creating craft | Tien Chiu's Blog

November 11, 2016 by Tien Chiu

SOFA Chicago – Part I

Sorry for the long lapse! I have been traveling like crazy – last week I was in Chicago, this week I’m in Southern California. I’m going to try catching up now…

Last week I went to SOFA Chicago – and what a time I had! I flew in on Thursday afternoon, and spent a very pleasant, low-key Friday with my in-laws before going to the show on Saturday. SOFA Chicago showcases top-flight craftwork – it is put on by galleries, who bring selected works from their featured artists. While there weren’t many textiles, it was an amazing show otherwise – I’ll showcase some of the art in my next blog post.

Chicago is just entering fall, and while it wasn’t yet the blaze of autumn leaves that I’d been hoping for, I did get to see some beautiful fall leaves:

fall leaves in Chicago — autumn tree in Chicago

If you’re wondering why I’m so fascinated by fall, it’s because I haven’t seen a real autumn for almost 30 years. Neither Los Angeles nor the San Francisco Bay Area have what I would call “fall” – yes, a few trees change colors, but most do not. So you get one or two trees changing colors on every street, but you never get a blaze of glory as all the trees change at once. I don’t miss the cold weather, and I definitely don’t miss slush and ice in winter – but I do miss fall. So it was nice getting to see even a little bit of it, for once.

Saturday I went to SOFA. It’s an incredible show – the creme de la creme of craft artists. I’m planning to cover some of the craftwork in a separate post, so I’ll leave that to later – but despite a dearth of textile artists, I found a ton of creative inspiration there. I also got inspiration of a different sort when I went to the Schiffer Publishing booth. My book Master Your Craft: Strategies for Designing, Making, and Selling Artisan Work was displayed prominently on a beautiful table. As I walked up to the display, I overheard two people (who were looking through the book) talking excitedly about how wonderful Master Your Craft was and how much they needed what was in it. They were delighted to meet me and get their books signed. Moments like that are golden for writers – they make the four years that went into the book totally worthwhile!

Here’s a pic of myself at the Master Your Craft display, with Pete Schiffer, the president of Schiffer Publishing:

Master Your Craft display at Schiffer Publishing

Later that day I gave my lecture, which was very well-received. The audience wasn’t huge (about 30 people), but they were engaged and attentive, and several people came up after the talk to say how great they thought it was. Sandra, my editor, was in the audience and said it was great to watch people’s eyes light up as they got “Aha!” moments throughout the presentation. And afterwards, ten or twelve people followed me to the Schiffer booth to buy books and get them signed.

Here’s a pic of me at the podium, wearing my jacket Autumn Splendor:

And here I am signing books afterwards:

The day finished on a lovely note. My mother-in-law had gifted a friend with a copy of Master Your Craft, and got a wonderfully enthusiastic thank-you note in return. Here it is:

I’m totally blushing. And delighted, of course! Helping others was my primary goal for the book, and it’s marvelous to hear that I’m succeeding.

I flew home on Sunday morning, still aglow and more certain than ever that spending four years writing the book had been the right thing to do.

October 26, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Many celebrations: cloth, craft, chocolates, and Chicago!

Wow! It’s been an action-packed week – things have been happening so fast I haven’t had a chance to catch up! But here are a few of last week’s highlights:

First, I celebrated a decade of weaving on October 20. Yep, last Thursday marked the 10-year anniversary of my learning to weave! On that fateful day, I brought home an 8-shaft Baby Wolf, and the rest is history.

Here’s my first weaving project:

And here’s my most recent one:

Quite a difference!

Second, I went to the American Craft Council conference, “Present Tense,” and had a wonderful time! It kicked off with a tasting of craft whiskeys:

And I gave a talk. Here’s Chris Amundsen, the executive director of the American Craft Council (who wrote the Foreword for my book Master Your Craft), about to introduce me for my “Creative Blocks” talk:

Tien and Chris Amundsen at "Present Tense" talk — Tien and Chris Amundsen at “Present Tense” talk

I’m pleased to say that the talk went well! The audience was engaged, and we had some great conversation about common creative blocks and how to address them. Much to my interest, one of the most common creative blocks was time and time management. When I got home, I wrote a Creating Craft blog post about finding time for studio work – which seems to have struck a chord: it’s already had more Facebook shares than anything else I’ve written in 14 years of blogging! I’m so glad people are finding it useful – if you are grappling with not enough studio time, check it out! I hope you will find it useful as well.

I also discovered that both the American Craft Council’s magazine American Craft and the Surface Design Association’s publication Surface Design Journal are planning to run reviews of Master Your Craft. And Schiffer Publishing is getting ready to send flyers to 1,000+ craft schools to sell Master Your Craft. So lots of good news there!

Pivoting to chocolate, Chocolates for Charity is now done, and brought in over $4,550 for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Thank you to all who donated! It’s a great cause; the money will fund some great textile programs and exhibits in the coming months.

And here’s a photo of this year’s chocolate haul, 112 pounds of Valrhona chocolate:

Finally, I’m pleased to say that I’ve been invited to give a lecture at SOFA Chicago! This is a large and renowned craft show – one of the top shows for gallery-represented artists/artisans. This is where collectors come to buy high-end craft. Most of the lecturers are very well-known artists sponsored by equally well-known galleries, so this is quite an honor. My talk will be on Saturday, November 5, from 4:30-5:30 in Room B, followed by a book signing from 5:30-6:30pm in the Schiffer Publishing booth. More details at http://www.sofaexpo.com/2016/lecture-series . (For those who would like to attend – SOFA Chicago will be held at Festival Hall, Navy Pier, 600 East Grand Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 .)

So it’s been an action-packed couple of weeks…stay tuned!

August 17, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Got my first coaching client!

I’m pleased to say that I have my first coaching client! She and I met through the Laptop Lifestyle Academy, a forum for people who are building online blog businesses. I’m going to be coaching her through the process outlined in my book, starting with a single project – a crocheted shoe. Of course the point is not to get to a finished piece; it’s to understand and practice the Creative Cycle and the principles behind it. Once she has that down, she’ll be able to accelerate her own leap to mastery. It’s going well so far!

I’m looking for more coaching clients, both to build experience and to help understand others’ creative roadblocks so I can plan out my online class. So if you think you might be interested in help, either with overcoming specific creative roadblocks or with a more systematic approach, email me at tien@creatingcraft.com . I’m offering a free 20-minute consultation; if you feel you need more help afterwards, I’m making a special offer of $59/hr (for the first 10 hours), but only for the first five people to sign up. After that it will go up to my posted rate of $100/hr. More details here – or just email me, I don’t bite!

(Don’t be shy about getting a free consultation, by the way; I am very interested in hearing about what problems people might want to solve, and I promise I will not give you a “hard sell” at the end. For me, this is about understanding my audience, so I will get value out of a free consultation even if we don’t wind up working together.)

Meanwhile, today I got the awesomest rejection letter EVER, from a publicist I was trying to hire. Here’s what she had to say:

After really taking a close look at everything you have in place and your goals, we just don’t think <my agency> is the best fit for you and your book. This actually comes from a place of admiration and support. So many of the services we offer focus online. The truth of the matter is, you have already covered online marketing in your plans for the book. It’s so important to us when we take on any project that we feel we are filling a need and can provide a service that an author can’t do on their own.

To be honest, we were blown away (and incredibly impressed!) with the plans you have in place. You have an extremely well thought out plan and the contacts/network you need to execute on that.

It’s rare but what I heard from my team today was that you were all set and we actually don’t have additional services to offer. That’s a huge compliment from my pretty tough group.

While I hate to send an email letting an author know we can’t help ““ this is truly the best kind. You don’t need our help. You are really really doing well on your own!

Please do keep us posted. We think you have a great product on your hands and a great plan in place. We’ll be anxious to hear how everything goes!

The other publicist I approached said the exact same thing. I guess all the reading I’ve done about book marketing has paid off! (Of course, I still need to execute on the plan, but at least my to-do list is sound.)

Weaving is progressing very slowly right now, but I have been busy harvesting! Here are 5 gallons of muscat grapes, which Mike will hopefully transform into muscat wine:

I am just a wee bit terrified by this sight. You see, we have four young grape vines. This was the first year we got any grapes at all, and only from two of the four vines. On top of that, we lost probably about 2/3 of the crop to a fungal rot (and probably rats, birds, etc.). And despite all that, we still got a five gallon bucket full of grapes! This suggests that we will be buried under a landslide of grapes in a few years.

Not to mention the 23 fruit trees in the yard, the raspberry patch, the six blueberry bushes, and the partridge in the pear tree. (Just kidding on the last; we have five peach trees, three cherry, two avocado, two dwarf mulberry, an aprium (apricot/plum hybrid), a plum, two persimmons, a dwarf pomegranate, a Meyer lemon, a Key lime, a kaffir lime, a bergamot, an almond, and a kumquat bush, plus a giant passionflower vine – but no pear trees. I guess the partridge will have to perch somewhere else!)

And – since cat photos have been somewhat sparse recently – here is a picture of Fritz and Tigress. As you can see, one of them has a well-developed, elegant sense of feline dignity, and the other, um….doesn’t. 🙂

August 2, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Announcing Creating Craft!

I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new business website, www.creatingcraft.com!

Creating Craft helps beginning to intermediate artisans make the leap to master artisan – by offering courses (online and in-person), informative blog posts, and personalized coaching in design and on the creative process. If you want to create award-winning, original work, this is the place for you.

At the moment, I’m mostly selling Master Your Craft and personal coaching services there, but there is also a list of in-person programs and workshops, all of which can be tailored for your guild’s needs. If you haven’t bought Master Your Craft yet, and want more information, sign up for my newsletter and get my free e-book Map to Mastery! Map to Mastery contains substantial excerpts from Master Your Craft, so will give you a nice-sized sample of the book.

I’m also currently developing some online courses around the creative process, so if you have ideas you’d like to see in a class, email me and let me know!

Creating Craft is also where I’ll be publishing new blog posts about the creative process in craft. I’ve written three posts so far:

I’ll be writing at least one blog post every two weeks (more if I can manage it!), each offering insights into a different aspect of the creative process. To find out about new Creating Craft blog posts, join my newsletter!

(But don’t worry – I’ll continue posting about my creative work in this blog. More cool stuff coming up soon!)

July 16, 2016 by Tien Chiu

So close…and yet so far

I’ve been waxing dangerously neurotic as the book release date draws nearer. According to my calculations, the advance copy should have arrived last Tuesday or Wednesday. So of course I couldn’t sleep Monday or Tuesday night, and during the day, every time a truck rolled by I sprinted to the front door to see if it was the advance copy arriving.

It did not arrive Tuesday. It also did not arrive Wednesday, despite my increasingly fervent pleas to the gods of shipping. So Thursday I sent my editor an oh-so-casual email asking about several minor details, and breezily inquired where the advance copy was and whether my book order was still likely to arrive by the date of the book launch party. Then I spent the next several hours obsessively checking my email until her response arrived.

It turns out that the book was a bit late coming from the printer’s, so the advance copy was also mailed later – it will arrive on Tuesday, via FedEx. So now I know, and I can stop jumping every time I hear a truck! Which is great because it means I might actually get some work done. 🙂

The full printing will be arriving in the warehouse early next week. I’ve asked that the majority of the order be shipped ground freight, because a 250-book order is going to be heavy! But I’ve also asked for ten books to be shipped via faster means, because I want to have some copies available at the launch party. So one small package will arrive next week, and the 450-pound gorilla will arrive the week after.

Meanwhile, I have been working very hard on my Creating Craft website to get it ready to launch alongside the book. I’ve also been designing thank-you cards to tuck into each book order – here’s the front of the card:

thank you notes for Master Your Craft orders

I’ve also been working away on the website, getting it ready for launch day. I’m almost there – another day or two should do it. I’ll likely unveil it sometime next week.

Meanwhile, I have finally started feeling secure enough about my launch schedule to get back to work on important things. Like this beauty, who has been sadly neglected the last few months:

One of the reasons I haven’t been doing much on Amazing Grace is that I ran into problems during “Bipolar Prison”. The red and blue warps are a mix of mercerized cotton, unmercerized cotton, and a silk/nylon yarn. Cotton is rather dusty, which wouldn’t normally be a problem. But the third warp is an alpaca/wool mix, which is collecting the dust, creating a gray “halo” around each thread:

Aside from being unsightly, the fuzzy balls catch on each other once they get big enough. So I spent a good chunk of my weaving time in “Bipolar Prison” picking off the fuzzy bits so the warp would weave properly. Not pleasant, and not terribly effective, either. So it became abundantly obvious that the alpaca/wool warp would have to go.

After weighing my options (including simply removing the white warp), I decided to replace the alpaca/wool warp with a silk warp. And there I got stuck for several months, because (frankly) I’ve been dreading it. I need to wind sixteen skeins of silk onto cones, wind a new 20-yard warp, remove the alpaca/wool warp from the beam, wind the silk warp onto the beam, and rethread by tying on to the previous warp – 880 knots to get just right. You can see why I walked away for several months, especially given the overwhelming effort required to get the business going.

But I’ve now reached the point where I can take some short breaks from working on Creating Craft. So I’m getting back to the stuff that’s more important in the long run – weaving!

So far I’ve spent several hours winding the 20/2 silk onto cones:

I’m hoping to finish the skein-winding today, and start winding the new warp tomorrow. My goal is to be weaving again by the end of August – a long time, to be sure, but there is a lot of work to be done, both on Amazing Grace and Creating Craft.

I’m also planning on developing more design sketches for woven work, so hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to show soon!