Wuyi shan red cape

A trip to the tea shop means new teas to try. While I did get several of my old favorites, I still have new teas on the menu left to try. This time I decided that I wanted a dark oolong to try. Well, technically I got a red cape oolong as a sample with some tea ware I bought last year, so this isn't a completely unknown tea, but its been a while. They are beautiful, heavily oxidized leaves.

As usual, I'm gushing over some quality leaf. Of course the leaves I'm interested in are tea leaves. I know some people have interests in other types of leaves, but I'm too boring for that. I wanted a dark oolong tea in the mix, so I opted to get a bag of wuyi shan red cape. It's not an entirely new tea to me since I got a small sample bag of this tea when I ordered my gaiwan and first two tea pets. It had been a while since I'd had it, so it was time to get a bag. I was in a phase where I was really liking my darker teas, so it seemed appropriate to get an oolong that could bridge into black teas.

It was a tea purchased for multiple brews. I was little nervous when I opened the bag and smelled a whiff of smoke. If you have read this blog before, you know that my stomach does not like smoked things very well. Thankfully, it is very mild, and the smoky flavor washes out after the first cup. These leaves brew well about 3 times with each cup having different characteristics. Like I said the first cup has a little smoke in it, followed by a more traditional dark oolong flavor in the next 2 cups. I'll let a recent tatting project speak for my thoughts on this tea.

I wasn't sure that this pattern would work out when I was making it. The curves were way too shallow for the piece to lay flat when connected. Thanks to some stratgeic stretching, easing, pinning, and a heavy book this piece took the proper shape. This is my piece to exchange at my next lace guild meeting. The pattern called this a heart frame. I'm trying to figure out if you would try to attach a picture to the heart, or if you would lay the heart between a picture and the glass. I guess it's up to the recipient (Ruth) to figure that out. I got a bobbin lace heart from Sally.

Now to get off my behind and get my Millanese snake from October 2018 done (if the dust on it doesn't kill me first).