Saturday Morning Tea

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This weekend is what we have been waiting for throughout the cold, icy New England winter. Sunny skies and temps in the 80s with everything blooming and filling our environment with color. I feel joy swelling in my heart. I’m starting to think about iced tea and for me and my caffeine sensitivity, that means herbal.

My favorite herbal is South African Rooibos. I’ve written a little about it here and here. This morning’s tea is called Poire Creme, a green Rooibos decorated with sunflower petals and flavored with pear and creme.

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I steeped it for 8 minutes in slightly less than boiling temp water. As the Rooibos and flower petals steeped, they seemed to be floating in an ethereal dance together.

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We had a truckload of bark mulch delivered this morning. The threads of reddish Rooibos remind me a little of the big pile in the driveway. Guess what I’m going to be doing this weekend?

The red amber liquor greets me with a fruity aroma which carries on into the taste. I love the blend of tart fruitiness and creamy richness in the flavor. This tea would make an excellent iced tea. I prefer the “cold brew” method of making iced tea. Fill a large container with cold filtered water and add a tablespoon of herbal tea leaves for every 6-8 ounces of water. Let this mixture sit overnight in the fridge and then strain into another container the next morning. As these measurements will make a concentrate, you can add water and ice to taste. I prefer drinking the Rooibos concentrate just as is with some lemon or orange slices.

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I’m enjoying my hot herbal cuppa with an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Simply substitute chocolate chips for the raisins in your favorite oatmeal raisin cookie recipe. Mmmm…

A thoughtful reader wrote to me this past week regarding my steeping times for Assam tea. I like to brew my whole leaf Assams for 5 minutes and he thinks that a 5 minute steeping time is too long and yields a bitter brew for him. That brings up a good point that it is important to experiment with steeping times to see what works best for you as everyone has different taste preferences. If a tea ever tastes bitter, that is a very good indication that it’s been steeped too long for you. Thanks, Bruce!

This morning I am off to look at more properties and then home to shovel bark mulch in the garden. Enjoy the weekend!

“Gardening is an instrument of grace.”

~May Sarton

From the Studio

Apr23

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I’ve decided to rename my weekly studio post because Wednesdays are now a pretty busy day for me between work and a physical therapy session right afterwards. So, instead of limiting my post to being published just on Wednesdays, I’m expanding my vision to include other weekdays as well. In other words, I can post when I have free time during the week instead of trying to cram it into a half hour before bedtime on a full day!

For the most part, I’ve always been much more comfortable with having specified days or times for when I do certain things. The Capricorn part of me is soothed by structure and schedule and knowing what to do next. That said, there is a part of me that craves just flowing along with the ever changing tides of my life. I’m trying to develop that side of me a lot more these days. It requires more of an openness and an intuitive sense of what I need for balance.

I finally completed my free-form bracelet. I’m sorry to say that I was in such a hurry to mail it that I completely forgot to take a picture of it! Oh dear. Well, all went well with its finishing. I created a variation of a bead and loop clasp where I built up around the loops with peyote stitch so that the “holes” actually became part of the bracelet’s structure. I attached 2 coppery pearls as part of the clasp.

As I observe the unfolding beauty of Spring around me, I am being inspired to create a new free-form bracelet in a color palette that will reflect all of the budding and blooming going on. I love this part of the process, the choosing of harmonious colors and the laying out of the selected beads on my tray to see how they look next to each other. I’m thinking of delicate spring greens and tree bark browns and grays with a sprinkling of forsythia yellow, hyacinth purple and white along with azalea purply-pink.

What do you think of my color palette so far?

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I finished my second Ripple scarf, the one knit in the pink/peach colorway. As I have grown accustomed to having something on my needles now (and loving it!), I just started a pair of sweet, cotton candy pink baby socks for my granddaughter, Ella. Made with a simple eyelet pattern (yes, yarn overs!), they are knitting up pretty fast.

I purchased the 2 Jane Thornley patterns that I wrote about last week, the “Come Spring” vest and the “Knit a Beach” vest. I’ve decided to start with the spring vest. Jane suggests using a gorgeous silk/wool blend yarn from La Lana. I like the colorway she has chosen, especially wonderful for this time of year – apple green, pine, teal and brown. The back panel of the vest is worked up in a hand dyed ribbon yarn blending all of those colors. Time to go yarn shopping!

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Last Saturday I spent a lovely Art Day with 2 dear friends. I worked on the next 2 pages in my art journal, cutting out magazine images into “inchies”, that is, one inch squares. I glued them onto my purple/brown painted pages in a grid pattern and then brushed and wiped a light, muted blue green over the images so they would blend into the page better.

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The next day I collected a bunch of tape rolls – electrical, paint and some sort of grid tape – from all over the house. I cut and placed tape pieces on my next 2 pages in a random design and then sanded, gessoed and sanded some more. Green blue paint was gently wiped over and then sanded.

This was a very interesting and fun way to create a background!

I’m learning that art journal pages can be created with a wide variety of materials that you can find around the house.

The ordinary arts we practice everyday at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

~Thomas Moore

Saturday Morning Tea

Mar28

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This morning I’m preparing to go away for the weekend to visit a dear friend who lives on Cape Cod. Or, as we say here, I’m going “down the Cape”. It’s a cloudy, misty early spring morning here with rain expected by tomorrow. All of the little greenies emerging from the soil will love being nourished by the raindrops. My friend and I will pour some tea and have a nice long chat while the rain falls softly outside.

Last night I heard my most favorite sound of spring – a peeper. Spring peepers are small chorus frogs commonly found in the East. Every spring they start sounding their mating call at night and it truly does turn into a chorus of sound. I find it very comforting to fall asleep to their song.

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I’m sipping a Chinese green tea called Dao Ren Top Pekoe. The leaf is a Mao Feng style which I wrote about in last week’s tea post. It refers to the downy white hairs on the new growth plucked. The leaf is rolled and twisted during processing.

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I steeped the leaf for 3 minutes in 180 degree F water.

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The tea liquor is a pale straw, reminding me of a white tea. The aroma is soft and vegetal and the taste is smooth and delicate. I taste a hint of nuttiness in the flavor. This is a great tea for someone looking for a very smooth, light green tea without any astringency. The perfect tea for calming meditation on a misty morning.

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I have met brave women who are exploring the

outer edges of human possibility, with no history to

guide them, and with a courage to make themselves

vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.

~Gloria Steinem

Saturday Morning Tea

Mar21

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A shell cradling some tea leaves. Both once living, now both transformed. One is part of my nature collection and one will be further transformed into a delicious hot beverage to drink. Both give me great pleasure.

Change. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and is a constant by which we can guide our lives. Some do not like change. Or, I should say, too much change all at once. I’m raising my hand on that one. However, it is the change in our lives that brings us to new and wonderful places.

Because the last year of my life has been filled with so much tremendous change, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’m sure that there a lot of folks experiencing the same in their lives. I find that when I embrace the change that it flows so much easier. Embracing it means that we have to move beyond our fears and that is sometimes a hard thing to do.

So, this morning I sip my tea and think about these things.

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My work colleague (thanks Dan!) gifted me with a sample of a brand new Keemun called Mao Feng Imperial. I’ve reviewed Keemun tea before and you can read more about it here. The leaf style is called Mao Feng which means “Fur Peak” or “Hairy Mountain”, referring to the downy white hairs on the leaf when it is plucked and also to the location where it is grown and harvested. During its processing, the full leaf is rolled into long, thin strands, characteristic of this style of tea.

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I steeped the leaves for 5 minutes in 212 degree F water. The tea liquor is a beautiful deep russet color with a sweet, dark aroma. The steeping leaves reveal a reflection of the deep blue spring sky today.

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You can see how the leaf uncurls slightly after steeping.

The flavor is silky smooth with a lot of complexity, meaning many layers of flavor. I taste wine, fruit, smoke, chocolate, earth. Keemun is called the “burgundy” of teas. Sometimes when a customer is looking for a new black tea to try, I ask them if they enjoy a full-bodied red wine. If so, I think that they would love a Keemun.

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