Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About Tien
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Travels
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All travel posts / Africa / Weaving from side to side, in fabric and cars
Previous post: Kente, kente, kente
Next post: Wove a placemat!

February 3, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Weaving from side to side, in fabric and cars

It’s amazing how fast one adapts to one’s surroundings.  For example, I can now ride in the front seat of a rickety old car, with no seat belt, as the driver careens wildly from one side of the road to another at 40 mph to avoid potholes, pedestrians, and the occasional cow, and pulls out to pass going head-on into oncoming traffic (and barely missing both the head-on collision and the passing car), with no second thoughts.

Of course, my first thought is usually “Holy-cow-mother-of-jesus-I’m-going-to-die,” followed by a fervent prayer not to reincarnate as a ground squirrel, but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

Things are going great in Ghana.  Kwame and I have been working on weaving a sampler, a single long strip of kente with quite a few Ewe designs in it.  Today I’m going to ask him to help me weave a placemat, so I can get an understanding of how they get those designs to line up so exactly.  It’s very slow work, about 7 hours for about 3-4 feet of woven strip, but even that should be enough to get me a small placemat, spread out over the next two days.  I hope, anyway.  I’d settle for a napkin. 

Ghanaian food is rapidly starting to wear on me.  Mostly what I’ve been offered so far consists of some kind of starch (boiled yam, a sticky mixture of cassava and corn flour mixed together, eaten with the fingers, a “bread” made from corn but not resembling cornbread in the slightest) and some kind of spicy, tomato-based stew with fish or meat, coconut or palm oil in it.  Tasty, but day after day is a little much.  I’d give a bunch for a burger right now.

Speaking of burgers, there appears to be a place in Accra that serves various bits of interesting game meat ““ zebra, kudu, antelope, etc. (nothing endangered).  I may try going there once I get back to Accra.

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: Africa, All travel posts, Ghana

Previous post: Kente, kente, kente
Next post: Wove a placemat!

Comments

  1. Laurel True says

    April 4, 2007 at 10:47 am

    Hey Tien,

    I found your blog by accident! Tried to read your Ghana postings but all were truncated… Sounds though like you had a super trip. I would love to hear more and how your travels with Chuku went and your overall impressions of your trip!

    All the best,

    Laurel True

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Archives

Tags

aids lifecycle outfits autumn splendor book cashmere coat cats celtic braid coat color study cross dyeing design design class devore doubleweave doubleweave shawls drawing dye samples dye study group gradient colors house infinite warp jacquard loom katazome knitted blanks kodachrome jacket ma's memorial mohair coat network drafted jacket/shawl project network drafting painted warp phoenix rising phoenix rising dress phoenix rising kimono phoenix rising reloaded pre-weavolution project sea turtles taquete tie-dye tied weaves tomatoes velvet weaving drafts web design website redesign wedding wedding dress woven shibori

Categories

  • Africa
  • aids lifecycle
  • All blog posts
  • All travel posts
  • Asia
  • Bangkok
  • Belize
  • Cambodia
  • Central America
  • Chai Ya (Wat Suon Mok)
  • Chiang Mai
  • Chiang Rai (Akha)
  • China
  • chocolate
  • computer stuff
  • creating craft
  • Creative works
  • cycling
  • Delhi
  • Dharamsala
  • drawing
  • dyeing
  • Fiber Arts
  • finished
  • food
  • garden
  • Ghana
  • Guatemala
  • Hanoi
  • Ho Chi Minh City
  • Hoi An
  • India
  • Khao Lak
  • Knitting
  • knitting
  • Ko Chang
  • Laos
  • Luang Namtha
  • Luang Prabang
  • markleeville death ride
  • meditations on craft
  • mental illness
  • musings
  • Phnom Penh
  • powerlifting
  • Rewalsar (Tso Pema)
  • sewing
  • Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
  • Southeast Asia
  • surface design
  • textiles
  • Thailand
  • travel
  • Vangvieng
  • Vientiane
  • Vietnam
  • Warp & Weave
  • Weaving
  • weaving
  • weavolution
  • writing

© Copyright 2025 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·