sea turtles

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!

January 1, 2016 by Tien Chiu

Fire and water: phoenixes and sea turtles

After testing out a ton of embellishments on the phoenix, I think I’ve decided that less is more. The piece is really about the free flow of color and the sense of movement, especially in the tail. Embroidery destroys the organic feel and the subtle shading by adding sharply focused lines. In the head, that’s good; it brings the piece into focus. Elsewhere, it’s merely distracting. So I think I will embroider the eye and crest of the bird, and maybe outline the beak, and leave the rest of the bird untouched.

I also tried scattering a small number of beads throughout the piece, but while they didn’t hurt the piece, they didn’t improve it much either. So I am leaving them out.

Here’s a picture of some of my experiments:

embroidery samples for handwoven phoenix

You can see how the sharp lines of the embroidery distract from the flowing shades in the tail.

I will actually be weaving a second phoenix – my brother and sister in law both loved the piece, so I am making a copy for them (very appropriate, since it’s a memorial to our mother). The upside of weaving two copies is that I can then enter them into both the Complex Weavers and Convergence exhibit – the exhibit dates overlap, so there’s no way I could do it otherwise. I’m not sure what to do for titles for the duplicate pieces – do I give them the same title since they will be identical? or slightly different titles? I would love input on that from those more experienced than I.

Also, I finally finished my sea turtle scarf! Here it is, front and back:

finished handwoven sea turtle scarf with beaded fringe

I’m glad to have completed it – I wove it near the beginning of 2015, but it languished for months because I couldn’t find beads in the right color. Then my mom visited, and insisted on going to all the bead shops in the area to find the right color. Finally, we went to General Bead in San Francisco together, and found the beads. Since she went to so much trouble to find the beads, I figured I’d better finish the project. So here you go, Ma! I hope you like it, wherever you are.

November 22, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Taking a breather

I’ve been chocolatiering nonstop for the past week, trying to catch up from my time away. I’m pleased to say that, with considerable help from two friends, I’m finally back on schedule. Here’s the current tally:

Candied bergamot peel dipped in chocolate
Candied grapefruit peel with rose geranium syrup, dipped in chocolate
Candied yuzu peel, dipped in chocolate
Candied Meyer lemon peel, ditto
English toffee (two batches)
Jasmine tea/vanilla bean/orange blossom honey caramels (two batches)
Salted lavender caramels
Ginger, lime, and Thai chile caramels dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with chopped peanuts
Cinnamon honey caramels
Rosemary thyme honey caramels
Coffee cardamom caramels
Cherry almond hazelnut squares: dark chocolate mixed with hazelnut paste, finely chopped dried sour cherries, and sliced almonds moistened with kirsch, rolled in sugar, and toasted in the oven (yum!)
Strawberry-honey-rose fruit jelly, dipped in dark chocolate
Walnut-caramel-cinnamon gianduja (to be dipped in dark chocolate later)
Coconut almond fudge: coconut fudge dipped in dark chocolate and topped with a roasted almond

I’ve now completed 15 of 36 flavors, so that is quite a bit of progress! Almost all the nonperishable flavors are done. I’m planning to make four more batches of fudge tomorrow, which will take a couple hours, but nowhere near as much time as I’ve been putting in the last few days. And Tuesday should be a light day as well – my main goal for Tuesday is to scrub down the kitchen before Chocopalooza starts on Wednesday.

(Chocopalooza, if you are wondering, is the four-day chocolatiering frenzy during which I and two helpers (this year, my friends Susan and Chris) make all the perishable flavors. We’ll crank out 50-60 pounds of chocolates on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Sunday is the packing party, wherein ten friends will come over and help me pack the chocolates into boxes. Monday morning I take seventy packages to the post office, and my Christmas presents and Chocolates for Charity commitments will be done for the year!)

So now that I’m caught up, I can take a breather and show you a few of the marvelous things I’ve been doing the past few weeks:

First, of course, the food porn. Here are the ginger/lime/Thai chili/peanut caramels:

Here are some of the jasmine tea/vanilla bean/orange blossom honey caramels, with the transfer sheets still on:

Jasmine tea, vanilla bean, and orange blossom honey caramels

And here’s the coconut almond fudge:

Coconut fudge dipped in chocolate and topped with a freshly-roasted almond

Here’s a portion of the English toffee, complete with sentiments of the season:

And, finally, here is a short video of my chocolate tempering machine at work on ten pounds of molten chocolate:

The tempering machine works by bringing the melted chocolate up to a high temperature, so all the cocoa butter crystals are fully melted. Then you add solid, tempered chocolate to the other half of the bowl (the top part of the video). The melted chocolate circulates through the bottom part of the bowl. That melts the tempered chocolate, which in turn “seeds” the melted chocolates with the right kind of cocoa butter crystals. The bowl rotates to keep the chocolate mixing, and a scraper in the bottom keeps the solid chocolate out of the melted chocolate. Since the tempering machine controls the temperature quite precisely, once the chocolate is properly tempered, you can just stand there and dip chocolates, totally carefree. Far better than the Bad Old Days, when I had to temper chocolate by hand on a giant marble slab.

(Not sure what is meant by tempering chocolate? Great explanation of how and why here.)

But wait! That’s not all. I finally finished the beaded fringe for my sea-turtle scarf:

sea turtle scarf - finished fringe — sea turtle scarf – with beaded fringe

I had put the project on hold many months ago because I couldn’t find the right color beads for the fringe. Indigo blue beads are very hard to find, it turns out, and I had given up looking. When my mother found out about that, during her visit in August, she insisted on driving around to every local bead shop until finally we found them together, at General Bead in San Francisco. Given that she took such great pains to get me those beads, I thought I should finish it. So I brought it with me to Maryland, and worked on it while organizing her memorial service. Both beaded fringes are done now, though I still need to sew them onto the scarf. I just wish my mom were around to see the finished piece! I think it will be lovely, and the indigo beads are just perfect.

I’ve also started a small beaded Christmas ornament. My mom had a book in her craft room about doing three-dimensional pieces with seed beads. There was a “star sphere” pattern that I thought would make a lovely ornament for her tree (now my brother’s tree, I suppose, though it will always be my mom’s tree to me, as she made so many of the ornaments on it). So I took the book and some of her bead stash, and have been working on it in odd moments:

beginnings of a "star sphere" ornament — beginnings of a “star sphere” ornament

Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I can’t make progress on it inside the house. Because, well, cats! Fritz and Tigress are standing by, eager to help. Especially if it involves chewing on beading thread, batting around beads, or making off with my piece-in-progress. (I got up for just a moment, and came back to find Tigress walking off with it in her mouth! I guess she was pleased by my consideration in making her a beautiful little cat toy.) But I am coming outdoors from time to time to work on it in the garage.

And that’s most of what I’ve been up to the last week or so.

And what has Tigress been up to? Using my design wall as a climbing wall, of course. I’ll leave you with this series of time-lapse photos, as Her Royal Furriness starts up the wall, considers whether she can get into the shelves on the right side of the door, and finally climbs to the top shelf on the left. She is quite the athlete, as you can see!

March 16, 2015 by Tien Chiu

On the fringe

In between sleeping twelve hours a day, I’ve been working up samples of beaded fringe. It turned out that the beads I was using were too irregular to work well in fringe: one bead would be huge, then the next bead would be tiny. This made it impossible to get a neat netted fringe, and I gave up after a few attempts.

So yesterday I went to a bead shop (Hallelujah! I can leave the house again!) and bought five tubes of Japanese seed beads, which are much better quality, and much more uniform in size. Since then I’ve been working up fringe samples:

more beaded fringe samples - front — more beaded fringe samples – front

more beaded fringe samples - back — more beaded fringe samples – back

Of these, my hands-down favorite is the one with the dark wavy lines. It captures and continues the ripple motif, and the dark beads match the turtles nicely. My one complaint is that the second set of wavy lines – the lighter aqua beads – don’t have good contrast with the pale aqua background, so they don’t show until you’re really close up (click to enlarge the photo). I think I may try another sample with either a darker aqua bead for the second set of ripples, or with all dark ripples. I’ll actually probably try both – I’m really enjoying making these samples!

I’m also enjoying the freedom from time pressure. While being mostly in bed isn’t fun, exactly, it’s also a relief from my usual hectic routine. Because of the book contract, I’ve been running at full tilt for quite some time, with three things to do with every minute, so having plenty of free time is a surprising luxury. Having limited (though improving) mobility is also forcing me to reduce my activities, which means a slower pace and fewer distractions. While I’m looking forward to being fully recovered, it’s nice to have some down time, too.

That does not, of course, mean I’m being idle. Since I am mostly limited to sitting down or lying in bed (plus my short walks once an hour, per doctor’s orders), I’ve decided to take this week and do something I’ve always wanted to do: learn Adobe Illustrator. I want to be able to draw sketches for my work, and because there are a ton of advantages to working on the computer (easy editing! undo! electronic storage and backups!), I’d prefer to do it electronically. But I never had enough focused time to learn Adobe Illustrator. It’s a powerful tool, but also complex, with a steep learning curve. And who has time to spend a week learning how to use a piece of software?

Well, I do, at least right now. So I am taking advantage of my temporary physical disability to do some focused study. I’m about 1/3 through an introductory book on Adobe Illustrator now, and churning through several chapters per day. At this rate, I should be fairly adept within a week. (Then, of course, I will have to learn to draw, but that’s another matter.)

I’m also doing some deep thinking about weaving. In particular, I have been meditating on tied weaves: the interaction between ground cloth, patterning in the ties, and the pattern shafts. I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I can explain my insights, but I’m finding it quite intriguing. I’m thinking I may combine it with my other avenue of study, Marian Stubenitsky’s wonderful book Weaving with Echo and Iris, and try a tied weave with some of her lovely parallel-threading structures as the ground cloth. If I do a divided parallel threading with 20 shafts for ties and 20 shafts for pattern, I should have many exciting possibilities. No idea what will work just yet, but the exploration is the fun part!

Speaking of exploration, here is a rare photo of Fritz the Explorer at the top of my yarn shelf. Normally Tigress is the intrepid climber, but I left one of the boxes of yarn off the shelf, making an easier path for His Royal Furriness to explore the high places.

And where is Tigress? Well, nowhere in sight, but I just saw some of my clean laundry falling off its shelf, so I am fairly confident I know where she is. (sigh) I really need to find somewhere else to put my clothes!

March 11, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Sea turtles and surgery

Many thanks to all who commented on my sea-turtle dilemma! I posed the question in a couple of forums, and curiously, the answers were pretty much evenly divided between samples 1, 2, and 3 (with perhaps a slight favoring of 1 and 2). I took that as a sign that there were no wrong answers to the question, and it basically came down to personal preference.

My dilemma remained, however. I thought the undyed scarf made the strongest artistic presentation, but it didn’t fit my personal style – too subdued, not enough color. So I could make a piece that would show beautifully, but that I wouldn’t wear. Or I could make a (possibly) slightly weaker piece, artistically speaking, that I could actually wear and enjoy.

This is a nontrivial question for me, but it was settled fairly simply on inspecting the piece. The selvedges are a bit wonky and there is variation in pick density that makes some turtles longer and some turtles shorter. It is also streaky on the back side due to a poor dye job on the dark blue pattern weft. So lovely as it is, this is probably not a show piece. That meant I could overdye with impunity, since this is an item for my wardrobe and not for show.

So I overdyed it. Here are the top and bottom of the scarf, laid side by side:

I like it! There is a bit more color than in the original sample, and it is consistent enough in its irregularity that it looks intentional, not the result of a bad dye job. (I hope, anyway!)

The next step will be to hem the scarf and apply a beaded fringe. Fortunately, I have a ton of seed beads in all the colors of the sea – legacy of an impulse trip to a bead show. My plan is to hem it today, then do the beaded fringe post-surgery. That will give me something fun and pretty to do while lying around recovering.

Here are the bead colors that I’m contemplating:

bead choices for sea turtle scarf fringe

It’s hard to make out the colors accurately while they’re still in the tube, so I intend to do lots of sampling. It’s hard to resist the temptation to start playing with them now – must save the pretty playthings for after surgery!

I also got a bunch of other things done this afternoon. I canned a gallon and a half of candied citrus peel (Seville orange and grapefruit peels), made two gallons of chicken soup for the post-recovery period, and made a gallon of applesauce to eat during the bland-foods phase of the recovery period. I also went through the pre- and post-surgery instruction packet and made an exhaustive list of what needs to be done when, and by whom. I think I can now safely say that I am vastly overprepared for the upcoming surgery. So I will spend the next few hours relaxing and spending time with Mike. After that, an early bedtime – we’re supposed to be at the surgical center no later than 6am tomorrow.

I’ll ask Mike to post an update after surgery – I imagine I’ll be too loopy to post much of anything.