Tien Chiu

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What do you think?

I’m almost done migrating the old site (the last of the redirects should go in today).  To go with the new site, though, I’ll need new business cards.  What do you think of this one?

tienchiu business card

I’m still waffling over whether to put a subtitle “Handweaver, World Traveler, More!” right below the name.  On the one hand, it will be hard to read (and arguably presumptuous/self-promoting); on the other hand, I’d like to give someone some context re what they’ll find on  my website.

It would look something  like this:

tienchiu business card 2

What do you think, both of the card and of the subtitle?

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Compliments, and website migration

First, apologies to those of you reading in a blog reader, who probably got tons of posts this morning.  I transferred over a lot of content from the old site, and it will appear in your blog reader.  But I suppose you could consider it a call to read through some of my Writings section, that you may have missed when it came out…a lot of it is really good stuff!

Also, most of the website is now migrated, so check out the Travel, Crafts, and Misc sections…heck, just play with the navigation menu at the top of the page…you’ll find that there’s LOADS of interesting stuff that you might have missed on the old site.  (Bear in mind that it is still a work in progress…some of the top-level pages are still blank, but the bottom-level pages should all be complete.)

And, I got a major compliment yesterday evening…my guild had its annual show and sale, and I donated a shawl (the Black Fire shawl) to the raffle.  (Don’t worry, I wove up two of them, so I still have one for myself!)  Would you believe, it was the most popular item in the raffle?  I don’t know exactly how many tickets it collected, but someone remarked that it looked like half the raffle tickets were in that bowl!  I am taking that as a major compliment, and it makes me happy.  [Read more…]

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Some thoughts on efficiency

To keep myself occupied while weaving on the Endless Warp, I timed myself and did some calculations.  I’m weaving up at a rate of 1 foot/hour, which comes out to about 5 minutes/inch.  I know from past experience that I weave at a rate of 2-2.5 minutes/inch.  It takes me about 20 seconds to reset the temples and advance the warp.  The only other things I do while weaving is mend broken threads, so a simple calculation suggests that I’m spending as much time mending broken threads as I am weaving.

Furthermore, it takes me about 80-90 seconds to mend a broken thread (I’ve gotten pretty efficient at it).  But wait!  A broken thread actually needs to be mended FOUR times – the first when the thread breaks, the second when you swap broken end for the repair end, and the third and fourth time when you darn in the ends from the respective swaps.  Put in that perspective, it probably takes 5-6 minutes to mend a single broken thread. [Read more…]

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Nine yards and website relief

I crossed the nine-yard mark yesterday.  I’ve been finding it difficult to keep up a 1/2-yard-a-day pace, as that means about a 1.5 to 2 hours of weaving every day in addition to work and my new exercise routine.  I’m tempted to come home at lunchtime and weave for about an hour before going back to work – a nice break!  The wonderful thing about working just 3 miles away – such things are actually possible.

But I am continuing to make progress, and have kept the pace up so far – and the weekend is coming, which will give me more time to weave as I have no commitments this weekend.  So hopefully I can get a little ahead of schedule then.  I suppose I could avoid scheduling my weaving and just weave, but I work better with concrete targets and setting goals means I’m more likely to get done.  And I enjoy the weaving process. [Read more…]

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Good news all ’round

The first piece of good news is fairly obvious: I have successfully migrated my blog to the new site!  It took quite a bit of fiddling and one conversation with tech support on my new hosting company, but I got things looking more or less as I’d wanted.  So from here on out, I will be posting my blog entries here.  (I guess that makes the new site the “real” one now!)

Second piece of good news: interview yesterday went well, and I had an excellent conversation with the company’s HR director today.  I think I could be employed again as early as next week (!).  Which means I better get cracking on the weaving!

Third piece of good news: I’m nearly done threading!  I expect to finish threading, tie on, and start weaving tonight, or tomorrow morning at latest.

So all in all, a good day.