Blooming Tea 11

Today we take a break from love themed blooming teas for a simple blueberry one. The tea did have a pleasant smell when I opened the package.
Its been a busy week. I took some time off work, and went on a rampage to use up what is left of my fabric stash. I come from a family where you must save everything for someday. The problem is that someday never comes. Well, I decided someday is here. I also have minimal contact with my more toxic family members, so they can't judge me for wanting to have less stuff to lug around from apartment to apartment every few years. So I made some quilt tops. They are just for throw quilts, not a full size bed quilt. I don't have the equipment to really quilt them nicely, but I can quilt them well enough with my regular sewing machine.
Now I have a lot of quilting to do. I discovered that I already had a quilt batting stashed away after I bought another one, so now I don't have to worry about whether these will all fit on one. I think it will be a little while before I get around to carving up the quilt batting. Granted, it's only 6 months until Christmas at this point. So back to the tea. I did take a couple of videos of it openeing. They were not exciting. It kept drifting to a spot in the teapot where I couldn't film it well.
It looks like it likes to float a bit, so I transferred it to a glass. The picture shows a red flower floating in the middle of an arch of white flowers. The reality is that there is an off center red flower tethered to some battered white flowers.
At least my lace guild meeting yesterday was fun. One of our members was showing a new technique to make a star. I didn't have any empty lace pillows to take to the meeting, but I did get instructions to try it sometime. I took a picture of the demo pillow. I really think I will try the split colors when I try it the first time so I can see whether or not I made it right.

Comments

  1. Poppy CrockerJune 19, 2022 at 11:54 AM

    I'm glad you got some stuff done on your week off! You're right about the futility of saving everything for "someday." After realizing that things have gone bad, broken, or gotten so irrevocably lost by the time I need them that I have to get a new one when the day I need them comes anyway, I've tried to cut back on trying to save anything too long-term.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lace makerJune 19, 2022 at 2:46 PM

      Yeah, I think most people have been there. It's also kind of freeing when you admit something doesn't work for you and you can just get rid of it.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Equatorial Guinea

Image
Equatorial Guinea Today we go to Equatorial Guinea , which consists of "Rio Muni" - Continental Equatorial Guinea, and 5 small islands known collectively as Insular Equatorial Guinea. When researching this country, I found "osang" tea. I found the name only, no instructions on how to make it. Mystery tea Upon doing some research, osang is a generic name for African milk tea. I couldn't pin down any specific flavors used for this region, just a general description of how people all over Africa make this tea. The base is black tea with milk. The suggested add ins are shown below. Tea Masala (thank you Indian food store), ginger, cardamom, or lemongrass. No, don't use them all together. Today I'm in the mood for cardamom, so that's what I used. The one blog I found about making this suggested a 1:1 ratio of milk and tea. I used 3/4 cup (about 200 ml) of each, with 3 cardamom pods. As usual, you can add sugar to taste. I decided to add the c...
Read more

Have a cup of Christmas

Image
I'm skipping ahead just a little bit because of a Central American holiday tradition. The hibiscus flowers are in bloom, and it's tea season. In this part of the world, hibiscus tea is known as "sorrel" instead of " bissap ". While my research on the tea of North America is not complete, I found that several countries make sorrel for Christmas. Trinidad and Tobago , the southern most Caribbean islands. They gained their independence from the UK in 1962. They are a continuation of the Andes mountains from Venezuela. They have a tropical climate, and temperatures vary widely between day and night. They used to grow a lot of sugarcane, but the last of the sugarcane estates was closed. Cocoa and coffee are also export crops. Most of the population is rural, and is made up of people from Africa, East Indian, and mixed race.  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines , are part of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea. These islands gained their independen...
Read more

Ataya/Waraga/Tuareg Tea

Image
"Berber Whiskey" What do you make on a Saturday afternoon when you're tired? I mean really tired. Like you just woke up from a 3 hour nap, and all you want to do is go back to sleep. I will admit I was a bit leery of this one when I found out how it was made, but this is wildly popular so I had to try it. This version of tea has many names, and some sources say that this is used like alcohol in cultures that forbid drinking and using drugs.  Ataya (or attaya - I've seen it spelled both ways), also known as Tuareg tea (so named for the Tuareg tribe), is a very social tea ceremony in West Africa. Most reviews say to expect to take at least 3 hours and have several rounds of tea. Over time, each round of tea is supposed to get milder and sweeter. Sometimes instructions say that mint is added. It is popular in many countries: The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau , Senegal (The Gambia is actually inside Senegal with a small border on the Atlantic), Sierra Leone , Mali , Mau...
Read more