Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / Archives for All blog posts / travel

December 11, 2008 by Tien Chiu

Photo meme

It recently came to my attention that I had been tagged with a “photo meme”.  The rule is, you go to your photos folders, pick the sixth folder, pick the sixth image in that folder, and post that image.  Then you tag five others.

Unfortunately for this theory, I store most of my photos in context-sensitive folders (so the photos of a given project are stored with that project’s photos, etc.), so I don’t have many photo folders per se.  So in “My Pictures”, there are only seven folders and the last few don’t even contain six photos!

So I decided to go with the fourth photo folder (which is the closest-to-sixth that has six photos).  It doesn’t contain any photos itself, so I went to the sixth photo subfolder, plucked the sixth photo, and here it is:

Eddie the weaver weaving in Ghana
Eddie the weaver weaving in Ghana

This was from my trip to Ghana and shows the Ghanaian loom, which I thought was ultra-cool.  For more on Ghanaian weaving, see my Ghana travel page on kente weaving.

I don’t read enough blogs to tag five people, so I’ll just put up this challenge: if you’re reading this, play the game on your own blog, and leave me a comment so I know to go look.

Filed Under: All blog posts, travel

September 21, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Back from China

After a long, grueling flight, we are back in San Francisco, being happily abused by the cats (who apparently missed us as much as we missed them).  I won’t go too much into the last part of the trip right now because I still intend to catch up on the travel blog, perhaps in a day or so once I get over the jet lag and this miserable cold that Mike and I both seem to have brought back with us.

It was a fun trip, although I don’t think I’ll do a group tour again.  It was tremendously stressful having to travel on someone else’s schedule, and to spend 12+ hours/day touring around.  I like to travel at a slower pace, and by the end of the two week tour, was definitely feeling a bit strung out.  Fortunately, being currently unemployed, I can take a vacation from my vacation before setting back out full tilt.

I am considering what goals I want to set for the period of my unemployment.  I figure that being unemployed gives me an extra 50 or so hours a week, between commute time, lunchtime, etc.  Figure a month of unemployment, that’s about 200 hours.  If you had 200 hours of free time suddenly available, how would you invest it?

I figure I can learn more about software development, study weaving, study dyeing, play with chocolate mold-making (I bought two jade seals carved with my name in Chinese that would be fun to cast in chocolate), work on getting back into shape for cycling, and/or study patternmaking and make some AIDS Lifecycle costumes.  200 hours sounds like a lot, until I start thinking of all the things that interest me.  Life is too short.
Off to dinner, and then to bed.  Hopefully I can sleep off this cold and the jet lag simultaneously.

Filed Under: All blog posts, travel

September 10, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Sock interlude

I have finished my first pair of travel socks!  Here are links to photos:

socks.jpgsock_foot.jpg

The pattern is the Crystalline Lattice Socks, although I’m using a different (but similarly-colored) yarn.

They’re pretty socks.  I like ’em.

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

September 5, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Off to China!

I’m sitting in an airport hotel near LAX, writing this entry before heading to the airport for the long slog to China. The flight will be well over 12 hours. I’m already several inches into the cuff for my first pair of travel socks, so I’m glad I’m taking two socks’ worth of yarn with me, just in case.
Feeling excited and a bit jumpy – it’s off to the road again, traveling. I love traveling, but don’t know how it will be with a group – so there’s some uncertainty, too. We’ll see what turns up!

I am now switching to my travel blog, so you won’t hear from me again on this blog until I return from China. Onward ho!

Filed Under: All blog posts, travel

September 3, 2007 by Tien Chiu

Placemats, and China

We’re off to China tomorrow, and I have packed in my suitcase (oh the neuroticism) not one, not two, not three, but FIVE socks’ worth of yarn.  I have been through my packing list a couple of times and am pretty confident that I have not forgotten anything a credit card won’t solve, so I’m basically happy.  Tomorrow at 6:30pm the Super Shuttle comes to take us away…

Anyway, I have had some quality weaving time, so I spent the first part of today weaving up samples.  Here are the first two that I intend to weave, woven up in 5/2 white cotton warp and 16/2 straw-colored linen.  (I dyed the linen myself, by the way.)

Dancing SquaresPlaits

(Click on the thumbnail for the larger image – the thumbnails really don’t do them justice.)

I took off and wet-finished the samples earlier this evening, and then (shortly before writing this blog post) took a deep breath and started weaving the placemats!  This will be my first “real” project on Lady Di, and I want to see how well she works.  Thus far I’ve woven one placemat, and am hoping to weave up all six in the first set before having to leave for China.

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, knitting, weaving, travel

Next Page »

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·