Tien Chiu

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Facelift!

I’m happy to announce that my website has gotten a serious facelift! I’ve spent the last five days working nonstop on the new look. I love it, and I hope you will, too.

For those of you who don’t read the blog on my website, here’s the original homepage:
screenshot of old websiteWhile there were quite a few things I liked about the old look, it really needed improvement in several areas:

First, the navigation was terribly cluttered – ten links in the top menu and Heaven only knows how many in the sidebar.

Second, the site was not mobile-friendly – it didn’t adapt to the screen size, so it was basically illegible on a cell phone.

Third, I felt the space was poorly organized.

And, finally, the kicker: the WordPress theme controlling the look had become outdated, and WordPress 4.4 broke my menu system. I got it working for awhile, but when WordPress 4.5 rolled around, I knew I would have to replace it.

So, after five frantic days in front of the computer, here’s the new look:screenshot of new websiteIt’s still not 100% of what I’d like it to be, but I think it’s better, sleeker, and more mobile-friendly than before.

There is actually quite a bit more to the revamp than just the appearance. I completely restructured the navigation, cleaning up the menus and sidebars. I also reorganized a lot of pages. The site is gigantic – 2,500+ blog posts, 183 static pages, and over 1.2 million words! Amazing to think that I wrote all that in just 14 years. That’s like writing a novel a year!

Come take a look at the site! (And please pardon any construction dust that’s still lingering.)

I’d love your thoughts on the new look, and the new navigation/page organization. And, of course, if something is not working – please, please let me know so I can fix it.

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Another website milestone

Official news from Google Analytics: as of today, the new website has served up 100,000+ pages since its launch on October 5 last year.  That works out to nearly 160,000 pageviews per year!  About 28% of that traffic goes either to the blog page or the main page; 7% has been people looking at the wedding dress; and an astonishing 2-3% goes to my photographic treatise on washing a hedgehog!  (Just goes to show that you can never tell what will be popular.)

I’m very pleased with the success of the new site.  It’s much “cleaner” than the previous site, design-wise, and much easier to maintain.  I may do some more tweaks to the main page (eliminating the “What I’m Working On” category, for one thing, since I rarely get around to updating those pages until after I’m finished), but overall I’m happy with it.

Meanwhile, I am nearly done beaming on the warp for the doubleweave project, which means I need to spend some serious time designing so I can finalize the threading.  I’m finding that as my studies progress, I’m less and less happy with the profile draft I’ve been using – I don’t think it is versatile enough to give me the variation I want.  I may go back to my original threading, or I may explore some more stuff.  I want to play with network drafting, too!  If I use an 8-end initial, the blocks I’ve been using should fall on a network.  Now I just need to figure out what network drafting in doubleweave looks like!  I think I’m going to hit the books tonight.

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100,000 page views served

Just a quick note to mention that in the past year, my website has served up over 100,000 page views, according to the WordPress stats module I installed!  And at the current rate, I’ll be serving up about 180,000 page views per year (about 500/day).  Not bad for a personal website!  I’m pleased.

I have been playing more with doubleweave, creating progressively more complex drafts.  I’ve gone from simple doubleweave patterns (two layers of plainweave in tubular, two separate layers, and center fold versions) to more complex, layer-interchanging patterns using Bonnie Inouye’s divided parallel threading method.  The most interesting part I’ve gotten so far has been two layers, interchanging in the shape of a cross, with layer A weaving satin in the background and plainweave in the cross, and layer B doing likewise.  The overall effect is a cross made of plainweave set atop a satin background, on both top and bottom.  In the process of getting to that, I got a cross that was satin on top and plainweave on bottom…really neat stuff.  I’m still working out the various permutations, but I’m starting to feel like I understand the simpler weaves now.  I’ll post pictures tonight – ran out of time this morning, too fascinated with the play of threads and colors.

I’ve decided to warp up with 10/2 cotton, alternating raspberry and dark turquoise, sett at 48 epi.  Weft will be screaming pink (paired with raspberry) and lime green (paired with dark turquoise).  Pretty dramatic, but it’s what I’ve got on hand.

I am also thinking of dyeing another set of gradated colors in 30/2 silk…I am dying to try doubleweave with gradated warps!

More tonight (this time with pretty pictures)!

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10,000 and counting

That’s right: according to Google Analytics, my website has now served up 10,000 pageviews, just 26 days into its existence.  (And 3,349 visits from just under 2,000 unique visitors!)  I’m very pleased – people are coming!  And liking what they see…the average time on site is about 3 minutes, which is quite awhile in Internet time.  Considering the effort that went into the revamp, I’m glad to see that people are enjoying the site.

Tonight was largely a lost cause, because I spent most of the evening searching fruitlessly for the little sensor magnet for the loom.  I had carefully removed it, set the screw for it in a place where I knew I’d be able to find it again, and…put it, uh, somewhere.  I’m sure it was a very clever place, because it’s taken me two hours to fail to find it.  Fortunately, I’m pretty sure the folks at AVL will ship me a new one.

And I have ordered a book!  Carol (the woman who fitted my sloper) recommended it to me as one of the best books out there on fitting for fashion design, so I ordered a copy from Amazon.  It’s titled Fitting and Pattern Alteration: A Multi-Method Approach to the Art of Style Selection, Fitting, and Alteration and is by multiple authors – just look it up on Amazon (or follow the link) if you want to find out more.  It’s not cheap by any means, but it looked pretty darn good/encyclopedic when I went through it at Carol’s place.  Once it arrives (Wednesday, according to Amazon) I’m going to use it to make all the changes that Carol suggested on the coat pattern.  It will be interesting to see how that goes!

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Bye bye Travelingtiger

We finished the redirects today.  Travelingtiger.com is officially gone, everything redirects to tienchiu.com .  In a few days I’ll point the domain name travelingtiger.com back to tienchiu.com and take down the old content.

I find myself oddly sentimental about the old site – yes, it was clunky to navigate, hard to update, and some people found the orange-on-black text hard to read.  But it felt much more personal, artistic-minded, and whimsical to me than the new site, which is more formal/structured.

Yet time marches on, and I wanted to put on a new public face that reflects my seriousness about the fiber arts, and particularly weaving.  And I wanted a website that was easier to navigate, easier to read, and easier to update.  So here we are!  I can’t believe it’s actually finished.  I’ll keep the old site as an archive, though, partly for sentimental reasons and partly as a backup, in case I discover that I left something out.

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