A Personal Best

All afternoon, I've been enjoying the glowy happy feeling of endorphins! Today, Jeff and I biked a 67 mile route at nearly the same rate of speed we ride our 20 mile routes! The ride was the NBW Scramble Metric starting in Seekonk, MA. Unfortunately, my Garmin mysteriously shut off during the ride (this happened to Mr. Suitcase last weekend!), but we had Jeff's Cateye computer for backup.

The Stats
Time: 3:47
Distance: 67 Miles
Average Speed: 17.7 mph
Note: *No Stops!* Well, we had to put a foot down at a couple of road crossings, but that was it!

The ride was wonderful! It felt like we were always going just the right speed. The temperature was about 70 degrees and we had some stretches in sun and some in shade. The terrain was mostly flat to rolling hills with a few steeper hills here and there. There were horse farms all along the route.

Sometimes I wonder if my obsession with cycling is a little weird, but when I show up to a club ride and see 100-150 other people there on bikes, I may be weird, but I know I have a lot of company!

My favorite thing about cycling is setting goals and challenging myself to ride harder, faster and longer. It's so rewarding to be able to see improvements from month to month, sometimes even from one week to the next. Sure, like with any sport, there is some pain involved, but there is definitely more gain than pain!

Garden

I'm doing a little less with the veggie garden this year, planting the same area, but with more spacing and fewer varieties. I'm focusing on the things we use the most and making those things easier to take care of by leaving lots of room for tilling to minimize the amount of hand weeding. So, things look a lot less impressive this year, but it's coming along! Among the weeds in this pic, there are tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and cukes. Thank goodness we have a long growing season here as I still have a bunch of seeds to sow! In the background to the right you can just make out a bunch of greenness that is the butterfly garden. At the corner of the veggie garden is a clump of weigala shrubs (two are small ones that I rooted from cuttings) and to the left is the arbor bed in the shade. I need to mow and do yardwork, but it's been too wet lately, so things are getting wild!

Here's a poppy in the color I expected to see...pink, not orange like I showed you in the last post! I think it is a Princess Victoria Louise.

Will I get these blueberries before the birds do this year? Last year I did and they were delicious!

Blooms

It's very overcast today, but I took some flower pics while out with the dogs. This is the best I can come up with for a flower that fits in with the current Project Spectrum colors. It's a Dianthus 'tuxedo'. It's just starting to bloom and should fill out a lot when the sun shines again.

The foxgloves are just starting to bloom. I love this color!

I have some blue Salvia.

And some in pink.

Where did this come from? It's a shocking color in my generally blue/pink garden. It sprang up where I had some light pink/coral poppies last year.

Knitting Goodies and FO

I've been looking at Knitting Lingerie Style every time I go to the bookstore lately, so I finally bought a copy. It is a beautifully produced book with some lovely patterns (beyond just underwear). I especially like the racer back top, square neck top, and the slip. I'm hoping to learn some shaping techniques I can apply to any pattern.

I also bought the latest Simply Knitting UK.

For Project Spectrum, I got to work on a red and gold Christmas stocking using a pattern from a past issue of Simply Knitting UK. It knitted up very quickly and I think I will make a few more for gift giving this December. I felt the pattern needed some interpretation (corrections!), but I made some adjustments and things turned out well. Isn't it weird to see pictures of a Christmas stocking in June? It was even weirder to knit it this time of year! Here's a pic taken straight on.

And one with a mug for scale. It seems like a good size for filling with an assortment of little gifts.

After finishing the back of Tea Time, I cast on for the sleeves and am now beginning the armhole decreases.

Recent Biking

It seems like the weather changed suddenly from cold to hot this year. One day, I was wearing my winter cycling jersey and the next, I needed to dress in my lightest summer kit. It's a little hard to make the adjustment to working out in hot weather. I tend to forget to drink enough! Now that the weather is hot, the bugs are out too. It hurts when a big bee or something crashes into your cheek as you are rolling along! But the worst thing is the way the small bugs collect in your helmet and crawl around under it. Ugh!!! I've actually had to stop and take my helmet off and shake them out of my hair to keep from going insane! As you know, I love to watch the birds when I'm out biking, but this time of year, I've learned I have to watch out for them. There are lots of young fledglings and weary parent birds flapping about without paying attention! I've had to brake to avoid running into a few. And, on one drive home from a ride, a tiny, still fluffy looking, baby bird landed on the hood of my truck as I drove slowly at an intersection. I was so worried for it and tried to go very, very slowly despite the traffic. Fortunately, it hopped/slid off to the right side and seemed to make it to the side of the road.

I love my bike so much that I have to be careful not to post too many pics of it on the blog. But it's been awhile, so here it is! My beautiful bike at a little pavilion by Newport harbor. I recently tipped my handlebars forward a little to give me a slightly more aerodynamic position on the hoods and better placement for my hands in the drops. See, I drink matching blue Gatorade, hee hee!

Thursday, I did a 40 mile solo ride twice around Conanicut Island. This is the route the racers do at the annual Jamestown races in the fall. I got an average speed of 16.9 mph for the ride. It always annoys me when I end up with a pesky .9! A 17.0 would have been much more satisfying! Oh well! Here’s the elevation graph for my ride and you can see more data and a map here, if you like.

Friday, was stormy, so I took a day off. Saturday morning, Jeff and I did the Newport Loop again. A lot of bikers were riding the same route including a friend of ours. I think everyone was trying to burn off calories so they could go to the Newport Chowder Cook-Off and consume vats of chowder and mountains of crab cakes without remorse! I'm allergic to seafood, so I can easily avoid those calories. It was funny to see all the people in their "I heart Chowdah" t-shirts walking to the festival. The elevation profile for the Newport Loop is kind of neat. You can see how we go downhill to the beaches and then back up at the end.

Sunday, Jeff and I did the NBW Hope Valley ride with at least 100 other club members. It was hilly, but fun as the scenery was pretty and there was a wonderful, long downhill stretch at the end. Here’s the elevation graph from that ride. Jeff and I worked on our drafting, inspired by pairs time trial racers, and got like clockwork doing 40 second pulls for some stretches of the ride. But it was hard to maintain that on some of the hills and there were also long stretches with very rough pavement. We got an overall average of 16.6 mph. Again, if you're into the bike stuff, you can see more data and a map here. I loved seeing all the exceedingly cute chipmunks over there. I don't know why, but we rarely see them around our home. We must have seen hundreds during the ride. I'm not sure which trees were causing it, but there was an unbelievable amount of pollen in the air. I've never seen anything like it! We were all covered with yellow powder and it was burning every one's eyes. My bike is yellow and my helmet and glasses, etc. It was weird to see it all stuck on my skin too! I was such a strange color! I dread to think how much I ingested, or worse, inhaled into my lungs. Hopefully the rain we are getting today will help clean all that pollen out of the air!

I hope you are enjoying lots of fun, outdoorsy activities too!

Blooms

It's been quite dry for a month or so, but the plants are coming along ok. I thought I'd show you some of the pretty flowers blooming at the moment. In the shade, I have Columbine and Jacob's Ladder.

In a full sun area, I have these daisies. Aren't they bright and happy looking?

The Weigala's are my favorite shrubs. I have this light pink one...

...and a few of these darker ones.

This picture shows you why I was taking pictures of flowers yesterday evening instead of biking! We got some powerful storms soon after I took this.

Project Spectrum: Black, Red, Metallics

I'm still working on Tea Time and Cara in past Project Spectrum colors, but do hope to cast on for a couple of new things that fit with the current PS scheme. The colors, black, red and metallic, make me think of Christmas. As it's never too early to start on presents, I think I'll make at least one stocking with Patons yarn using a pattern from Simply Knitting magazine. The stockings will be good wrappings for gifts this December. The yarn is red with a gold thread running through it.

Also, I plan to cast on for a shawl using Rowan kidsilk night which has a silver thread running though it. The pattern is from Exquisite Little Knits. What cast on/off would you use for this? Just long-tail, or is there something better? I haven't made a lacy shawl before, so I'd appreciate your advice. I really want the ends to look neat and match each other as closely as possible.

As someone who tends to go for muted colors, I'm a little surprised at how many things I found around my home that fit the PS scheme! Red is prevalent in my dining room, but in a subtle way. It's in the upholstery of the chairs (see the background of the Rowan yarn pic above) and I have a red checkered tablecloth that you've seen a lot as the background of my pics (including the Patons yarn one above).

Metallics are everywhere and sadly all need polishing or dusting! I blame the dogs for tracking all the dirt in ;-) In my kitchen, I have this quirky old coffee grinder.

I like to hang paintings and prints on the walls and most have gold frames that add a soft metallic gleam here and there. This one is the most ornate and one of my favorites. It's petite, just about 10 inches across.

Many of my things that are black, red and metallic come from or are inspired by things from China, India or Japan. In my living room, I have this cabinet for our cd collection. It's just from the Winterthur Museum catalog, but adds a little color to the room and thankfully hides all the the cds and keeps them from getting dusty.

Other than the cd cabinet, all my black, red and metallic items are very small and part of displays in my curio cabinets. Here is one example. It's a little wooden toy horse from India. I've collected horses for a long time.

Another example is this demi cup and saucer from Japan.

Of course, I have to include a picture of Jeff's bike as it's black, red and metallic! (This is the pic from the Cannondale site, not Jeff's actual bike.)

Well, that's all I have for now! I look forward to seeing all your PS posts for the new color scheme!