The Ladies' Tea Guild

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Back from the San Francisco International Tea Festival!

Ferry Building Marketplace, San Francisco.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.
 Today was the 4th annual San Francisco International Tea Festival, at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and it was a fun day, although I did wish there was more to the festival than 15 to 20 vendors and 5 lectures.  I did get to taste some really interesting teas, and purchased one of them, a Taiwanese black tea with a really interesting cinnamon-spice aroma and flavor -- and no actual cinnamon or flavoring had been added!  I'll write a follow-up post about my impressions of some of the teas I tasted, later.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Changes, good and bad

Image by Joy Coffman.
Wikimedia Commons.
Well, I haven't fallen entirely off the face of the planet, but it feels like it.  Some dramatic changes have occurred, including the changing of my career (for the present), and moving to another house.  I have left the history museum where I worked for 14 years, and I'm currently working at an elementary school while I plan for graduate school, which is what I had planned to do before beginning work at the museum.  I'm working more hours than I used to work, which is both a good thing and a bad thing: I'm glad for the extra wages, but I am so exhausted that I have very little energy, even on weekends, and none during the week, for sewing and cooking like I used to.  I hear that my energy level will change as I get used to it, but we'll see.  I am so behind on my writing, sewing, and historic cooking!  The new living situation doesn't allow for much, if any, cooking, unfortunately.

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
-- William Cowper (1731-1800)
"The Winter Evening" (Book Four), _The Task_ (1784)