Saturday Morning Tea

Mar5

The hard edges of winter continue to soften as temps creep up over the freezing mark and snow and ice transform. As we start the transition from one season to the next, it’s almost as if nature is holding its breath waiting for just the right moment to burst into life. I find my mood these days to be just in the same place – poised and waiting. Waiting for warmth. Waiting for growth. Waiting for nature to rebirth itself in its continuing cycle.

I’ve strayed a bit from my usual choice of Darjeelings this morning. Not a first flush, not a second flush, not even an autumnal but a Darjeeling Oolong. Tindharia estate Oolong tea.

Most of the teas produced in the Darjeeling tea growing region of northeast India are black teas. Some are green teas, rarer are white teas but rarer still are Oolong style teas. I don’t have any information on the oxidation level of this Oolong but if I had to guess, I would say it’s low.

The leaf is much bigger than a Darjeeling black tea and wow, look at that intact fine plucking of the upper leaves and bud. I love to find a leaf set like that as I sift through the wet leaf. Taking photographs of the tea in all its steeping stages has given me a finer appreciation of how the tea leaf makes its journey from bush to cup. It gives me an awareness that I wouldn’t usually have. It’s amazing what you see when you look at something very closely.

I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes in 190 degree F water. I find its light golden color to be more in line with a green or white tea as well as the vegetal, almost herbaceous flavor notes and aroma.

Isn’t this a gorgeous teabowl? My friend got it for me in Hawaii on his recent vacation there. The glazing reminds me of cake icing. Mmmm…

As my tea cools, I detect a fruity, almost muscatel flavor note. Oh, there you are, Darjeeling flavor. A whisper of peach reminds me of a Fancy Oolong from Taiwan. This tea has an incredible range of complexity.

I love the pattern of cracks on my teabowl. I wonder if they fired it in such a way that it was intentional. Intentional or not, I love its character. It makes me want to peer more closely at it to discover its wonders.

Just like with my tea leaves…

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

~T.S. Eliot

Saturday Morning Tea

Feb26

Can you feel it? The air is softening with a glimmer of hope as we near the month that will bring us the very first day of spring. Ah, music to my ears!

Hello March, you are most welcome here in New England where we’ve felt winter’s brutal force most keenly this season.

To celebrate March this week, I chose a fresh, bright Ceylon called Shawlands estate OP1.

Many teas from Sri Lanka and India have letters after their estate name, in this case, “OP” which stands for Orange Pekoe (rhymes with echo). It doesn’t refer to the flavor of the tea. It is simply a leaf designation. OP refers to a whole leaf tea. If you’re interested in learning more, you can read about this subject here and here.

I steeped the OP leaves for 4 minutes in boiling point (212 F) water.

The Shawlands estate is located in the Uva district, found in the southeastern area of the island of Sri Lanka. The second largest province in Sri Lanka, Uva is a beautiful place of hills and valleys with abundant wildlife, including elephants and leopards and many species of birds.

The tea liquor is as bright as a new copper penny, with quite a pronounced refreshing minty aroma. This might sound strange but the aroma reminds me of the paste I used many moons ago in kindergarten. It is a minty smell I find very comforting.

The brisk, full-bodied flavor brings notes of mint and sweet raisins to my palate. I’m not usually a Ceylon lover but I find this tea deliciously appealing.

I prefer my tea without milk but this tea might stand up to a dollop or two, if you’d like. What’s in your cup this morning?

“It is the first mild day of March.

Each minute sweeter than before…

There is a blessing in the air…”

~William Wordsworth

Rita made me do it

Feb16

Last July, I wrote about my welcome return to the Rhode Island polymer clay guild here. At that meeting, my friend, Judy, showed us how to create ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) using polymer clay, stamps and paint. I had a lot of fun in the following weeks going off in my own direction with what I had learned that day. I created some painted polymer clay bracelets, very different from anything I had ever created before.

Something else happened at that meeting which also changed the course of my jewelry making.

My guildmate and friend, Rita, brought in a stunning, handmade wire necklace from her amazing collection of jewelry. Rita makes her home in the Washington, DC, area and summers every year on the coast of Rhode Island. She returns every summer to welcoming hugs and smiles all around, to be a part of our group once again.

It’s amazing how something can happen one day that changes everything. Even though I’ve had that experience quite a few times in my life, it constantly surprises me.

As I drooled over her necklace all day, I felt a spark being re-ignited inside of my creative soul, my passion for wireworking, born many years ago during my early days of making jewelry. At that time, I wanted to include crystals in my necklaces but couldn’t figure out how to do that because they didn’t have a hole in them for stringing. As I mused upon that predicament, I happened to come upon a book about wire wrapping at the local bookstore. Being so long ago, I’m sorry to say that I completely forget the author’s name and I donated that book to the library in one of my moves. Anyway, distractions come up in our lives that can pull us completely off a given path so after a couple of years of wire wrapping, I veered off that path to try something else. I’m ecstatic to have found that path once again. It’s like finding a secret garden hidden behind an ivy covered gate, a garden discovered once long ago and secretly yearned for without consciously knowing it.

This necklace was born of my resurrected passion. It’s constructed entirely of copper wire and chain with raku and crystal beads, pearls and a polymer clay focal bead. I dipped it in liver of sulfur to antique it and then polished the wire with fine steel wool.

It’s great to be playing with wire once again…

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Saturday Morning Tea

Feb12

Wow, for the first time in 6 weeks, we actually got through a whole week with no significantly nasty weather to deal with. It was such a treat to not have to get up at zero dark thirty to dig myself out before work! Speaking of a treat, this morning’s tea is quite special. It’s a Darjeeling tea, not a black tea but a green tea, called Arya Emerald.

I wrote about the 2007 harvest lot of this tea here. The Arya estate, located in the Himalayan mountains of northeast India, produces special, hand processed tea lots with beautiful gemstone names like Ruby (black), Pearl (white) and Emerald (green). I reviewed Arya Ruby a couple of months ago here.

Dry, the dark green leaf is long and twisted with light green bits but a 3 minute steeping unfurled the leaves, revealing many intact leaves that are a beautiful, light olive green. With most green teas, this one included, I use 180 degree F water for steeping.

The aroma is lightly vegetal with a hint of Darjeeling astringency.

The vegetal quality carries on into the flavor but only lightly so, with notes of tart green grapes and sweet pear which I enjoyed very much.

I find it interesting that such intensely green leaves can produce a liquor that is so golden yellow.

I’ve chosen my spiral teabowl as the light color of the liquor allows me to see the wonderful spiral shape inside the bowl.

Do you have a favorite teabowl or mug? What does it look like? One of the things that influences my choice of mug or bowl is the color of the tea liquor.

I had an odd experience this week. Normally, when I include a link to a former post in my present post, WordPress sends me a “pingback”. Of course, I know about this already because I was the one to place the link in my post. But this week I received one I didn’t recognize. I discovered that another website called rakkatei was posting my latest post in its entirety as if they had written it! I found this quite disturbing, especially when I couldn’t locate any contact information on the site. I did some research and was able to find a company name and promptly sent them a letter requesting that they immediately remove my content from their website. So, if you’re seeing this post on that website right now, please know that it does not belong to them. I am the author, Karen at Art and Tea. Has this ever happened to anyone?

Have a great weekend, dear tea friends, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

“Where there is great love there are always miracles.”

~Willa Cather

Saturday Morning Tea

Feb5

I’ve become fascinated with roofs lately. Yes, you heard me correctly – roofs. In particular, the big chunks of ice and icicles hanging from their edges.

This has been such a rough winter in New England with a foot of snow arriving every week it seems and so many people are dealing with collapsed roofs and leakages from ice dams. On the news, they recommend shoveling the snow off your roof. However, when you live in a 3-story house such as I do, that task seems monumental. I’ve been lucky and have had only a minimum amount of leaking from one of my windows.

Ok, on to my tea…

Introducing Moonlight white tea. For me, the name conjures up images of a huge, full moon illuminating a tropical sea, a path of glitter from shore to horizon. Hey, I think that all of this snow is inspiring daydreams of a warm place. A much warmer place…

The leaf of this white tea from China is enormous and beautifully variegated, ranging in color from dark olive to silvery green.

I steeped the leaves in 180 degree F water for 3 minutes which produced a lovely pale yellow liquor.

The aroma is soft and floral, the floral notes carrying on into the flavor. Notes of honey and apricot whisper in the delicate taste. This would be a wonderful treat for white tea lovers to try.

Speaking of a treat, I treated myself to a pair of new teamugs this week. Made by Bodum, they’re double-walled, insulated borosilicate glass mugs.

I was amazed at how light they are! I just love anything glass and now I can see my tea while I’m drinking it.

Like my glass teapot, I’ll treat my new mugs with extra TLC and handwash them. So far, I think they’re great. I see from the brochure that came with my mugs that there’s a whole line of these glasses in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Hmmm, perhaps a pair of tall glasses this summer for iced tea…

Does anyone have any experience with these glasses?

Rain is in our forecast for later today so it’s a good day for staying inside and playing in my studio. Now that I’ve finished my Towers and Turrets necklace (see last post), I’m ready to start on a brand new project!

“Ah! There’s nothing like staying home for real comfort.”

~Jane Austen