origami | Tien Chiu's Blog

May 17, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Revisiting the long-forgotten

After 10+ years’ hiatus, I’ve taken up another old interest of mine: handspinning. A week or two ago, I wandered down to my local yarn shop, Purlescence Yarns, because I had heard they were stocking weaving supplies. In particular, I had heard that they had a computer-driven Louet Megado, which startled me because that is a mighty high-end, complex loom for a yarn shop to be selling. Having a Megado on their floor meant that they were serious about selling to weavers, so I drifted in to suss out their offerings.

I’m pleased to say that we now have a “real” weaving shop in the Bay Area! They have quite a variety of looms, including several types of rigid heddle looms, table looms, and floor looms (both treadled and electronic dobby). Yarns are mostly cotton, I think 5/2, 10/2, and 20/2 cotton. That’s not too surprising since the majority of weavers use those yarns. They have Lunatic Fringe yarns in a rainbow of colors, plus the American Maid yarns, natural color-grown cotton that Lunatic Fringe also supplies. They also have a lot of other weaving yarns, but I have to admit that I was so drawn to the brightly colored Lunatic Fringe yarns that I didn’t much notice the others. (I am a color magpie, in case you hadn’t noticed. 🙂 )

In addition to weaving supplies and equipment, and the expected array of knitting yarns, Purlescence also sells equipment and materials for handspinning. There’s a largish flock of spinning wheels on their shop floor, plus four or five drum carders, and a wall dedicated to spinning supplies – natural, commercially dyed, and hand painted rovings, plus a little bit of fleece. And other spinning goodies, like spindles, hand cards, blending boards, etc.

If you’re in the Bay Area, you should definitely check them out. They’re in Sunnyvale, so South Bay folks (like me!) should be especially excited – we haven’t had a good fiber arts shop down here for ages.

Anyway, I had decided beforehand that I was not buying any more weaving yarn – my stash is embarrassingly large already! But ooh, pretty colors! I wound up walking out with a four-ounce braid of rainbow-colored hand-painted roving, 50-50 silk/merino, from Greenwood Fiberworks. It’s gorgeous.

I was berating myself for the complete uselessness of this purchase (I haven’t spun anything in ten years, don’t own a spinning wheel, and had no intentions of picking up spinning again) when it occurred to me that hey, maybe I could use a drop spindle and spin while walking! I had been trying to get myself to exercise more, but was stymied by my subconscious, which has zero patience for anything it considers unproductive. “Are we done yet? Can we go do something useful now?” Having to listen to your subconscious whining in the back seat for the entirety of a one-hour walk is a real demotivator, so I was having trouble getting myself to go for even short walks.

So I got out my drop spindle from a dusty bin of craft supplies, and tried out the roving. It was a delight to spin, and I quickly discovered that I could spin while walking briskly. And my subconscious did a 180-degree about-face: “Oh, can we do just a few more blocks? I want to make more yarn!”So behold my secret weapon for exercise:

Having started spinning again, of course, it was inevitable that I would acquire a stash. So I bought some roving, and traded with a friend to get some hand cards and some of her fiber stash. I now have about 5-6 pounds of various spinning fibers – enough for several years at the rate I’m spinning.

Since most of my new stash was undyed, I naturally had to put some color in it. So yesterday I hand-painted this roving:

It’s Kraemer Yarns’ Sterling roving – 63% superwash merino, 20% silk, 15% nylon, and 2% glitter. Perfect for a pair of fabulous socks. (And I do mean faaaabulous, dahhhling.)

So after I’m done practicing on the rainbow roving, I’ll start spinning this one. I’m thinking a three-ply yarn, Navajo-plied to keep the color sequence intact, would be perfect.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading up on another long-forgotten interest, origami. I’ve read the first 200 pages of Robert Lang’s Origami Design Secrets – a fantastic book about designing your own origami models. I haven’t studied it at great depth, but I understand the basic strategies that he’s outlining. It’s very well-written and logical in its progression – you can tell it was written by a scientist! (Lang is a former professor at Caltech, and was affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for quite some time.) I’m really enjoying it.

I’ve also tried folding some origami tessellations, but have been stymied by my small squares of origami paper. The tessellation I was attempting begins by nonchalantly telling you to fold the paper into 1,024 squares of equal size, so you can imagine that on an 11×11 sheet of origami paper, those squares are very small indeed! (But don’t look so aghast: you can fold those 1,024 squares with just 64 folds.) So I bought some larger sheets of origami-suitable paper yesterday and will try again this week.

I’m also planning to get in touch with some origami masters this week, to see if I can pick their brains about doing origami in fabric. Fortunately several very well-known origamists are in the Bay Area, so hopefully at least one of them will let me buy them lunch. 🙂

But if not, maybe I can pull some strings. After all, I do have friends in high places.

May 13, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Paper arts

I dove into origami over the last few days, reading up on tessellation origami as well as origami sculpture. I even folded a model or two:

The models are folded out of dampened watercolor paper. Unfortunately, I rapidly discovered a problem with that medium: it is attractive to cats. Very attractive. Here is Fritz, investigating my first model:

I think it was the smell that attracted him: this particular paper, dampened, smells musty, like a wet dog. Unfortunately the paper is also tasty (if you’re a cat) – Fritz rapidly discovered an obsession for licking the paper. I’m pretty sure the glue in the paper isn’t good for him, so the paper went onto a high shelf.

The peacock fan model was only somewhat successful – I had a lot of trouble forming the curved folds. There is an origami enthusiasts’ meeting near me on Saturday; I’ll probably go there to ask for advice on curved folds in heavy paper.

In addition to the books I mentioned in my last blog post, I remembered that I had this wonderful origami book in my library:

"Origami Design Secrets" by Robert Lang — “Origami Design Secrets” by Robert Lang

It’s a hefty tome (583 pages), but promises to be very helpful in understanding origami structures and how to design them.

So I have mostly been reading on origami the last few days.

But yesterday a package arrived with Yet More Inspiration:

"How to Draw" by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling — “How to Draw” by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling

"How to Render" by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling — “How to Render” by Scott Robertson and Thomas Bertling

"Color and Light" by James Gurney — “Color and Light” by James Gurney

"Perspective Made Easy" by Ernest Norling — “Perspective Made Easy” by Ernest Norling

So I expect I have a lot of reading and a little bit of practicing to do, in both drawing and origami, over the next week or so.

This may seem like a scattershot approach – a little bit of this, a little bit of that – but I’ve found that’s how I learn a subject fastest. Particularly in this case, I’m a generalist – I’m not interested in going deep into either form, as my interest in both is entirely ancillary to my interest in weaving. I don’t want to be an expert origamist; I only want to know what I need in order to design intriguing woven origami pieces. Similarly, I am not interested in being an expert artist – just enough to design for the jacquard loom. So I want a broad theoretical overview coupled with just enough practice to understand the basics. Hence the large collection of books, which I will mostly skim to get the underlying principles. If I have time and inclination later, I’ll go back and do a deeper reading.

Of course, there are challenges to learning either art. One of the big ones weighs about twelve pounds, is adorably furry, and finds any open space on my worktable utterly irresistible:

Clearly, under the circumstances, the only possible response is to give him a belly rub. (Or so he thinks, anyway…and he is occasionally right. 🙂 )

May 10, 2015 by Tien Chiu

A ton of inspiration

Last week was a pretty quiet week, creatively speaking – right up until yesterday, when I innocently went up to San Francisco to see an exhibit, and got dumped into a huge vat of inspiration.

The exhibit was one I’d wanted to see for quite some time – “High Style,” a collection of couture dresses spanning 100 years, from the Brooklyn Museum’s famous costume collection. The accompanying book had been on my Amazon wish list for quite some time – full of luscious dresses. So when I discovered that the exhibit had traveled to San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum, I decided to go.

The exhibit is fabulous. If you have a chance to see it, definitely do. It covers a broad range of couture designers over a century of fashion. Fortunately, non-flash photography was allowed in the exhibit, so here are a few of my favorite dresses.

I unfortunately did not remember to photograph the plaque for this dress, so I don’t recall the designer. However, I was very taken with the simple lines and the lovely netted pearls and rhinestones:

And I simply love, love, love the sleeves on this dress by Sorelle and Micol Fontana. At first blush, they look like a cape! I love the drama of the contrasting sleeve and lining, and want to use the idea in a piece. Somehow.

And here, to fuel my phoenix obsession, is a shoe with elegant gold-and-black flames:

Shoe prototype by Steven Arpad — “Shoe prototype” by Steven Arpad

And finally, who could resist? I bought a postcard of this dress to take home and show to Tigress. (She was unimpressed, of course, having her own, far more beautiful, coat.)

"The Tigress" evening ensemble, by Gilbert Adrian — “The Tigress” evening ensemble, by Gilbert Adrian

But the exhibit wasn’t all. My friend and fellow weaver Alfred (who went to the exhibit with me) and I decided to have lunch in Japantown afterwards. Alas, the restaurant we wanted to go to wasn’t open yet, so we sat down on a bench to show each other our recent work. When we looked up, this intriguing shop was directly across from us:

"Paper Tree" - an origami store — “Paper Tree” – the origami store

If we’d just been walking by, I wouldn’t have noticed it – there are any number of art-paper-and-stationery stores floating around, at least in the Bay Area. But the subtitle, “the origami store,” piqued my interest. About two decades ago I was obsessed with origami, and folded quite a few complex models before giving it up for other pursuits. But I have never entirely lost interest in the art of folding paper. Origami has evolved far beyond the simple paper crane, and a quick look through this shop showed some of the amazing possibilities.

And it may have addressed one of the questions I’ve been wrestling with: what format I want to use for my woven art. I don’t want to do clothing forever, but I enjoy a three-dimensional format; two-dimensional work leaves me, well, flat. But what three-dimensional things could I do with cloth, that aren’t clothing?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. Here are a few of the fabulous possibilities: