Pacific Northwest
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Climbing, Footbag, Running Leave a comment »Yeah, I’ve been sewing new footbags at a pretty slow rate, but I’ve still got a few to show:
This was a custom bag for a customer in the UK.
All black footbag. My black Ultrasuede is somewhat thicker than my other colors, so this bag is kind of stiff. I might kick around with it to test its durability.
I haven’t actually played any footbag for many weeks. I’ve been devoting all of my time to running. Lots of running. I have a marathon coming up on June 3rd, so I’ve been getting long runs of around 20 miles in on the weekends for most of the past few weeks. It feels good to be running so far, but also very time consuming. I’m looking forward to having less structure to my running schedule after the marathon, so I can just run in whatever manner I feel like running for that day. I suspect that will include some long runs in the mountains once they melt out a little more.
A big reason why I haven’t posted anything in so long is that I now live in Silverdale Washington. I was offered a good job, and having been mostly unemployed for the previous 1.5 years, I decided to take the opportunity. The job is going good, but the area is surely lacking in climbing. There’s basically zero climbing around Silverdale. Climbing has been probably the biggest, or one of the biggest, components of my life, so it feels strange to not have that creative/physical/whatever outlet that climbing always afforded me. Going from living in a car to climb every day, to not climbing outside and only going to a climbing gym, to now only going to a gym on the weekends (1-2 hours away, depending on which one I go to), has given me a little bit of a mental shock. I can’t help but question my motives for making employment such a priority over climbing that it has nearly ruled climbing out entirely. On the flipside, I’m gaining a lot of job experience that will hopefully lead into another job in a place that has climbing readily available. One thing that a friend pointed out that is very helpful, is even if I decide to leave, I can look for other jobs while I still have one and am getting paid, rather than living in a tent and applying for jobs while I look at my bank account dwindle and wonder where I can stay in 2 weeks. Its an interesting choice to mull over, with so many variable it can be overwhelming.
Since I do have weekends off, I’ve made a couple trips to Seattle to sample a gym called the Seattle Bouldering Project. That place is pretty cool; one of the few places that has a section dedicated to just training, with three lanes of campus rungs, hangboards, and even H.I.T. strips. If it were closer, I would be able to get uber strong!
On the ferry over to Seattle, with a distant view of Ranier
Approaching Seattle, with another ferry leaving
On the ferry back to Bremerton, with the Olympic Mountains trying to peek out through the clouds
Back to Bishop
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Climbing Leave a comment »I was lucky enough this past week to get in a bouldering trip down in Bishop, California. The first two days were accompanied by some motivation sapping wind; the kind that blows tents flat to the ground and leaves yours with a nice layer of fine sand all over the inside. Despite the wind, and the following rain storm, the climbing was great. I had a few goals coming into Bishop, but only manged one of them. These goals were to onsight The Checkerboard (V7/8), try to send Xavier’s Roof (V11), and just to try to send a double-digit boulder problem in general. The only one I got was to onsight (technically flash, since I watched some videos of it) The Checkerboard, which was put up by Chris Sharma.
Phil on the starting moves of The Checkerboard. I did the high start, since falling off the low start would have ended in a big tumble off a sloping boulder.
Xavier’s Roof was hard… I did all the moves up to the last two holds, but couldn’t pull the last one. It takes putting your foot up at head height and then rocking over on to it to make a 3.5 foot span to the finishing jug. I had high hopes initially, but when I started feeling out that mantle, I figured Xavier’s Roof would have to be bookmarked as a project.
In addition to all the bouldering, we also got in a day at Owens River Gorge. It was a good day to give the tips a rest, and I even managed to onsight Theives in the Temple (5.12a). For the week that we spent in Bishop, only one of them was a rest day. By the end, I think we were all feeling a bit destroyed. Our last day I was sort of scrambling to try and fulfill my other goals by searching out a V10 I could hopefully get pretty quickly, but came up short and ended my day by giving close to 50 tries on a super thin V7 called Junior’s Acheivement. I didn’t send, and I just had tips that ached when I tried to untie knots the next morning.
Whenever I leave Bishop, I just want to go back!
Kristin on a 35 meter 5.10d at The Gorge.
Zac on the last moves of Iron Man Traverse (V4)
Lincoln City 10k
Posted: March 7, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Running Leave a comment »Last weekend I was able to make it up the coast and run in the Lincoln City 10k. It was a pretty good event, with good food afterwards, a fun course, and a long sleeve technical T-shirt to boot. I had a goal of getting under 50 minutes, and managed to run a lot faster than expected with a time of 46’15.3″. This works out to be 7’27″miles, which I am pretty happy with. I even came in 10th overall, and won my age division! There was a half-marathon as well, so my thought is that all the speedy people did the half-marathon instead of the 10k, which is why it sounds like I did so good. Nonetheless it was a fun weekend.
And I also have another footbag; its a baby cougar/country cream atomic pattern:
60 grams, golf-ball size
Lots of Running
Posted: February 27, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Climbing, Running 1 Comment »So my footbag stitching has been sluggish, to say the least. I’ve made two bags in the past couple weeks, both feel good and are 60 grams:
Instead of stitching and focusing on footbag, I have been running, climbing, and reading much more than I usually do. On Saturday, I ran 10.3 miles, with about 1000′ of elevation gain, and averaged like 10’20” miles. That doesn’t sound fast, but given the elevation, distance, and the feeling of not being cashed when I finished, I was pretty happy with it. Plus, I had no soreness or tightness afterward; It didn’t feel like it was a big, taxing effort. I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that I’m on a marathon training schedule. I figured since this will be my first marathon, I’ll probably just poke along and get it done kind of slowly. Over the past couple weeks though, I’ve been finding that I’m actually getting faster. I can run 9’30” miles comfortably (as in I think I could sustain that pace for up to 2 hours on a flat course), and even did a 9.1 mile run at a 9’20” mile pace without an undue amount of discomfort. It’s pretty cool to see just how effective training can be. (Oh yeah, my run on Saturday put me over 100 miles so far for the year – an arbitrary but fun landmark!)
So I’ve been running 4 times a week, and climbing 3-4 times a week as well. Once or twice a week I climb and run on the same days. Even my climbing sessions have been getting longer. I’m starting to climb for a solid 2.5-3 hours every time I go in. It feels pretty good to be exercising and strengthening my entire body, and then be able to see the performance gains. I was talking about this the other day with a friend at the gym; we both agreed that the ideal occupation would be a professional athlete. Getting paid, or at least “making it happen”, to be in top form. Yep, that sounds awesome.
The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of is reading. So far in 2012 I’ve finished 5 books: “Freefall” by Joseph Stiglitz (about the collapse of the economy), “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain, “Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide To Running Ultramarathons” by Bryon Powell, “We The Living” by Ayn Rand (go read it!), “On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion” by Stefan Molyneux (about the power, stability, and rewards that enacting logic and reason has over just accepting someone’s words as fact). And right now I’m reading “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore. Right, Al Gore? (Insert Al Gore joke here) Regardless of who wrote it, it has a good conversation about the role, or absence of the role, reason has in today’s politics, government, and how it is conveyed to the public.
To round things out, I’ll put up a new link. If you feel like it, you can check out all my runs that I do, and even be a fan: http://www.movescount.com/members/beckermj.
More Footbags
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Footbag Leave a comment »So I was sitting around a few days ago, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t sewn a footbag for what seemed like a really long time (but probably like 4-5 days). I said to myself “I’m gonna make some footbags!”
I like this color combo
Blur pattern
These bags have some small polyester pellets substituted for glass beads, which is what I have been using. The pellets are just a tiny bit bigger than the glass beads, but way lighter. All this means is that to get to 60 grams, I put more steel shot in. All said and done, the feel of the bag is very similar to one that has glass beads. I bought a 2 lb. bag, so the upside is that if anyone wants a lighter bag to use in a kicking circle, I can just fill it up with some polyester pellets, and it’ll last ages longer than a heavy bag filled with metal.
I went to play play some footbag a couple days ago, and found that I’m really out of practice. I’ve adopted a marathon training schedule, so most of my exercise time is devoted to running. It was a little frustrating to watch the bag roll off over and over on inside and clipper stalls, but the satisfaction of running 8 miles helps to make up for it. Maybe I’ll just focus on simple and not intensive technical drills for the time being since having hard footbag sessions and a complete running schedule are difficult to combine.
Oh yeah, and here are some cool links to check out:
http://www.shredglobal.com/: A site with a lot of useful info on footbag, including a vocab list, and a large collection of tricks to learn
http://www.etsy.com/shop/UmbrellaFootbags: I think I’m going to start putting some footbags on etsy.com in an effort to sell more bags. Check out my store, and buy my bags there, too. I’m asking $25, after shipping, since etsy.com takes a percentage of the transaction, and there’s also a very small listing fee.
2 New Patterns
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Footbag Leave a comment »I finally got around to making a couple of patterns that I’d seen, but never made. This first one is a spinner tri-claw:
This one has been sold
I like the spinner tri-claw because it has three distinct “arms” of each color that wrap around the bag. As viewed from the side, it gives the impression that the bag is striped. The next new pattern is called a ninja-star:
This shows one of the three "arms"
The ninja-star was probably the most confusing bag I have made so far. I didn’t really understand how it was going to work until I was like 3/4 done with it. It’s actually similar to the spinner tri-claw in that it has three “arms” that intertwine with the other color and wrap around the bag. The difference is that the arms are shorter in a ninja-star, and there is a larger area where they emanate from (with the center of this area being a hexagon of the opposite color). It’s a really neat pattern, so I might have to try out some more color combos.
Also, I came across Jay Boychuk’s “footblog” (check out his more recent posts for some good reading) on modified.in last night and really enjoyed it. I’ve read similar accounts of people involved in other sports like climbing or running, but its inspiring to read how dedicated Jay is to truly mastering all aspects of footbag. He was also responsible for the 2011 Christmas Calendar, and now it makes a lot of sense why every video was so great: he really likes footbag!
3 New Footbags
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made 2 Comments »I’ve got some new footbags to show. Two are regular sized and the third one is a mini, and all are 59-60 grams.
Almost a repeat of an earlier bag
The classic soccer ball
Mini
Size comparison
In addition to my bags, I also made an updated stitching tutorial. I’ve been wanting to make it for a long time, but never made myself sit down and actually do it. It isn’t a completely new tutorial; I just go over some things that I do differently now and that I think make a better footbag.
Also – Field’s Fabric (online fabric store) just started carrying some bright yellow (called sunshine) ultrasuede light! Go get some!
Two More
Posted: January 18, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made Leave a comment »I’ve had some time on my hands, so here are a couple more bags that I’ve made:
4 color stripe pattern
This one weighs in at 61 grams
Tri-claw pattern
New Bags For a New Year
Posted: January 14, 2012 Filed under: Bags I've Made, Footbag Leave a comment »Apologies for the large lapse in time between my posts, but with the holiday travel and everything else, I wasn’t able to sew any footbags. But now that I’m back, and I’ve got three new ones to show (two of which are sold):
A custom 12 and 32 - Sold!
My shiny new scale
All new colors
I’m excited now because I’ve added about 9 new colors to my collection of Ultrasuede. If you want to take a look at all of it, I made a new tab at the top of the page that says “Custom Footbags”. Browse the colors, and e-mail me if you want to create your own! In case you want to visualize something new, here’s a handy little tool. It lets you use a colorless footbag as a canvas, and has colors you can dye each panel with, letting you make any color combo you want!
After watching all the videos on the modified Christmas calendar, I think this one was my favorite: http://vimeo.com/33633806. Footbag at 300 frames per second equals mind blowage, followed by a surge in motivation!
Sunday Sewing
Posted: December 11, 2011 Filed under: Bags I've Made 1 Comment »I’ve got another new bag to show today, and it’s also a new design. Four equaltorial hexes of one color, combined with sort of a reverse flower design. That probably doesn’t make any sense, so I’ll just show the pictures:
For comparison, here are my last two footbags with a regular sized Haniabag in the middle:
I’ve been making an effort to up the quality of my bags by striving to make them on the same level as a Haniabag. I think they’re pretty similar, but Hania has made something like 2000 footbags, so she has her stitching on auto-pilot which means her stitches are almost always uniform. I’m still streamlining my method, but always making good bags in the process.
If you want an Umbrella footabg, here is my current selection:
Plenty to choose from!
Just leave an email if you see “the one”. Oh yeah, stay up to date with the modified Christmas calendar. The videos so far have been top quality!
