking, the only way to make long term changes in your life is to get both your conscious and subconscious minds convinced that they want to do this. Which is tricky, since your subconscious mind, by definition, doesn’t respond to logic.

Fortunately for me, I’m a veteran project manager. I spent twenty years convincing groups of obstinate, opinionated people, none of whom worked for me, to pull together into a cohesive team that worked singlemindedly towards our common goal. In other words, I am a sneaky, manipulative bastard, a world-class expert in brainwashing others into carrying out my evil whims. (Tom Sawyer, eat your heart out!)

Surprisingly, it had never occurred to me to apply my project management supervillain powers to myself. So for ten years, I was out there dutifully flogging myself on in the name of discipline, just like everyone else. And getting what they got – zero results. And then, like all the others, getting angry at myself for not having done it, and resolving to do better next time. Repeat over and over until too frustrated to try.

Okay, so flogging myself doesn’t work. Time to dust off the cape and Spandex, put on my evil mind-control propeller beanie, and motivate myself.

The first thing I asked myself was, “What makes something fun? What makes it worth doing?”

And here it is: I’m a storyteller. I love to write. I also love adventure, but mostly because adventure gives me the fodder for writing new stories! I’ve been blogging about my adventures, discoveries, and creative work for over 15 years now. In fact, my blog encourages me to get into the studio more often simply to “feed the blog”. And it encourages me to reach higher, because epic projects make better stories.

Ohhhhhh…That’s why I couldn’t convince myself to do “easy” things like going walking!! There’s no story in it. Duh!!

Having figured that out, I went on to ask, “What makes a good story out of exercise? Why did I succeed at cycling where I failed at other forms of exercise?”

Well, here’s one hint:

What happens when fashionista fiber artists get on a bike... — What happens when fashionista fiber artists get on a bike…

That’s me riding up a hill during AIDS Lifecycle, a 585-mile, 7-day ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, raising money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. This is a really tough ride – three of the days are 100+ miles and the others are pretty close to 100 miles. It takes about eight months of training to prepare for.

But, as you’ve noticed, it’s also a fabulous ride – an epic athletic event which I turned into my own personal fashion show, with seven elaborate costumes (each made by yours truly), one for each day of the ride. The final day of my last ride featured the dress with tutu-of-gold, embellished with 1000+ peacock feathers!

A tutu with over 1000 hand-sewn peacock feathers!

So of course it was interesting. Epic, fabulous, and creative! A great story.

Based on this analysis, I’ve realized that I do best at exercise when I have epic goals, a preparation process that makes for great stories, and a certain element of fabulousness.

My main fitness objectives are to stay in decent cardio shape and build muscle (which helps reduce blood glucose levels), without having to spend 15-20 hours/week training for it. Based on those criteria, I decided to try weightlifting. Not only does it fit all three criteria, but the weights will help maintain bone density – important since Asian women are particularly prone to osteoporosis. (Though, based on my last DXA scan, my bone density is better than 95% of people my age, so I’m not too terribly worried for now.)

There are basically three flavors of weightlifting. There’s Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding (which isn’t exactly weightlifting, but). Bodybuilding is not my thing – it’s mostly about appearance, so it requires not only developing insane amounts of muscle but cutting body fat to an unhealthy and unsustainable level for competition. The rules for competition also make the Miss America Pageant organizers look like a bunch of radical feminists. (I know it’s not much better for male bodybuilders, but that is hardly a recommendation.)

Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting are both about strength, but involve different exercises. I decided on powerlifting because it’s a more popular sport, which means more trainers with expertise in it, and probably more divisions if I choose to compete. I haven’t decided that yet – I’m not really interested in becoming a champion or anything, but doing specific events usually helps focus my training and make for a better story. An unending narrative is not nearly as interesting as a tale with beginning, middle, and end.

Right now I’m still doing basic preparation – getting into decent physical condition and doing sets with lots of reps and relatively low weights. That’s because it’s best to start slow to give your bones, muscles, and tendons time to acclimate to the strain, and to perfect your form before attempting lots of weight. I hired an excellent trainer, Touissant Tenette at Silicon Valley Athletics, to teach me correct form, push me hard while avoiding injury, and keep me showing up (because workouts with him are fun!) until I have more concrete goals.

I have chosen a long-term goal, though. Powerlifting features three exercises: The squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. I feel that a proper cavewoman should be able to muscle her husband around the cave, and since Mike’s hair isn’t long enough for me to drag him about by his hair, I want to be able to squat, deadlift, and bench press Mike.

Right now, Mike weighs about 170-180 pounds. My weight, back before I started packing on pounds, was about 130 pounds. According to strengthlevel.com, an advanced-level female weightlifter my age, weighing 130 pounds, should be able to deadlift 232 pounds, squat 199 pounds, and bench press 139 pounds. And if I can get to elite level, I should be able to bench press 189 pounds! So I won’t even have to make Mike go on a diet – if I work hard enough, I’ll get there eventually.

(I’ll probably weigh more than 130 pounds when I reach advanced/elite level, of course – that’s just my natural couch-potato weight.)

The next question is what units to use to measure progress. (Because pounds, let’s face it, are boring.)

Well, here was my first idea (of course!):

In the grand English tradition where the foot was the length of the king’s foot (yes, I know that’s apocryphal), the obvious unit for measuring progress is the “cat,” since Fritz and Tigress rule the household with an iron paw.

But this gets me into dangerous territory. Do I measure progress in “Fritzes” (12 pounds)? Or “Tigresses” (10 pounds)? Given that I’m merely a human servant, giving precedence to one cat over another seems like a dangerous thing to do. I could measure in “standardized cat” units – which of course would be 11 pounds, since I’m reliably informed that there are only two cats who are relevant to my life as a feline body servant. 🙂

But that is dangerous as well – what if one cat gains or loses weight? It would make it very difficult to report my form from day to day. And cats are pretty heavy. A 1-cat weight gain sounds much less epic than a 10-pound weight gain.

So I needed another unit. I thought about it for awhile, before stumbling on the obvious answer. Weasels! Weasels are intrinsically funny, they’re cute, and they’re small and light. And they’re fabulous! The species most commonly described as “weasel,” the least weasel, weighs only about 1-8 ounces for males and 1-4 ounces for females. And they’re adorable:

Naturally, with such a wide range of possible weights, I needed to establish a standard weasel weight. Fortunately, that is easily done. I wrote off to NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Time, which is responsible for establishing and maintaining standard units of weights, among other things), and asked them for the mass of their standard weasel. This really shouldn’t have been hard – all they’d have to do is go down into their vaults and weigh their Standard Weasel, which is presumably down there munching their Standard Mice and keeping company with the 1-kilogram sphere, the Standard Reasonable Person (for use in lawsuits), and other time-honored standards frequently used in daily life.

But have I heard back from them? NO! And this is where my tax dollars are going. Sigh.

In lieu of a direct ruling from a standards body, I have decided that the standard weasel will be 4 ounces. Converting from pounds, that means my goal is 700 weasels, Mike’s weight in standardized weasels. (At least until I hear back from NIST. I mean, seriously, guys? You can’t even tell me what a standard English weasel weighs?)

So far the only stat I have is from my last round of weight training, the deadlift, at which I can do 10 reps with 380 weasels (95 pounds). I don’t yet know my one-rep maximum, though – we’re still working up to that. But it appears I still have quite a few weasels to go.

Now, if you’re wondering about the practicalities of lifting that many weasels, I think 380 weasels is very do-able. One scenario would require a bunch of very well-trained weasels standing on an Olympic bar. Or maybe I could do buckets of weasels! I like the idea of lifting buckets of weasels. Or Vietnamese-style baskets of weasels, as in this photo from my 6-month trip through Southeast Asia. Visualize the greens in the baskets replaced with scampering weasels, and you’ll understand why weasels are so much effective for staying fit than mere self-discipline.

Yep! After thinking this through thoroughly, I think that weaseling my way into fitness is the right way to go. And thus, the weasel will be on the coat of arms I’m developing for my powerlifting persona. Watch this space for jacquard-woven weasel banners!