Sunday TeaRoom 11/23/08 TeaSlob, TeaKlutz?

[evilberg]

evilberg: Regarding scones, the recipe I used today was from this page (in swedish) - it worked fine.

I took the easy way out with Scones/Pizza mix
Allthough that looked pretty darn easy.. I'll try that next time.

[Proinsias]

I'm a full on teaslob nut but I'm not a teaklutz.

Making tea and drinking tea tend to beat cleaning and sorting tea stuff, I plan to extend my tea making routine to include cleaning things and putting them back but this is a slow road.

[Chip]

As usual, I am enjoying learning little bits about everyone!

TeaSlob, no, but a TeaSLOP, yes. There can be chaos abound everywhere, but not the tea or teaware and of course my Asian TeaTins. I enjoy displaying my wares.

Slop, most definitely, water everywhere all the time. But that is to be expected when using Asian teaware.

Klutz, 99.9% of the time no, .1% usually because I lose focus, yes and usually with very bad results. Kyusu-s have borne the brunt of this having broken at least 3 and chipped 2 others.

Good tea so far, Chiran Yutaka Midori from O-Cha was great. Matcha Kanro again from O-Cha was grrrreat.

NEXT! Maybe oolong or black?
.

[gingkoseto]

I am very very careful about storing tea. But I let leftover tea stay in teapot or even cups sometimes I use a tea tray with a pattern similar to tea stain because I often spill tea water out, and forget to rinse tea ware immediately. So such a tea tray has good camouflage

Long Jing morning and TGY afternoon

[murrius]

I am a tea klutz. I wear this proudly in the form of burn scars on various parts of my body. My favourite is a scar I have on my right wrist from trying to pour scalding hot water into a teapot with a kettle whose lid I had removed in order to insert the thermometer. I know exactly how hot the steam was that fried my skin. Let me tell you I'm only going to do that once! I have also gone through three glass teapots in 2008. I dropped one on the floor that exploded into 1,000,000,000 pieces. I also lifted another into a cupboard. The teapot lost that one. The third I am still using but it looks at me nervously whenever I brew something in it. I recently bought a gaiwan so I suppose I will be reporting finger burns soon.

Today it's been matcha, matcha, matcha.

[Victoria]

Victoria, CRAP! what broke?

This sweet little glass pot that is now destined to be a fair cup. The inside
filter shattered and nicked the rim of the lid pretty badly, but remarkably
the pot itself did not break. The lid was constructed to fit the filter
so it's of no use now, even if I wanted to ignore the nicks.

Glass was every where, I took the picture before I even removed the top
lid and you may be able to see - there are glass fragments even on the
tape!

[treazure]

Can you return it to the sender or would it cost more to ship than to turn it into a cup or beta bowl? Maybe you could plant a small African Violet in it. Not a great week for teaware. *sniffle*

[Drax]

What a shame. That's one of those hand-made ones, too....

[Victoria]

Can you return it to the sender or would it cost more to ship than to turn it into a cup or beta bowl? Maybe you could plant a small African Violet in it. Not a great week for teaware. *sniffle*

It was relatively cheap, so no sending back. But what makes me mad is the vendor likes to have low prices on items and high prices on shipping.

So after paying $26 for shipping (whole order), I expect everything to arrive in perfect condition. Even though realistically not all that was for shipping - but you see my point, right???
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

There was no bubble wrap at all and the pot was placed in the corner of the box.

I really believe it is a bad idea to order both tea and teaware at the same time when ordering from China/Taiwan.

On the upside - their AliShan 30% Roast is pretty tastey.

[Geekgirl]

I can't understand at all why a vendor from another country refuses to bubble wrap before mailing. It's not that expensive, and certainly less than refunding. Last month I won a very beautiful kutani teabowl. It had the wooden box and everything. The sender wrapped the box in a few newspapers and put it in another box. The bowl itself was not wrapped at all, just in the wooden box. Of course it arrived broken.

Granted, the seller refunded my money, but all things being equal I much rather would have had the bowl, it was a very unique one, and gone now. Also, they said they have never had a problem with breakage. Well, I'm sorry, but I can't believe that if this is how you routinely wrap stuff.

[TaiPing Hou Kui]

I am in the middle of a meeting right now and am currently drinking some Awacha that I got from Toru-san from artisticnippon.com. I couldnt read the instructions becuase they are in Japanese and the info online is quite lacking (other than websites that are in....you guessed it Japanese!) From the little I could find, it said to brew at a slightly higher temp then you would for sencha...so I did and it produced a nice vegetal cup that was very clean and crisp. It does not compare to a premium sencha but it is a good every day drinker.

-Nick (TaiPing)

[Victoria]

I can't understand at all why a vendor from another country refuses to bubble wrap before mailing. It's not that expensive, and certainly less than refunding.

Oy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree!!!

[leiche]

Aw, poor broken teaware.

I'm really enjoying the Fujian Baroque tonight. Very nice on this cold, cold night.

[chamekke]

Last month I won a very beautiful kutani teabowl. It had the wooden box and everything. The sender wrapped the box in a few newspapers and put it in another box. The bowl itself was not wrapped at all, just in the wooden box. Of course it arrived broken.

It's very hard to understand why some sellers don't spend a little more effort on protecting the items they're shipping.

Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago: a seller from the UK shipped me a chawan in its tomobako (wooden box) along with some other tea ceremony-related items. The chawan was unwrapped in its box, and arrived - of course - in pieces. Contrite, the seller promptly refunded the full amount, but I PayPalled a portion of the money back to him since the other tea items, at least, were unharmed. But like you, Geekgirl, I really wanted the bowl. It probably broke while it was still in transit within the UK!

[Geekgirl]

If I buy anymore teabowls in tomobako, I'm thinking of including a note to say please carefully wrap the bowl inside the box too, as the Postal Service often breaks loose items. Sheesh, if bubble wrap is so dear, I'd be willing to pay an extra couple bucks just for that!