Niligiri

Today we are reviewing another new tea. This tea is named for the blue mountains in southern India where this tea is grown. Unlike Darjeeling and Assam, tea grows year round here. I looked up some pictures of the Niligiri mountains. It brought up pictures of snow covered peaks, and verdant slopes. If you looked closely you could see the fine lines of crop rows and terracing on some of the hills. Mountains always amaze me, probably because I've always lived on the plains. I've flown over the Alps, and the Canadian Rockies, I've seen the peak of Denali emerge from behind an airplane wing. I've spent time on the ground in the Appilachians, Alaska, and the Rift Valley (with associated mountains and volcanoes) yet mountains still seem somewhat abstract to me. In all reality, few people who live around mountains actually go mountain climbing. They are either undeveloped areas that you just kind of look at, or highly developed areas that are paved over and barely noticeable. The only reason I know that there was a Davis mountain on my commute to Cumberland is that there was a sign by the side of the road announcing it. It wasn't a place to pull off, it was just a sign saying it was there. I think it may have given the elevation of the summit. In the end, all mountains came to mean to me was the need for downshifting my car. I drove very differently in the Midwest winter after spending part of a winter in the Appilachians (and it still bothers me that my current car doesn't have 3 separate low gears on its automatic transmission). Upon opening the bag, I get a light scent of tea and earth.

Upon brewing, the leaves unfurled to a moderate size leaf. My tea shop describes this as a relatively mild tea with a mellow, light, and clean liquor. I would have to agree. I think I get a slight flavor change with aeration, but nothing spectacular. I even served it up in a wine glass to hold the scent of the tea for enjoyment. Okay, that and the color of black tea just looks really wrong in a wine glass. Green teas look like a steamy white wine of some sort, but brown liquid in a wine glass makes it look like you are up to something strange.

In July, I entered an international lace making contest. The theme of the unconventional convention this year was "the silver lining", and the contest was to make a piece of lace about the moon. I didn't win any prizes (although I did get a certificate of participation and a machine embroidered mug rug in the mail this week). My lace entry shows the phases of the moon counter-clockwise around the night sky (complete with Milky Way and stars). Yes, I was an astronomy nerd growing up.

Check out my pretty mug rug! It's embroidered on both sides. The nice thing about lacers is that we have other, overlapping hobbies. Most lacers have a fabric stash. Some of them belong to the embroidery guild, some have embroidery machines, and some of us just make things out of fabric and leave the embroidery to others.