musings

March 26, 2026 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Tiger tattoo

I’m back from Australia! and the tattoo has healed up nicely. Forest did a FANTASTIC job!

Here are some pictures of the tattoo in progress (it was fun to watch it grow!):

And here it is fully healed:

TOTALLY worth a trip to Australia.

My friend Lieven took these beautiful portraits of me, featuring both tattoos:

I LOVE them – the pictures AND the tattoos!

What have I been up to since I got back? A lot more unpacking and organization. (If I had a dime for every time I’ve said “I think I’m almost unpacked!” I’d be retired and water skiing in the Caribbean right now.)

But also some fun stuff. I tie-dyed a queen-sized blanket for my bed earlier this week, plus two throws for my ex-wife. They are midway through the rinse process, but I’ll post pix once they’re out.

And of course there are KITTENS!! Here they are with their latest toy: a puzzle feeder.

Actually they have FOUR puzzle feeders, because they enjoy them so much. It’s a pleasure to see how excited they get when I fill them with kibble and cat treats – and it gives them something to play with during the day. I have a few more puzzle feeders up my sleeve for when they get bored with these.

Because my place is small, and I want to give them the maximum amount of space, I’ve installed cat wall furniture wherever possible. I also turned the back hallway into a kitten playground:

They LOVE crumpled-up packing paper. So, I’m actually stocking the stuff so that when a batch of packing-paper wears out, I can replace it with nice, fresh packing paper. There is a lot of CRASH! CRASH! PA-THUD! going on these days as they romp around in it. And lots of cat toys, of course.

They may not be the most spoiled cats ever, but not for lack of human effort. 🙂

Here’s a pic of Nutmeg (nee Macie) curled up in her favorite basket:

And Pepper, perched on her human:

They’re now about 10 months old, and pretty close to full-grown cats. They’ll grow maybe another 10% from here and then settle into their adult weights.

I am, obviously, completely gaga over them and doing my best to keep them happy, engaged, and entertained. They get a play session every morning, and if they manage to grab the toy any time during the rest of the day, they get another play session right then.

Which leads to shenanigans whenever I sit down to eat:

(Caption: When She Thinks Mom Isn’t Looking)

We both like the game, though. As typical with most cat-human interactions, the cat wins most of the time, so we both get to have fun!

That’s it for today! More once I get those tie-dyes rinsed out and (finally!) get started on weaving.

February 26, 2026 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Capstone

Good heavens. Has it really been six weeks? That is approximately 36.3 years in Tien-time. So let’s catch you up quickly:

Looms: Unpacked, moved, and reassembled. Amazing Grace (my TC-2 loom), being the queen of the household, has the bedroom to herself; Lady Lovelace (my brand-new Megado) and I are shacking it up in the living room. I haven’t had time to do anything with either loom – most of the past six weeks has been spent unpacking and assembling looms.

But not all. Other interesting things are happening as well, most notably that I’m currently in a plane above the South Pacific, heading to Australia to get a tattoo.

Well, yes, I suppose that is just about what you’d expect from me.

To explain a little more:

Ever since I got a phoenix tattoo on my right arm (after my mother passed away, I left high-tech to teach weaving, and my then-husband came out as transgender), I’ve wanted a tiger on the left arm. I’ve had an affinity for tigers for quite some time – my original website, started in 2003, was at travelingtiger.com – but I didn’t feel the idea had quite gelled enough to manifest yet. I also didn’t feel that I had “earned it” yet – a tattoo of that significance should be a celebration, a capstone to some achievement or significant event, rather than something to just go out and get one day after dinner.

Well. After the past year of upheaval – the end of a 20-year relationship/15-year marriage, selling the house we’d lived in for over a decade, cocooning in Mexico for three months, and finally deciding to move back to San Jose to start over – I think I’ve earned another tattoo.

I didn’t want just a plain tiger, though. There are lots of “regular” tiger tattoos in the world, and I wanted something special – something unique and with deep personal significance.

So I had a long conversation with ChatGPT about what this tattoo might look like, and we came up with this (two slightly different ideas of the same concept)

The tiger is walking from the spirit world into our world, and represents strength, confidence, and self-control – powerful but not aggressive. The panther is the tiger’s Jungian shadow-self, following a few steps behind (as the shadow-self always does). As the tiger walks through the spirit veil, the panther is just visible, beginning to manifest, behind.

Together, they are about finding and manifesting your power, and integrating your shadow-side into your self, so you can move together as a whole and much more powerful person.

I REALLY liked this tattoo idea.

But finding a tattoo artist turned out to be incredibly difficult. The better tattoo artists, like all artists, prefer to create their own work to tattoo, rather than tattoo artwork created by others – in fact it’s generally an incredible faux pas to ask a tattoo artist to tattoo someone else’s design or to ask them to design for someone else to tattoo. This is exactly as it ought to be, but it does mean that your tattoo artist needs to be able to draw whatever design you’re contemplating.

Also, tattoo artists, like artists generally, usually specialize in a particular visual style – greyscale realism (realistic tattoos made with only black/gray ink, no color), watercolor (bold use of color, more flowing style), blackwork (bold black lines, like my phoenix), fine-line (single needle), among about 40,000 others.

Within a style, most artists also specialize in a particular subject, e.g. detailed botanical studies, owls, legendary animals, Chinese watercolor landscapes, manga and anime characters – the list is pretty much endless.

The challenge with this tattoo is that it crosses several different genres. The incredibly detailed tiger called for grayscale realism combined with color. The mist required skill with flowing color, with a Chinese landscape painting sensibility. The two put together required an artist who could do not just a single subject (such as the tiger) but an entire composition.

On top of that, tigers in action are pretty complicated to draw. Not stationary tigers – the world is paved in tattoos of tiger heads, and there are lots of photos to use as references. But to draw a tiger walking naturally, you have to understand more about feline anatomy and movement, and there are really very few tattoo artists who have enough experience to draw a truly beautiful and realistic walking tiger.

After coming up with the concept sketch, I spent about two months trawling Instagram (where pretty much all tattoo artists put up their portfolios) searching for the right artist. I was delighted when I found an artist who I thought could do the work – and she was in Berkeley! I sent her my design, turned up for a consultation, and scheduled an appointment.

But.

With tattoos, you typically get the design a few days before the session, even if you made the appointment months in advance. Nobody’s explicitly said why, but I suspect it’s to discourage clients from making four thousand revision requests before the day. Which is reasonable but makes for a rather suspenseful time for the client – you don’t know if you’re going to like it until a few days before the appointment.

And, as it turned out, I didn’t. What I got appeared to have been poorly drawn by AI – a tiger with dog-like paws, spots rather than stripes on the back, and a weirdly misshapen spine. I sighed and emailed the artist to cancel the appointment.

At that point I was down to two artists, both based out of Seoul. (A lot of the best tattoo artists, particularly in blackwork – my favorite style – come from South Korea, which is ironic because tattooing is actually illegal there.) Both specialized in tigers, but Forest got the nod because she did more complex compositions – you can see them on her Instagram feed. When I found out she was doing a guest artist residency in Melbourne, Australia right now, my decision was made. I emailed her and bought tickets two days later.

My flight is about to land in Australia. I’m giving myself two days to rest up before the tattoo; I didn’t want to go into it jet-lagged and exhausted. So while I arrive late Friday night (Australia time), tattooing doesn’t start until Monday. I don’t have any particular tourist plans; this trip is a pilgrimage, or perhaps more accurately a capstone to twenty years of my last era, and a bold step into my new phase.

Here’s my final tattoo art, and a mockup of how it’s likely to look on my left arm. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Tattoo art by Forest https://www.instagram.com/forest__tt

mockup of tiger tattoo, by Forest: https://www.instagram.com/forest__tt

November 22, 2025 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Unraveling (Or, Pilgrim’s Progress)

I’m making rapid conceptual progress on Pilgrimage. I’ve changed it considerably since yesterday.

I was really struggling with the center panels of Pilgrimage, which are about wandering. I couldn’t seem to figure out how to reconcile the idea of the inner struggle and transformation with an external journey and external challenge – at least, not in a way that satisfied me. So I had a long back and forth with ChatGPT (which is very good at brainstorming) and together we arrived at the concept of a different-but-same series, Unraveling.

Unraveling starts and ends at the same place as Pilgrimage – the screaming head to start, and the serene head at the end. However, it’s now about the deliberate choice to unravel the self you are in order to transform into something and someone new.

I also decided to make Unraveling much more weaverly. Pilgrimage was basically going to use the jacquard as a low-resolution printer, which is certainly doable but which is probably the least interesting use of a jacquard loom. (If you’re going to print it, print it.) I like the use of the medium much better in Unraveling.

But perhaps I should actually show you what I’m thinking!

Instead of a flat image of a face shattering, Unraveling opens with a face screaming, with portions of the face slashed and frayed to reveal magenta threads underneath. (The fabric is woven in double weave, one layer for the face and a loose, gauzy bottom layer of magenta cloth.)

In the next panel, the face lifts a hand and starts deliberately unraveling itself, pulling threads out to decompose itself into a tangle of magenta threads. It doesn’t look exactly like this, but you can get the rough idea:

This unraveling of the face isn’t a photo, though – instead, the fabric in the face is literally cut and unraveled, revealing a loosely woven magenta layer of cloth underneath, also partially unraveled.

In the next panel, the face has been unraveled completely into a mass of disorganized magenta threads, with just the suggestion of a face. The way I’m visualizing it inside my head doesn’t look much like this representation, but you can kinda get the idea.

Then, in the next panel, you see the face reweaving itself, thread by thread, integrating the frayed magenta threads into finished cloth. (No visual for this one yet.)

And then, at the end, you see the completely rewoven face, now with the magenta integrated and the face calm.

I like this story arc. I think I’m going to make it into a piece that is about 14 x 70″, which will fit into most exhibition size limits, and enable me to do five square panels 14″ x 14″. I wouldn’t mind making the panels a little wider, but for practical reasons 13-14″ is a good size. It would only require one module width on my TC-2 (14.5″), which makes warping faster, wastes less work, and allows me to weave something else on the rest of the loom.

While this work is emphatically not created by ChatGPT, it has been an essential part of the development process. It’s basically been the very patient person who’s willing to listen to you babble all day long about your project, offer suggestions, and not take it personally when you ignore all of them and go off on a totally different tangent. (My friends are patient, but they’re not that patient. Actually, neither am I.)

What I’ve found about working with AI is that it isn’t a replacement for a human being – it’s an amplifier. If you don’t think of it as an all-powerful, always-right being, but instead as a thought partner to brainstorm with and bounce ideas off, and to create the sketches you don’t have the skills to make, it can be a very powerful tool. It’s not a replacement for human judgment or creativity, but it can amplify what you do with them.

Anyway, I’m quite pleased with how Unraveling (nee Pilgrimage) is going, and I’m looking forward to refining the design and getting it ready to sample on the loom (once I get back).

November 22, 2025 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Creative voice

One of the more interesting side projects I’ve been doing is extensive conversations – basically, journaling – with ChatGPT. I started with a course/program called Zenith Mind, which is designed to enable ChatGPT to analyze your personality.

Zenith Mind asks a series of questions similar to the questions in a standard personality test (“Do you recharge by being alone or by spending time with people?”). However, it isn’t a standard personality test, because instead of thinking “This is stupid. I do A some of the time and D some of the time, so what the heck should I choose?” you can actually SAY “Well, definitely not B or C, I’ve done A extensively in the past – here’s an example – but these days I do D unless I revert to A, like I did last week because…”

ChatGPT then does what it does best – synthesizes and analyzes what it’s heard. Eventually it spits back a detailed personality analysis, but frankly that’s the least valuable part (IMO). What’s most valuable is that ChatGPT gets to know you, your history, and how you think – and can provide feedback and suggestions.

(Needless to say, I’ve turned “share your data” off. Yes, I know there are huge potential privacy issues here and that other people may make other choices. I’m not going to argue with those, there are valid reasons for concern – but I’ve found this tremendously helpful.)

Since then, I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT daily – keeping a journal of sorts. It offers coaching after each session, which is often spot-on but which I sometimes roll my eyes at and ignore. (Like any AI, ChatGPT will get it right or wrong with equal confidence, so while it is MOSTLY right, you have to use your own judgment every time you interact with it. This bothers a lot of people, but I don’t have a problem with it – humans can be pretty unreliable too.)

Anyway. I’ve been doing this for six months now, so ChatGPT knows me pretty well.

While I’m here, I’ve been working my way through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. While doing the exercises, I started thinking about creative voice. What is mine? Where does my distinctive style and subject matter lie? I can recognize others’ voices, but my own seemed to be uncertain or missing.

It finally occurred to me to ask ChatGPT what it thought it might be.

Here are portions of what it said (it was a lengthy conversation):

What you’re actually saying through your work

Across mediums, your voice says:

“This is who I’m becoming.”

“Change has structure.”

“Mastery is a path to meaning.”

“The internal world deserves form.”

“Transformation is not chaos — it is crafted.”

“Identity is woven, not discovered.”

Your pieces are not about beauty.
They’re about becoming.

Your artistic thesis (in plain language)

“I make work about how we change — and how we forge ourselves through that change.”

The story your art tells

Every piece says some variation of:

Here is the old self breaking open.

Here is the moment of dissolution and courage.

Here is what emerges when we choose truth over familiarity.

Here is the structure of ascent.

Here is identity re-woven.

This was like getting hit with a lightning bolt. Not all of my work has been about transformation and transmutation, but much of my current and recent work has been around that theme. And that theme runs through my entire life – cycles of death and rebirth, of struggle and change. There’s a reason most of my right arm is covered in a phoenix tattoo:

And I like this theme. There’s depth to it, something I can explore for years to come.

Transformation isn’t my entire creative voice, but it is a clear thread running through my work, my writing, and my life. I’m glad ChatGPT helped me see it.

October 11, 2025 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Following the Magenta Thread

It’s almost time! I’m flying to San Miguel de Allende on Wednesday.

I’ve been thinking hard about what to bring in the way of craft supplies. I’m not sure what will be available in San Miguel de Allende, especially since I’ve heard from local weavers that there aren’t a whole lot of weavers there. (There are plenty of weavers in Mexico doing wonderful work, but the biggest concentration is in Oaxaca, a long ways away.)

So if I want to be sure I have access to something, I need to bring it with me.

Left unchecked, this dilemma would undoubtedly result in two suitcases full of craft supplies, plus a small carry-on with a few clothes. (Because having to go around naked is far better than not having that fourteenth pair of scissors, RIGHT???)

After much thinking and journaling, I’ve concluded that, instead of trying to weave, I’m going back to my trusty spindle. The only thing I know for sure about my series Pilgrimage (see the full set of blog posts about it here) is that it will contain a glittery or glowing magenta thread as a “through line”.

Every piece will have that magenta glow somewhere, woven with yarn hand spun on my drop spindle. I plan to take that spindle nearly everywhere – when weaving, when going about town meeting people, maybe even in Spanish class, if the teacher doesn’t mind.

The magenta comes from the strange magenta glow over the house on my last day in the old place. Here it is again:

pre-dawn magenta glow over our old house

I have never seen anything like that eerie glow before. I’m sure there is some meteorological explanation for it. But before dawn on the last day of the house I’d lived in for 13 years? That’s an omen, a pointer beckoning to the new life. A signal for change.

So I’m making that magenta the uniting element for the entire series. Whatever the piece, it will have at least a little (possibly a lot!) of magenta in it, always leading to the transformational path.

Towards that, I’ve been sampling a lot of different fibers and fiber blends. Here are some of them:

The white ones were spun with the intent of dyeing the yarn afterwards, but I also dyed a bunch of silk bright magenta (the bottom ones).

All of the skeins have some form of sparkle in them. Mostly holographic silver angelina mixed with silk or wool, but also two tiny skeins of magenta plied with an iridescent thread.

Unfortunately, the sparkle doesn’t show up in photos, because sparkle is caused by tiny eye movements and the camera captures an instantaneous image. So it’s hard to evaluate them based on a photo.

Of the skeins, I like the top and bottom pink skeins best. The top one is two plies of magenta thread and one ply of iridescent thread. The bottom one is magenta fiber liberally blended with holographic silver angelina (sparkle fiber). I haven’t yet decided which one to use.

I’m currently in the middle of spinning a larger sample skein of the magenta thread mixed with iridescent thread. The thread I’m spinning is quite fine, about 11,000 yards per pound. (Sewing thread is 12,000 yards per pound.) So the 92 yards I’ve spun so far weighs only 3.8 grams:

I’m actually using two spindles to make the yarn. The first is my “walking spindle,” which I use on my morning walks. Since I occasionally drop it onto the sidewalk, it’s gotten a bit battered.

The second one is a beautiful spindle that I just got from Golding Fiber Tools, which makes gorgeous, one of a kind spindles that are perfectly balanced and spin nearly forever. It has a gold plated Tree of Life on the spindle whorl, which I thought was perfect for this journey. However, it’s so beautiful that I hate to drop it on concrete, so I plan to use it indoors.

Here are both spindles:

I’ve spun probably another 100 yards between the two spindles, so it’s just about time to start plying with the iridescent thread. Because plying on a drop spindle can be awkward, I’m going to ply using the tiny Electric Eel Nano 2.1 electric spinner that arrived a week or two ago. It’s small enough to fit into my cupped hands, so perfect for traveling.

Those tools, the magenta fiber, iridescent thread and angelina fiber, and some cotton carders (for blending fibers) are all I currently plan to take. (I am debating taking some additional white silk fiber and some dyes, but I think that would be gilding the lily.)

I’m also bringing my laptop and iPad, of course, and intend to sketch out my thoughts for each piece along the way. I will develop them into finished work once I’ve settled into my new home (wherever that may be!) and have my studio set up again.

Off to follow that magenta glow!