qiviut shawl | Tien Chiu's Blog

February 10, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Photos, phoenixes, and placemats

Lieven came over last week to do the “official” photo shoot for my show entries, and I got the final shots a few days later. They’re beautiful!

Here are the finished cat placemats (I completed them late so I shot them myself):

Cat placemats - "The Tao of Cats" - dark side — Cat placemats – “The Tao of Cats” – dark side

Cat placemat - "The Tao of Cats" - light side — Cat placemat – “The Tao of Cats” – light side

And here are the two phoenixes, both full photos and detail shots. I can tell them apart easily, but then, mothers always know their offspring, right? I think it would be hard for most people to distinguish the two, so I’ve titled them “Goodbye, Ma (v.1)” and “Goodbye, Ma (v.2)” It occurred to me after I sent in my show entries that using software terminology for numbering pieces is about the least sexy possibility out there, but oh well. Henceforth I shall name them something sexier, like “Tweedledee” and “Tweedledum”.

"Goodbye, Ma #1", detail shot — “Goodbye, Ma #1”, detail shot

Handwoven phoenix #2 - "Goodbye, Ma #2" — Handwoven phoenix #2 – “Goodbye, Ma #2”

Handwoven phoenix #2 - "Goodbye, Ma #2" - Detail shot — Handwoven phoenix #2 – “Goodbye, Ma #2” – Detail shot

I also decided to enter the musk ox scarf and the sea-turtle scarf, and the photos are so lovely I have to share:

"Under the Sea" - handwoven sea turtle scarf — “Under the Sea” – handwoven sea turtle scarf

"Under the Sea" - handwoven sea turtle scarf, detail shot — “Under the Sea” – handwoven sea turtle scarf, detail shot

And here is a shot of the photographer at work, in my oh-so-glamorous “photography studio”:

And that’s it for now!

March 22, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Finished the qiviut scarf!

I wove for about two hours yesterday, in half-hour intervals punctuated by lots of rest time in between. No ill effects today, so I think I can continue weaving with impunity. Hooray!

I finished weaving the first qiviut scarf early this morning, twisted the fringe in the late morning/early afternoon, and have just wet-finished it and given it a good hard press. It is beautiful! and unbelievably soft to the touch. Softer even than cashmere.

Here are two photos:

handwoven qiviut scarf - closeup — handwoven qiviut scarf – closeup

I lost some of the expression in the eyes during wet-finishing, but the musk oxen are still adorable. I’m very happy with how the scarf turned out. There is a faint wonkiness along one selvage, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about the white section (not pictured) that will go around the neck. I wove it in the same musk ox pattern, but with just the tabby weft, no qiviut. I think for the next scarf I may continue weaving with two shuttles, and replace the qiviut with a white cashmere pattern weft of about the same size. I may also change the draft so there are no musk oxen in the white section, only the swirling ripples in the background. Tomorrow I’ll decide how to proceed.

I’ve also done some more work on the beaded fringe for the sea turtle scarf – almost done with one side’s worth. I’m not wild about the color match between the dark blue beads and the dark blue turtles, but I’ve been to three bead shops already looking for a better match, and failed to find one. So this will have to do. It does look nice from the front side of the scarf, though. (Pictures in the next blog post, after I finish the first length of fringe.)

Book-wise, I’m starting to restructure the three chapters that need merging. I put in an hour this morning, and will start increasing the time over the next few days until I’m either done with my revisions or working 2-3 hours a day on it. That should enable me to finish my revisions in plenty of time.

Studied a little more in the Adobe Illustrator book, too. I’m almost done with the book, and getting ready to apply my knowledge by designing a strip-woven sea turtle shawl. I have some really cool ideas for this…just need to get them into a sketch. Next post, perhaps!

Finally, since Fritz has really been sadly underrepresented lately (it’s hard to take a good photo of a black cat!), here is a photo of His Royal Furriness, licking his chops. (I think he was anticipating cat treats!)

Fritz anticipating goodies! — Fritz expecting goodies!

March 20, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Qiviut scarves

Yesterday I finished the edits on my musk ox design and started weaving the scarves. I wove one musk ox at a time (about 15 minutes of weaving), separated by a few hours of doing other things, so as not to aggravate things during recovery. But it seemed to be fine, so I wove two more musk oxen in a single session this morning. I’m now about 1/3 done with the first qiviut scarf – four musk oxen in. Here’s a photo from the beginning of the scarf:

I love the surprised and mildly puzzled look on the musk ox faces – a “Who, me?” expression.

The plan is to weave two scarves, one for me and one for my friend. I had originally planned only a single scarf, as I had only 72 grams of qiviut yarn and two scarves would have required 100 grams. But I hated to waste the leftover qiviut, so I did some more calculations and realized that if I wove the center of the scarf in plain weave and placed the motifs on each end of the scarf, I would have enough to do two scarves. So that’s the plan.

I am also cooking up an interesting thought experiment with tied weaves, just to test my understanding. I’m considering a divided parallel threading to weave echo weave ground cloth with two or more pattern wefts and maybe some patterning in the ties. I have no idea what it will look like, and doubt that it will be super attractive, but I want to make sure I understand the tied structure and how it’s constructed. I am reading through Marian Stubenistsky’s marvelous book Weaving with Echo and Iris in an attempt to understand parallel threadings and what can be done with them. It will be awhile before I can do anything with it, though – I have three more scarves to weave before the current warp is off the loom. (Two qiviut scarves, and probably another sea-turtle scarf.)

In book-land, I reviewed the manuscript with one of my editors yesterday. She had some structural suggestions, but said that overall, it was one of the cleanest and most professional manuscripts she’d ever seen! and that after I finished the structural edits, it was probably good enough to send to the publisher. I’m thrilled to get that feedback – it means I’m on the right track. I’m planning to start the structural edits later today.

No progress on Adobe Illustrator, but planning to do a few more chapters today, if I can find time between the book and weaving. I want to use it to draft the design for my sea turtle shawl – intended to be an adventure in kente-style strip weaving.

I’m also planning to work some more on the beaded fringe, though time is rapidly getting away from me (especially since I am still sleeping ten hours a day). It’s OK, though…everything will get done eventually.

And now Fritz has arrived to harass me, so I am peering around a cat and typing with the keyboard held awkwardly in my lap. Lest you think that I’m the only one who gets feline help, though, here is Tigress, “helping” Mike at the computer. Isn’t she adorable when she’s naughty?

March 19, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Babe the Blue Musk Ox

Yesterday I got back to weaving – working gingerly, a few minutes at a time, stopping at any hint of soreness. But I am weaving!

Here is what I wove yesterday:

Being too lazy to wind new wefts, I used the sea-turtle wefts, so the musk oxen are blue against a very pale aqua background. I’m calling the result “Babe the Blue Musk Ox,” after Paul Bunyan’s legendary ox, Babe (who was also blue).

I’m quite pleased with the musk ox design. I need to make a few changes, like darkening the musk ox’s face so both face and eyes show more clearly, but it is clearly a musk ox and really captures the sense of shaggy fur. The next step is to weave it in a more plausible color, which I plan to do today. I am also thinking of dyeing some brushed silk/mohair yarn brown for use as pattern weft – I think the furriness of the mohair would contribute some interesting shagginess. But that will have to wait until I can get Mike to help with the heavy lifting. Both the dyepots and the skeiner are too heavy for me to lift (safely) right now – per the doctor’s orders, I’m staying away from heavy lifting for the next five weeks.

I am considering weaving a similar angora goat design, using the aforementioned silk/kid mohair yarn. That would be fun, too, and I have enough yarn for an extra scarf.

In book-land, I now have feedback from both editors – and it’s very encouraging! Both had valuable thoughts on the structure, and the editor who did the detailed edits said the writing overall was very “clean” – very few line edits needed. Today I will fix the line edits, and tomorrow I will talk to the second editor about her suggestions for structure. Then I will dive back into the book. Some chapters require serious restructuring, but I’m confident I can do that in the next week or two, at which point it will be ready to go out to the artists so they can review their quotes. Very pleased at my progress so far.

On the sea turtles, I finished many more samples on Tuesday, and yesterday got started on the fringe. I’ve beaded about five inches of fringe, which means I’m about a quarter of the way through. I’m beading the fringe as a separate piece and will attach it to the scarf when I’m done. Will probably finish in the next few days.

And I am now 3/4 of the way through the book on Adobe Illustrator, and feeling much more confident in my use of the tool. It is much more powerful than I had thought. I had been thinking of it as the digital equivalent of a pencil, where you draw lines that you can then edit. But it can do much, much, more. More than that I can’t explain (at least, not without a lot more description), but it’s an amazing tool for the digital artist. I’m very pleased to be learning it, and will probably use it soon to mock up some more design ideas. I need to practice to solidify my knowledge of the tool.

Physically, I’m doing well. I’m still being very careful about anything involving abdominal muscle, and I can’t fit into jeans yet, but I have pretty good energy. And mentally speaking, I’m close to 100%. However, I’m also still sleeping 10-12 hours a day, which suggests that there is still a lot of healing going on inside. It’s okay – I have three more weeks away from work, plenty of time to recover fully. And I’m doing extremely well for just one week post-surgery. I’m pleased with my progress.

Fritz and Tigress are on vacation for this post, but I promise their antics will return in the next one! They are being as entertaining and mischievous as ever, I just haven’t had a chance to download my photos yet. But I have some wonderful footage of Fritz galloping down the length of the house, after a laser pointer – you wouldn’t believe a cat could move so fast! And a great video of Tigress playing “fetch”. Next time!

January 14, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Scarf and simulations

I have finished the cashmere “test version” of the scarf, and while the pattern looks great, the selvages are awful:

Completed "test scarf", with cashmere weft

Part of it may be user error, but I think a good chunk of it is actually the weave structure, which really ought to have a floating selvage. Since I hate floating selvages and have lots of extra shafts, I think I’m going to add two ends on either side, weaving plain weave. With only two threads the different take-up shouldn’t matter much, it should be more or less invisible, and it should fix some of the problems I’ve been having. I may also tighten up the tension on my end feed shuttle just a hair.

I have also been mulling over the painted warp design. Here are the two overall patterns I’m contemplating (note that the weave structure is the same in both cases, it’s just the width of the painted-warp stripes that varies):

At first glance the wide pattern looks better (to me, anyway), but in “real life” each stripe would be 4″ wide, which I think might be a little too wide for garments. The narrow stripes are 2″ wide, which is more manageable for me to wind and beam on. So I think I will try a sample with the narrow stripes.

Color and dye-wise, I think I will go with Cibacron F in fuchsia, gold, and turquoise. These colors blend well, and achieve nice green, orange, and purple when mixed in equal proportions, which is important if I want to keep the instructions simple. I also have them all on hand – important since I am pressed for time and Pro Chemical (the only source I know of for Cibacron/Sabracron F dyes) is on the opposite coast. The colors may be a little bright, but I’m hoping that a black weft will tone down the intensity a bit.

Weft-wise, I’ve decided to use Zegna Baruffa’s Cashwool, available from Little Knits. It turns out that Yubina yarn store is located in China (I think), and the sample skein I ordered won’t arrive in time for me to do my sampling. Little Knits is in Seattle, so can get yarn to me much faster. (I could use Jaggerspun Zephyr, as someone suggested, but it is significantly heavier than the 30/2 silk I’m using for warp, and I want the weft the same size or a little thinner, for better drape and to allow the silk to shine.)

I plan to start winding the warp today, and dye it over the weekend. Once I have the warp dyed and drying, I’ll turn my attention back to the qiviut scarf – at only 60″ long I’m pretty sure I can weave it up in less than a day.