Month: July 2018

Tuesday Project Roundup: DIY Patagonia

Karen2 Comments

I needed a pair of quick-dry shorts so I ordered a pair of the famous Patagonia Baggies. I would have been fine paying $55 for sweatshop-free shorts from a sustainable B Corp, BUT–the elastic waist wasn’t enclosed on the inside (good for quick drying, but I wanted to wear these hiking too and I thought that would get irritating)–and the pockets weren’t deep enough for my phone. (This is a problem in nearly every pair of active bottoms I have. How hard is it, women’s clothing designers?!)

I looked at the Patagonia shorts, and thought, “Wait, I could make the Emerson Shorts…leave out the pleats…deepen the pockets…this might work!” I found some nylon supplex at The Rain Shed and for about $12 I had some DIY Patagonia.

The smart thing to do would have been to measure how deep the pleats were and add that exact amount to the waistband, but I just guessed and added about an inch and it worked out ok. I deepened the pockets by 1.5″ and made a second drop-in pocket inside the right main pocket to corral my phone while hiking (shown here in the next project). And to keep my shorts up with a phone in the pocket, I added an interior drawstring. (I also made my regular Emerson mod of adding about 3/8″ to the front crotch curve.)

The nylon supplex I found isn’t stretchy and matte like the Patagonia fabric, but it’s light and comfortable and really does dry quickly. Overall I’m really happy with these, and not just because they were cheap–they’re functional and exactly what I wanted and they performed really well on a 4-mile hike:

Val-der-i, val-der-a…

 

Things Done Over The Weekend

Karen
  • an HOA meeting
  • cleaning
  • the gym
  • a visit to Tracey Aviary
  • seeing family
  • meal planing
  • weekly planning
  • a trip to Costco
  • hiking up a mountain

I’d like a weekend to recover from the weekend, maybe?

 

Friday Links

Karen1 Comment

1. All about grunting, bros:

When you exert yourself at or above your physical limit, as in lifting something heavy, you will reflexively close the vocal folds of the larynx in an attempt to seal off the respiratory tract. By doing so, you give yourself a slightly enhanced degree of trunk stability and therefore slightly increased leg and arm strength.

2. Funny, but also maddening, but also true: 17 Real Life Would-You-Rathers I, A Woman, Have Had To Ask Myself.

Summer Poem

Karen

This is from Robert Hass’s “Santa Barbara Road” (in Human Wishes)  and it popped into my head this morning as I was thinking how nice it is that it’s light when you wake up and warm when you get out of the shower.

 

Everything rises from the dead in June .
There is some treasure hidden in the heart of summer
everyone remembers now, and they can’t be sure
the lives they live in will discover it.
They remember the smells of childhood vacations.
The men buy maps, raffish hats. Some women
pray to it by wearing blouses
with small buttons you have to button patiently,
as if to say, this is not winter, not
the cold shudder of dressing in the dark.

Summer Of Basics #1: Art Teacher Pants?

Karen1 Comment

The Arenite Pants pattern has been taking Instagram by storm since it was introduced earlier this year, and it seemed right up my alley: elastic waist, interesting shape, big pockets. I put them on the Summer of Basics list right away.

Reader, take heed to the pattern designer who says that you need fabrics with excellent drape for these. I thought my Brussels Washer Linen blend would be OK, but you need something really slinky to avoid having the pockets stick out about six inches. In the photo below, I’ve added a pleat to the center of the pockets to take in some of the volume and I’m still not quite convinced:

About those pockets: they looked magnificently large in the pattern photo, and they are indeed wide. But they’re surprisingly shallow–just the depth of my hand, and definitely not the vertical depth of an iPhone.

If I were to make these again, I’d use 100% rayon (or this, gah, but I do not need silk harem pants, right?), add a couple inches to the pocket bag depth, and probably cut a size down–these run fairly large. (You can probably get away with far less yardage than the pattern designer calls for, too. This was 3 yards of 60″ fabric and I easily had three-quarters of a yard leftover. And that’s from a size 10.)

For all of the reasons above, I wasn’t sure what I thought of these, but seeing them in pictures has convinced me that they work. I just need to pile on the jewelry, mess up my hair, and pretend I’m an art teacher who can’t be constrained by ordinary pants.

All The Hikes

Karen

We did a 4th of July hike up in the Uinta mountains last week that I didn’t post about because I was too busy talking about my workouts.* Yesterday we did a normal jaunt up Millcreek Canyon (the upper canyon is open again!) so here’s double the hike pictures for Monday.

From Millcreek yesterday–we got some afternoon rain so there were good cloud shadows:

 

And from our holiday hike–we did the Lofty Lake Loop trail again with my brother and his family. It was indeed lofty (11,000 feet top elevation) with many lakes:

 

 

*Turns out that when you push a heavy sled at the gym, everything else that does not involve pushing a heavy sled gets easier! Including hiking! Also, DID YOU KNOW I GO TO THE GYM NOW?!

My Life Is Now Just One Big Sports Metaphor

Karen1 Comment

Since I last talked about swoleness, I’ve started working with a personal trainer at a gym and it takes everything I have not to tell all and sundry about it. (Trader Joe’s checker: “Got any fun plans this weekend?” Me, internally: “Yes! I’m gonna get my ass kicked at the gym! I never thought I’d like it! It’s the weirdest and best thing!”)

I have never been sporty. I never thought I would ever enjoy “the burn.” In fact, I did just about everything in my power to AVOID feeling any prolonged or extreme burn my entire life–but now I’m at a gym three days a week working towards a goal of lifting my bodyweight. No one is more surprised than I.

Every session with the trainer is literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I do things I never would have considered on my own (push a hundred-pound sled?! I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR!) But after every session–once I stop feeling like I might die–I feel invincible. If I can do [whatever Extremely Challenging Physical Thing I just did], I can do anything.

It’s like I’m in my own training montage in a movie.

I know–from a non-sporty lifetime of pretending to care about sporty people talking about their sport–that no one cares about your workout but you. But I can’t stop talking about it! It’s not even like I can brag about how much I can bench (12 pound dumbbells, bro!); I’m just so excited about my own action movie montage that I assume other people want to know about this too.

So if I know you and all I talk about is my workouts, or how sore one muscle is, or how another one might be getting bigger, or how far I pushed the damn sled: I’m sorry.

And have you considered powerlifting? It’s really fun.