Tea in a whole new way.

Those of you who know me, know I'm a tea drinker.  I drink a LOT of tea regardless of the weather & haven't been known to say no very often when offered a cup.  My preference is just plain ol black tea with sugar, although I am fond of a herbal one now & then.  The making & drinking of tea for me is a calming, mindful experience.  I love watching the steam rise in floaty tendrils from my mug as I cradle it in my hands.

On a recentish trip to the "big city" (read:  The Gold Coast) I came across these:

Hand rolled "Buddha Balls" in the most devine tea-dedicated shop I've ever seen.  They smelt simply delicious & I was told that as they steep, they unfurl into pretty flowers.  Wow!  This I had to try.

After a lengthy search to find a glass teapot at non-astranomical prices, I finally found (on special - gotta love that!) the perfect vessel in which to enjoy all it's beauty:

It's an all in one mug/teapot.  Just add one ball & boiling water, wait a few minutes and:

Ta-dah!  Oooo ... pretty! 

Then remove the glass insert & you're ready to enjoy.

Mmmm - yum!

Another Sandwich

After my friend D & I had been blathering on to Miss E from Evoke about what fun it is to make/spin a fibre sandwich, we decided to take over the table in her store & just MAKE one!  It was only a smallish sandwich, as there were only 4 of us (Miss N - baby spinner joined the fun), so it was nice & easy to just divide it into 4 equal parts.  Here's mine:

We had all kinds of fluff including silk roving, but decided to hold off on the wilder things we could add.  No marshmallows!  (Cotton balls)

I decided to use this:

To create these:

Which spun into singles looked a little like this:

And plied together to produce 150 grams of this:

Now what?  It's more pinky than the photo suggests, & quite smooth.  About an 8ply.  I really like the way it's turned out - I've never plied a fibre sandwich with itself before.  It's muted the bits of stark white quite nicely & happily there don't seem to be any spots where white is plied with white.
Hmmm - I was feeling a little stressed while I was spinning it & therefore it's slightly overspun (bad habit I know, whenever I'm tense it transfers into my spinning no matter what I do).  Maybe a hat or two for my market bag?