sea turtles – Page 2

March 10, 2015 by Tien Chiu 12 Comments

Dyepot decisions

I finished weaving the sea-turtle scarf yesterday evening, and ran a few tests in the dyepots this morning. Here are the results:

Clockwise from top left, they are:

(top left) Dyed in a very weak turquoise immersion dye bath, then scrunched up and overdyed with a slightly stronger solution of turquoise to produce a mottled pattern
(right) undyed – straight off the loom
(bottom middle) dyed in a very weak turquoise immersion dye bath, with only very slight dye variations
(bottom left) scrunched up and dyed with relatively strong solutions of green and turquoise

Of the four, I think I like the undyed version the best, but the colors don’t look good on me, so I am thinking of using the dye processes in either sample 1 or 3. (Sample 4 doesn’t work, in my opinion; the colors are too strong and the sea turtles are hard to see.) But I can’t decide between 1 and 3.

Conceptually, I like the idea of the mottled dye job in sample 1: it gives the impression of looking down through water at the sea turtles, which is (thematically) what I was after. But the irregular dye job also draws the eye away from the sea turtles towards the variation in color, and I’m not sure I like that. Sample 3 is simpler, and keeps the focus on the sea turtles, but isn’t quite as visually interesting. Across the length of a 72″ scarf, the mottled dye job might hold up better.The good news is that I have to do sample 3’s dye technique (weak immersion dyebath) before I can get to sample 1, so I can always do the dyebath and then decide whether to stop there. But I wish I could decide whether sample 1 or 3 looks better.

What do you think? Please let me know in the comments, below.

And thanks to everyone for the surgical well-wishes!

March 8, 2015 by Tien Chiu 5 Comments

Sea turtle scarf

The last few days have basically been about surgery prep and sea turtles. Surgery is Thursday, so I have been tying off loose ends. At work I finished a major project review on Friday; I still need to do some work for performance reviews and tie up a few loose ends, but that’s about it. At home, I finally finished hemming the placemats and table runner, and handed them off to my photographer friend Lieven, who will be taking the beauty shots for the Handwoven for the Home contest being put on by Handwoven magazine. And I put together my sample sheets for the Twenty Four Plus or Minus study group. That’s almost everything I had planned to do before surgery – the last one, finishing two batches of candied citrus, will be completed today. They are not quite as sugar-saturated as I would like, but they’re done enough, and it’s now or never.

So what am I doing with my copious free time? Why, weaving, of course! I have put together a draft for a sea turtle scarf, a complicated process that involved redrafting the sea turtles and making sure they reversed gracefully in the center of the scarf. Because of the network drafted ripples, that meant drafting out the entire scarf. It will be 5,040 picks (72 inches) long, plus another inch or so on the ends to provide a generous hem. Here it is after the first few sea turtles:

the beginning of the handwoven sea turtle scarf

The blue portion at the bottom of the scarf will become the hem. Why? Because, when turned back and turned under, it will match the back of the scarf:

This will make the hem much less obvious. (The idea comes from Kerstin FrÃ¶berg’s marvelous blog. Apparently it’s standard practice in Sweden, but it had never occurred to me before!)

The back of the scarf looks somewhat erratic, because it’s from the original set of samples with an incorrect pick density. The scarf itself has a much more solid underside.

I haven’t yet decided which side I like better. The ripples are more obvious on the bottom side, but the sea turtles “read” better on the top side. It also depends on the results of overdyeing at the end – I’m planning to scrunch it up tight in tiny ripples and then pour very pale shades of aqua and sea green dyes over the cloth. That will give it a bit more color and a more water-like effect. I will sample first, of course! Fortunately the reversed hem will match whichever side I choose to be the back.

Anyway, the scarf, as mentioned, is 5040 picks long, and I’m currently at 1,080 picks. I’m hoping to finish weaving/dyeing it before surgery, so I can add the beaded fringe while in bed recovering, but I’m not going to stress about it. There will be plenty of time to finish it afterwards. I’ll be off work recovering for a bit over a month, and I expect to be mostly ambulatory (though not fully recovered) within a week or two.

Surgery is scheduled for Thursday. I’ve got an excellent surgeon (one of the pioneers in his field, with tons of experience), so I’m not particularly worried, but well-wishes are welcome, as always. I’ll try to post my status on Friday, but if you don’t hear from me for a few days afterwards, blame the painkillers.

The cats, of course, have sensed there is something wrong in the household (cats have a sixth sense about these things), and are doing their best to help me finish my last few chores. For example, here are Fritz and Tigress helping me finish the placemat hems:

Said “help,” admittedly, consists mostly of batting at the thread I’m trying to sew with, trying to eat any stray bits of yarn, and sitting on the placemat I’m trying to hem, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

They had to help with putting together the sample sheets for my study group, too. Here is Fritz, helpfully chewing on a cone of yarn:

Then Tigress joined in the fun, and for awhile, I was too busy fending off enthusiastic feline assistance to get anything done. Fortunately a white knight (aka B.) appeared and distracted the cats with a laser pointer, or I never would have gotten those samples finished!

March 2, 2015 by Tien Chiu 1 Comment

The loom is fixed!!

Bob Kruger, the owner of AVL Looms, paid a house call this morning. He figured out the problem within half an hour, fixed it within another half hour, and then spent the next three hours inspecting and adjusting the loom. It’s so well-tuned now that it practically sings!

Here’s the tune I was playing on it this evening:

900 picks, no errors that I could see. Wonderful! I can’t wait to weave more on it.

I’m quite pleased with the sea turtles now. I re-sleyed the warp to a denser sett (48 ends per inch rather than 40 ends per inch) after deciding that my first sample was too sleazy. With the denser sett, the ripples show much more clearly, but are tantalizingly subtle, too – appearing and vanishing as you change your angle of view. I’m eagerly waiting for tomorrow morning, when I’ll weave a few more sea turtles and then cut off and wet-finish the samples. These are destined for a sample exchange that is due March 15 – I’ll do a second set as well, for a sample exchange due in May. And then I plan to weave a scarf in that pattern, then scrunch-dye it in a very weak solution of turquoise, to give the impression of turtles swimming through Caribbean waters. I’ll likely do a beaded hem in gradient colors, as I did for my In the Inferno scarf.

Major things are happening on the book front as well. I decided that the book was really ready to send to editors right now (as opposed to a week and a half from now, when I had planned to send it) and shipped it off to my editor at Schiffer Publishing for her review. I’ll probably send it to my other editors within the next day or so. This frees me to start working on other things, like the sample exchange and my entry for Handwoven‘s “Handwoven for the Home” contest.

And in cat-land? Well, we did a lot of spring cleaning over the weekend. An entire carload of stuff went to Goodwill, and we cleared out a big pile of boxes that had been cluttering up the living room. Since one of those stacks had been regularly used as a cat perch, we had to replace it, of course. (Can’t deprive the cats!) So we bought a big new cat tree for the bedroom, and moved the comfy old cat tree to the living room, right where the stack of boxes had been.

The cats are thrilled. Fritz and Tigress have spent the last two days lounging in the old cat tree, cuddled up to each other and even grooming each other! which is pretty unusual these days. They aren’t as enthused about the new cat tree yet, but they did explore it pretty thoroughly, and I’m confident that within a few days, it too will be covered in cat hair.

Here are a few photos of Tigress exploring the cat tree. (I wasn’t quite quick enough to photograph Fritz exploring it; by the time I arrived, His Highness had already done his once-over and headed leisurely out to check out the other cat tree.)

Tigress examining the base of the cat tree

Tigress discovering the hidden alcoveq — Tigress discovering the hidden alcove

Tigress checking out the cat tree — “Ooh, can I scratch it?”

And here’s a photo of the two of them cuddled up in the comfy old cat tree, looking out the window:

And with that, it’s off to bed! Tomorrow will be an exciting new day, full of weaving adventures.

February 28, 2015 by Tien Chiu Leave a Comment

Sea turtles and spring cleaning

I decided to finish putting the new warp onto the loom this weekend. AVL is sending someone to fix the loom on Monday, and I thought it would be better to have a warp on the loom for troubleshooting purposes. So I finished threading the long-languishing sea-turtle warp, tied on, and wove my first row of sea turtles:

It came out surprisingly well, though I think the background ripples aren’t showing very well. After the loom is repaired (no more floating shafts, please!) I may play with the network drafted background pattern to see if I can make it show more distinctly. I may also change the aspect ratio on the sea turtles to make them a little longer.

Plans for the rest of the weekend are to work on the book and do a bit more spring cleaning. I finished reorganizing the garage two weeks ago – a Herculean effort that involved moving every item in the garage at least twice. I put up three sets of 2′ x 4′ utility shelves and moved all the clutter off the floor and into neatly stacked plastic boxes. That took an entire three-day weekend, working eleven hours a day! But it was worth it – the garage is much neater now, and (more to the point) the loom is now accessible from every side, to make for easier repairs.

So now I’m turning my attention indoors, and will be cleaning up the dining room, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I am a terrible housekeeper at the best of times, but things are cluttered and dirty even beyond my ability to tolerate, so tonight and tomorrow will be spring cleaning.

I realize spring cleaning may be a bit of a ways away for most of you. But out here, spring came about a month ago. It started with the violets:

(The white things on the violets are almond flower petals – the almond tree, while harder to photograph, was in dazzling bloom as well.)

We now have California poppies, blueberry bushes, and peach trees flowering. And, of course, the ever-enthusiastic artichoke plant is pumping out a bumper crop of tasty, tender flower buds:

Artichokes are amazing. We cut the plant back to the ground last summer, and it’s already a six-foot mound again. And, of course, the artichokes are delicious. Since they are so abundant, we pick them young, while you can still eat the “choke” in the center – much more tender and delicious that way. I love this time of year.

I also had a lovely trip to Seattle, where I got to meet some wonderful people at the Seattle Weavers Guild meeting. I presented one program about the creative process and the evolution of designs, and another one about my wedding dress adventures. I had just enough time for a cup of coffee with a fellow Caltech alumna before flying back. My latte arrived looking so beautiful I had to snap a photo:

Not much book progress this week as I was mostly working on my presentations for the Seattle Weavers Guild, but I did read through the entire manuscript twice on my trip. This morning I finished integrating the changes from those read-throughs. I will make a few more edits, update some diagrams, and add some illustrative photos before sending it off to the editors for comment, but it’s in pretty good shape, I think. Nowhere near polished, but I have all the content in, and it’s almost ready to go out to the artists I interviewed so they can review their quotes and send me photos of themselves and their work. So I am feeling fairly good about that.

My last task for the next two weeks is to figure out post-surgery projects. Surgery is March 12, and as it’s abdominal surgery, I’m likely to be stuck in bed for at least a couple of days. So I am casting about for things to do. I already have a big stack of books to read (hallelujah, a chance to read through that three-foot stack on my worktable!), weaving videos to watch, and so on. But I’d like to do something with my hands, and I’m guessing that inkle or card weaving will involve too much abdominal movement/stress for the first few days. So I’m thinking I may try a knitting project. Perhaps a fabulous pair of socks is in my future?

Speaking of socks, I am developing my own set of feline sock woes. I admit that I had been waxing somewhat smug about the fact that Fritz steals B.’s socks but leaves mine alone. But pride goeth before a fall, as they say, and a few days ago I found about half my sock supply had fallen off the shelf and onto the floor, along with a couple of my T-shirts. Wondering how they had gotten there, I scooped them up and started putting them back on the shelf. Suddenly a head popped out!

Apparently those shelves now belong to Tigress; they are perfect for napping, once you push off those inconvenient clothes that the silly human keeps putting there.

I tried to reason with her, of course. Here’s what she thought of my remonstrances:

Apparently I need to find a new place to put my clothes!

February 8, 2015 by Tien Chiu 3 Comments

Temptations

The last week has been pretty quiet, creatively speaking – work has been busy and almost all my remaining time has been spent on the book. But I have made significant progress – interviewed four more artists, annotated three interviews, and rewrote one entire chapter! Not bad for one week, especially since much of my attention has been at work.

I have now finished all the artist interviews, I think. I had been considering doing a few more, but they eat up an unbelievable amount of time – about 3.5 hours per interview to set up, interview, annotate the interview transcript, and tag all the annotations. Since I only have twelve hours a week to work on the book, that means that just three interviews will eat an entire week’s work. Given that I’ve only got four and a half weeks until my (self-imposed) March 12 deadline for a complete-and-moderately-polished draft, I really need to get going on the manuscript. So I am declaring my interviews complete. I’ve talked to twenty-five artists already, and I think that’s enough.

My goal for this week is to annotate the transcripts for my final three interviews, and finish rewriting the chapters on design. I have restructured the book into two parts, one about design and one about process. It’s a much more logical organization than what I had previously, and the book reads much better now, but I now need to do a good bit of editing to support the new scheme. I also need to add some examples.

But, just to mess with my exemplary self-discipline, several temptations have appeared on the horizon. Here’s the first one:

Seville oranges, pink grapefruit, and blood oranges

I was so surprised to find Seville sour oranges at the farmer’s market that I bought eight pounds. Then I went on a buying spree, getting another eight pounds of blood oranges and ten pounds of pink grapefruit. I have no idea where I got the impression that I’ll have time to process those into candied citrus and marmalade. There must have been chocolate fumes wafting through the air!

The other temptation looks like this:

As you can see, despite the work madness, I did carve out enough time to get started on the sea-turtle warp. I beamed on a 14″ wide warp in 60/2 silk/cashmere yarn and am about 1/3 done threading it. I’ve also dyed the weft yarns – sea foam green for the tabby weft and deep indigo for the pattern weft.

I’ve arrived at what I think is a decent compromise between discipline and temptations. In the mornings, I work on the book. But in the evenings, I work on other things – in this case, candied citrus and warping/weaving. This lets me make reasonably quick progress on the book, while still leaving time for other fun. (And I’m really not losing much working time on the book, as I’m usually too tired for writing/editing by the end of the day, anyway.)

The book is fun too, of course. Particularly if you are a cat – or, better yet, a pair of cats – who are fascinated by the duplexing printer. The printer makes clicky noises, hums a bit, and a sheet of paper appears! And then, almost immediately, it disappears again, only to reappear (with more clicks and hums) a few moments later. Magic! They could watch it endlessly. So a 117-page manuscript rolling out of the printer is pure, unadulterated joy.