other than biking

the above photo is of a current Navajo Weaving in Coal Mine Technique-a work in progress

Today was my usual hour long workout with my trainer,an ex-Marine, at the gym. In addition to an hour of weight lifting, and an hour of heavy cardio on the eliptical trainer and staggering out of the gym I also managed to squeeze in a short leg stretching ride in the wind gusts ahead of the rain. 14 miles was enough to loosen me up and give me my daily dose of fighting the headwinds. Somehow without that challenge, my day just doesn't seem the same. In spite of the strong gusts and pretty consistent, strong east, southeast winds and pending rain, I still managed to maintain an average of 15 miles an hour.

Contrary to the impression that my recent spate of biking comments, I do other things in my life. Along with the usual housekeeping chores, caring for three cats and a dog etc, I am a handweaver and hand spinner. Most of my handweaving is done in traditional Navajo technique. My project this year is to learn how to do a technique called the Coal Mine technique.

In Coal Mine technique weaving, there are two threads for each pattern section, a leader and a follower. The weaving process results in a vertical pin stripe effect which seems easy in concept but is surprisingly difficult to keep track of since it is a completely different method of working the thread back and forth than I am used to. If I don't pay very close attention, I automatically revert to the sequence of back and forth I am used to which I then have to unweave, as a result my progress on this piece has been rather like doing the missionary step, moving two steps forward and one step back. The weaving is also slowing because I am at the last critical 3" . The last bit is always the hardest and often takes the same amount of time or more than the rest of the weaving because the threads are so tightly packed together