Mid summer news

A close up of one of the sunflowers from the garden

The heat wave, which is really just normal hot Houston July temperatures, continues. This week and last, the temperatures have been in the mid to high 90's (in the shade with air circulation) which means that they have been about 10 degrees higher in the sun. The humidity has yet to drop much below 60% and has topped out most days much higher and it never cools off much below the high 70's at night with the dew point usually matching the temperature which means that it never has a chance to cool off or disperse the humidity much at all.

I have been trying to get out to ride my bike earlier in the morning in order to beat the heat, which doesn't really work much , but at least means that I am usually in before the major heat of the day has built up. But really, riding in weather like this is a lot like riding in the rain. Once you are wet, whether from sweat or rain, you're wet and you can't get any wetter so you might as well continue. The main difference is that if you stop, there is a momentary illusion of coolness when you start up again and the air passing through your jersey tries to evaporate a bit of sweat. Then you start sweating agin, and your jersey is once again warm and clammy.

By the time I get home, I am soaked and dripping. I leave puddles behind where ever I stand and run a serious danger drowning by sweat inhalation when I bend over to clean my chain and check my tires. Since by this time, the backyard hose has been laying in the sun for several hours and has heated up nicely, I have taken to removing my shoes and showering off in my bike clothes in the back yard. This doesn't eliminate the puddles in the house, but provides a preliminary rinse for the bike clothes and seems to eliminate at least visible salt build up, around my feet. Besides the distance to the washing machine where I can dump the wet clothes and the distance to the real shower is shorter.

I have been picking out the local training routes that have shade. They vary in the quality and quantity of shade, and for as much shade as each of the routes has, there is an equal amount of bare sunlight on pavement. The termperature changes do seem helped in terms of speed and endurance, if not in comfort. Strangely enough, the best rides also manage to find their way to the vicinity of my favorite coffee shop, Fill Your Cup on highway 90A in Richmond, for an iced latte on the way home with only 10 miles to go. Just getting into the AC for 15 minutes helps a lot. The down side to this is that they do delicious scones. The up side is that I am usually too hot to want to eat anything other than the ice left at the end of the latte which probably saves me about 350 calories or another hour of riding to work it off. They are delicious scones though!

With gas prices increasing, I have invested in a backpack and now ride my bike to and from the gym, which serves as a nice warm up and cool down to my cardio and sessions with a trainer and gives me another 12-18 miles a week to add to my mileage. Although I would like to be doing 150 miles a week, I am realistic enough to settle for 100 while the heat lasts. I am fortunate enough to live in a suburb where it is also possible to ride around locally to do short errands, thus conserving the gas bucks for the once a week major grocery shop which involves more groceries than I could ever hope to carry on a bike. Between the decreased car use and the reliance on ceiling fans and not turning the AC down below 80, I am hoping to make a small savings in the gas and utility bills. Besides, it is a hoot to ride through the drive through at the bank or pick up prescriptions at the drive through.

After a hiatus from fiber activities while I was heavily training and preparing for the long ride, as well as a three week transition back to reality after the ride, I am starting to spin and weave again. I am focusing mostly on weaving, since the only fibers I really like to spin are silk, cashemere, alpaca and wool. Between the moderate heat inside the house, due to a less than efficient AC, and my sweaty hands, the wool tends to end up as an interesting semi felted yarn, while the short cashmere fibers stick to my hands and the silk and alpaca fibers stick to each other enough that a decent draw or drafting triangle isn't as easy as usual. I wish I liked spinning cotton, but alas I have no interest in spinning enough to weave with, and I can't stand knitting with it so it is not an eligible fiber.

I have put away my knitting for the duration, and my Southwest Shawl which was about 2/3 done will probably get ripped back to a start for the fourth time when the weather cools down enough to have wool and knitting in my lap without stifling with the heat. This one is another 3 year ongoing project. It is big and warm so I can only work on it when it is cool or cold. Unforntunately the cold weather never seems to last long enough for me to finish it. This makes me question my sanity, as if it is never cold enough to finish it, when do I ever think I will be able to wear it? Thoughts of retiring to Antartica just so we can wear our nice handspun, handknit wool shawl and sweaters has crossed my mind. Maybe I will eventually finish it and possibly even have a chance to wear it once or twice a winter if Houston gets a hard freeze (hey, it could happen) but in the meantime it is my so called "Penelope" project. (see Homer's "The Odessey.")

Cotton towels on the 4 harness table loom

My current weaving projects are a set of cotton pieces in alternating twill. I don't really have a purpose for these other than to use up a lot of thread. I had planned to try doing Navajo Coal Mine technique, which gives a pin stripe, pin wale cordorouy effect, but my sample only used up a small amount of the warp and if I recall, I put on 10 yards so I wouldn't have to rewarp for awhile. I have never done just a length of weaving in smaller horizontal units with the intent of cutting them apart and hemming them up as place mats or dish towels, so this will all be an experiment.

I am also working on a small tapestry study piece of a "Hopi Rain Maiden" carrying an olla for one of the guilds I am involved in. My objective is to manage some curves while still using basic Navajo methods. I haven't hit any of the curved portions yet, so it will be interesting if and when I progess that far. As usual, my design exceeds my abilities, so I am adapting and simplifying as I go.

drawing for "Hopi Rain Maiden tapestry"

I want to start another small Coal Mine tapestry using more traditional styles and motifs and have gotten my large Cactus Flower loom warped, but am wary of starting until I get either the cotton warp woven off or a better start on the Hopi Maiden. In the meantime, the large personal totem piece I started about 3 1/2 years ago waits patiently for it's last two inches, which as any weaver will tell you is the slowest hardest part, especially in Navajo Weaving.

However in the process of dragging it out of the cupboard and putting it where it could visually reproach me and reassembling the yarns required to complete it, I disappeared into the fiber closet one day, and when I re-emerged several hours later, spring cleaning had happened. So now that I can no longer use not being able to find the matching yarn as an excuse, I am forced to stick by the old stand by that "the last two inches take as long as the rest of the weaving. " That gives me another 3 1/2 years to procrastinate.

Ah well, it's all part of the summertime fun and and games. In the meantime, the garden is producing more basil than I can use, and 6 pots of bananna, jalapeno , Santo Domingo chile and New Mexico ancho chile peppers that I got from Michael for my birthday are coming on nicely.

First pepper harvest of the New Mexico varieties. We have been eating sweet bananna peppers for a month.