Tien Chiu

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A 2009 retrospective, and 2010 goals

Yes, I know it’s not New Year’s yet, but as it’s getting close, I’m doing my New Year’s retrospective a day early.

Looking back on last year’s New Year’s post, a lot of my New Year’s goals got sidetracked by the wedding:

Here are the accomplishments I want for myself in 2009:

  • Deepen my relationship with Mike. (We got engaged!)
  • Practice compassion: either ride AIDS Lifecycle 8 in June, or else get into some kind of volunteer work, exact form TBD. (OK, didn’t get around to this one.)
  • Lose 20 pounds.  (Or this one, either.)
  • Learn more about weave structures.  I can’t say what exactly because I don’t know what I will want to explore, but tied weaves and four-color doubleweave top the list right now.  I want to put in some serious study of weave structure, more than I did last year.  (Very little on this front, though I did learn a lot about setts and weaving technique instead.  And I figured out how to handle profile drafts last week, which is a pretty big thing.)
  • Get Weavolution up and running, preferably no later than June.  (YES!!!  We launched in June.)
  • Learn more about fashion design.  I would like to be able to go from a photo to a passable imitation of the outfit. (Well, I’ve learned something about fashion design, but not that much.)

But life changes, and sometimes in good ways: I got engaged!  And that changed the focus of my year completely, as I started work on the wedding dress.  And a lot did get done:

  • Got engaged!!!
  • Launched Weavolution!!
  • Dyed and wove 16 yards of fabric for the cashmere coat
  • Learned a lot about fitting while adjusting muslins for the cashmere coat and for the wedding-dress
  • Experimented with knitted blanks for interesting effects while weaving
  • Moved from San Francisco to Sunnyvale
  • Got most of the way through sewing a couture coat (the mohair coat)
  • Designed and wove 26 yards of very fine dress fabric – 10 yards at 96 epi, 16 yards at 72 epi
  • Designed the double happiness ribbon and the eternity knot pattern for the coat
  • Spent five days studying weaving ergonomics and collapse weave with Laura Fry
  • Learned to make bobbin lace
  • Completely redesigned my website
  • Wrote my first two weaving publications, an article on plain weave for WeaveZine and an article on the wedding-dress drafts for Complex Weavers Journal
  • Played with woven iridescence
  • Made 70 lbs of chocolates, in 38 different kinds
  • Made fruitcake with home-candied sour cherries, sweet cherries, and home-candied Seville orange, bergamot, citron, and Meyer lemon peels

Whew!  That makes me tired just thinking about it.  I been BUSY!

Now, my goals for the next year:

  • Get married!!
  • Finish weaving and sewing my wedding dress, using couture techniques
  • Exhibit the wedding dress at CNCH and Complex Weavers
  • More studies of weave structures
  • Play with color
  • Write a few more weaving articles
  • Finish the cashmere coat, hopefully with more assistance from Sharon Bell
  • Lose that 20 lbs I wanted to lose last year

I think that covers it.  The wedding itself is a lofty and ambitious goal (in more ways than one!) so I’m limiting my other goals for this year.

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