Tien Chiu

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January 9, 2009 by Tien Chiu

Contrast between knitted blanks

I dyed the second half of the knitted blank yesterday, and wove up part of it on my lunch hour.  This one I did not do in regular stripes, instead I did it in blobs of color.

The intent was to provide more organic shapes than straight lines.  The first blank, which you may recall looked like this:

2nd-sample-blank1

This blank looked great in the small sample I’d woven, but after about four inches it was clear it was turning into very small, repetitive stripes, very predictable order:

img_2050

It’s not a bad pattern, just not what I had been hoping for.  So I dyed the second blank like this:

img_2045_1

and here is a photo of roughly what it looks like woven up:

img_2046_1

(I know, I know, it’s a rotten picture.  I have got to figure out how to get that SLR camera working, but life is so short and there is so little time…!)

At any rate, bad photography aside, it’s much closer to what I was looking for – the colors are softer and more organic, and the overlapping colors are not as bad as I thought they’d be:

img_2048

You can see some sections where shots of red are alternating with shots of yellow, and it’s a little disruptive, but because the overall pattern is fairly “busy” to start with, it isn’t super obvious.  Instead it appears as a Monet-like texturing of the color.

I like this approach a lot better – there’s more variation and it’s more interesting.  It’s also something that can only be done using a knitted blank, whereas I realized (after the fact) that the first blank (stripes) was only mimicking what could be done with a handpainted skein if you got the length of the skein right.  Notice how much more organic the color flow is in the second version, whereas it is very regular, almost rigid in the first version!

Not that that is necessarily bad – just not what I wanted for this shawl.  I do plan to weave up another shawl in pattern #1, against a black background, with an undulating twill pattern, and call it “Tiger Stripes”.  I think woven up that way, it will be VERY attractive.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, knitting, weaving Tagged With: gradient colors, knitted blanks

December 22, 2008 by Tien Chiu

Funky hat

When I arrived in Maryland, it was in the high thirties or low forties and windy as we came out of the airport.  Within seconds, my ears were freezing.

So, of course, I decided to think warm thoughts.  A hat!  A hat would be just the thing to keep my ears from freezing off when we fly to Chicago to visit Mike’s family.  And I had some extra super-bulky, funky handspun yarn…

Voila the result of a few hours this afternoon:

hat-front-view
Hat, front view

And from the side:

Side view of funky hat
Side view of funky hat

The pom-pom was mandatory, of course.  Every hat should have a pom-pom. 🙂

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, knitting

October 30, 2008 by Tien Chiu

Fiber therapy

I was still really cranky and stressed out this morning, so after a few hours of me stomping around the house, Mike suggested that I find something fun to do, to relax. He also suggested that I investigatewhy I was being cranky, since this is radically out of character for me.  Exercise, stress, seasonal affective disorder…nope.  I concluded it was fiber withdrawal.  With my loom “in the shop” for another 2-3 weeks (according to AVL), I haven’t been doing anything at all related to fiber or yarn for the last few days/week, and fiber arts is extremely calming for me.

So I ran down to Imagiknit on my lunch break and bought some gorgeous, fun, funky handspun yarn.  And knitted myself the following slipper-top:

Top of a slipper knitted from funky handspun yarn.
Top of a slipper knitted from funky handspun yarn.

It was quick, relatively mindless (since I “winged it” on the design and didn’t worry about reproducibility), and oh-so-satisfying to be working with yarn and fiber again.  I’m really looking forward to knitting the other one, and putting in the soles.  I will have warm feet, FABULOUS slippers, and I will be blissfully un-cranky again.  What’s not to like?

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, knitting

July 16, 2008 by Tien Chiu

Sock blanks

So, I received my sock blanks from Knitpicks today.  I’m excited – this is a wholly new concept, and I’m glad someone invented it.  Basically, it’s a long rectangle of knitted fabric, done with two strands held together.  You dye the sock blank however you like, unravel it, knit from the unraveled yarn, and lo! you have two socks with patterns that match precisely. You can do all sorts of interesting patterns – Knitpicks actually has a tutorial on the different dye patterns you can do (warning: it’s 3MB, so don’t click on the link unless you have a fast connection or a LOT of spare time on your hands).  I personally want to see if I can do gradated dyeing from pink to turquoise in vertical stripes (with smooth color blending) – and see what happens.  Since this is back and forth flat knitting and not knitting from a round skein, I doubt I’ll get a spiral, but I can’t really envision what I’ll wind up with.  Which is why I must try it!

However, this is mostly a theoretical exercise – I don’t have time or inclination for sock knitting right now, it was the new concept that intrigued me into buying them. I’ll probably dye them sometime in the next month or so and put off knitting the socks until the next time I go traveling, or need something portable.

Meanwhile, my head has been exploding recently, and I’ve concluded it’s because I’m trying to do too much analytical work at once.  The PHP/MySQL thing is proving extremely complex, more than I can really handle after a long day at work. So I’ve been beating my head against the wall, which is not fun and needs to stop.

Soo…I have decided to remand PHP/MySQL to the weekends, when I can devote half a day to deep concentration.  During the week I’m going to work on the web redesign and various craft projects, with weaving and beading at the top of the list.  I’ve ordered Gwen Fisher’s Lotus Beaded Bead and Sea Star bead patterns, and a few books on beading should be arriving shortly.  I’m also planning to start moving my weaving project along again, though I expect (what with everything else) it will go fairly slowly.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, knitting

September 19, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Second sock interlude

I have now finished two solo socks:

blue_socks.jpg rainbow_sock.jpg

I’m about 3/4 of the way through the second blue sock now, and will start the other rainbow sock as soon as I finish that one.  Since I don’t expect to have a whole lot of time left in my trip (I fly home tomorrow), I expect it will be a total of three pairs of socks for the trip.

I think in the future I will stick with solid colored yarns or else use the multicolors as in the rainbow sock.  With multicolor yarns, the pattern really doesn’t show up as clearly as I’d like, being dominated by the color changes (esp. at a distance).

Regardless, they’re neat socks.  I like ’em.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, knitting

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