Christmas Night from English Tea Shop

This past Christmas season I decided to try some new Christmas teas. While we were back home visiting for Christmas, I had the opportunity to go to TJMaxx with the excuse that I needed just a couple more items to complete my shopping list. That was true by the way, but as I looked for just the right items I ran across this organic tea in its clip-on lidded canister. Sadly, the graphics are only paper, but that might make them easier to remove once all the tea is gone, leaving me with the perfect container for another of my loose leaf teas.

According to the description on the front, this particular blend is said to be “bursting with festive cheer” having black tea that has been combined with cinnamon, ginger, and caramel. The back of the label adds to that cocoa, cloves, licorice, and vanilla pods, all of which are organic.

This loose leaf tea has a lovely subtle scent before steeping and an equally subtle aroma when poured into your cup. I add a generous dollop of honey to my tea, so the flavour I enjoy might be a bit diffent when a different sweetener, or no sweetener at all, is added. What I enjoy once the tea has steeped is thoughts of a winter evening sitting by a warm fire while having my feet and legs wrapped up in a flannel-backed quilt. No one spice overpowers another, although you can sometimes feel a bite of the cinnamon at the back of your tongue just before swallowing. Best of all, at least for me, is that the taste of licorice is not noticeable at all.

I looked on the English Tea Shop’s website to see if this tea is still available. It shows up under their seasonal offerings in the 3.5 oz. (100g) clip tin like mine. Their site shows that they sell on Amazon, a site from which I never purchase. I’ll just have to look again at TJMaxx, Homegoods, or Marshall’s when I need more of this tea and cross my fingers that they’ll have it. I will definitely buy more when I run out, probably beforehand actually if I can, as I’d rather not be without this option come tea drinking time.

The cup you see here is from the Winter Greetings collection by Lenox. I’ve been fortunate enough to have added to my collection this year and can’t wait to set a table this upcoming season with this beautiful china. Speaking of the upcoming season, we’re now only six months away from Christmas Day. Hope you’ve been cracking along on your gift-giving projects because the year is half over. If not, get going!

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Holiday Spice Tea from Tea of Life

The Christmas tea that I’d like to share with you this month is from Tea of Life. This is their Holiday Spice Tea which I purchased from TJMaxx in 2017. Try as we might, neither I nor my girls could find this tea again for Christmas 2018, and we looked every chance we got. We looked at not only TJMaxx but also Marshall’s, Home Goods, and even Tuesdays as they tend to carry a lot of Tea of Life tea varieties.

When I originally purchased this tea I wasn’t really sure I’d like it, but knew if I didn’t there would be a good chance that either Victoria or Julia would. Why did I think I wouldn’t like it? Because it contains vanilla flavour, of which I’m not really a fan, but even more questionable in my mind was the spice star anise, which to me smells and tastes like licorice, and I hate licorice. That being said, I’ve read that this spice has many benefits which include the killing off of bacteria and fungus, providing a concentrated dose of antioxidants which may aid with heart health, and it keeps blood sugar levels steady. It is also a natural way to fight off the flu. In fact, the active ingredient in flu medications like Tamiflu is shikimic acid which is extracted from star anise. (Source)

I decided that for $3.99 I would take a chance since I liked the other spices in this pure Ceylon black tea which are cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, all of which have their own list of health benefits. Suffice it to say, I’m glad I bought this tea, and although I’ve shared it with my girls, who love it, I didn’t give either of them all of it. Since we were unable to find more this past Christmas, I drink it sparingly, which isn’t hard given all the various varieties of tea I have on hand.

There were two sealed foil bags inside the tin each of which contained twenty teabags. The minute I opened the first foil bag I could smell licorice. While there’s a hint of the other spices as well, the overwhelming scent of licorice hit my nose first. That made me even more skeptical. However, I’m glad to say that once it had steeped I really liked the overall taste of this tea. The combination of spices and vanilla flavour was perfect and the aroma was lovely. Just the thing to have in hand when you’re curled up in front of a fireplace with a roaring fire, a comfy quilt, and a good book. And yes, I like it well enough that I do drink it on even not so cold winter days. It’s such a treat!

Just as a reminder, three months in this new year have come and gone. The gift giving season is only nine months away. If you’ve not started on at least a list of things to make, and people for whom to make them, you’d best grab a cup of tea, a pad of paper, and get on it. Time’s a wastin’!

Magazine Monday

While I was busy hosting Stitchin’ Camp this weekend, the winter edition of Primitive Quilts landed in our mailbox. Anxious to look through it, but at the same time wishing to be able to give it my full attention, I decided to wait until Sunday afternoon, after my nap of course, to look through its pages.

Sometimes, magazines will offer several projects within their pages, but only one or two that will tickle my fancy. In this case, my wait was welcomed with a magazine brimming with projects that I wanted to do. I use sticky flags to mark the projects that interest me, so my copy now sprouts nine colourful flags, each marking a must-do project, out of the 16 projects included within its covers. Not bad! In addition to the projects, there are many other useful tidbits included in each issue. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the books reviewed in the Book Nook section as the shop has, or has had, all but one of the ones listed, and I have a special order request for that one book which I’ve not yet had in the shop. Needless to say, I’ve already sold out of a couple of the books that were reviewed, yes, they are that good, but I can always “buy more” as Nathanael used to say when we’d tell him that we’d run out of something, including money.

Now, you might say that “primitive” is not your style. Well, it’s not really mine either. I’m a Victorian kinda girl. But, thankfully, I had a grandmother who was a seamstress by profession. She taught me at an early age to ignore the fabrics used on a pattern, usually dress patterns, and to look at the bare bones drawing at the bottom of the catalog page instead. From her I learned that while I might not like the fabric shown on the cover of a pattern, all I had to do was change the fabric in order to have something that better suited me. She taught me how to visualize the dress made in my choice of fabric(s) instead of the fabric used in the cover photo. At the time, I didn’t realize just how valuable that lesson was. Now, as a shop owner, and creative person in general, I would say learning to look beyond the visible and being able to visualize the possible is a lesson we all need to learn as it can help in so many areas of our lives with one of the most important areas being personal relationships, where looking beyond the outside covering of a person into the depths within can mean the difference between being saved from a bad relationship or making a forever friend.

As one might guess, the colours used in the projects of this issue are mainly warm, cozy colours. While I might make one or two of the projects using similar colours, I will most likely brighten them up just a tad. Instead of using dark greens, browns, and navy, for example, I will probably use bright reds, turquoise, and lime greens. Who knows, I might even throw in some purple along the way because I do have purple ornaments for the small tree that sits on the library table in our hallway. In my book, purple is a valid colour for any time of the year. Of course, there are all those variations-on-a-theme possibilities as well. I can see extracting parts of projects to make a smaller version, especially for gift giving, or mixing and matching bits and pieces to my heart’s content. Oh, dear…here we go…

If you’ve never looked through a copy of Primitive Quilts you can visit their website and see the projects included in the winter issue. You can either order a copy online or visit your nearest bookstore for immediate satisfaction. I really think you’ll be hard pressed to ignore this issue once you’ve taken time to look through it and imagine the projects in your own favorite colours. As always, feel free to share what you’ve made with us. I’ll do that myself, once I decide on just which project to do first. Those who know me well know that decision making is not my strong suit, so it might be next Christmas season, or winter, before I actually have anything to show. Remember though, patience is a virtue. Knowing me will no doubt help make you a very virtuous person indeed.

We Have a Winner!

Before I could even get the shop door opened this morning, I had someone parked out front waiting on me. That someone wasn’t here just to shop either. No! That someone brought her finished quilt for the Row by Row Experience contest. Yes! Now we have a WINNER!!! And yes, our row was amongst the eight that she included in the quilt. Super! Who is our winner? Her name is Stacy Houk. She’s a local supporter of the shop and has been ever since we bought it back in 2004.

Stacy had help from her daughter in obtaining rows from outside of our area and in deciding which rows to put into this quilt. The quilt will eventually make its way to her daughter’s house, but for now it will be on display here for all who visit us to see and marvel over. Then I think she needs to enter it into our local county fair, or better yet into the Tennessee State Fair.

One of the criticisms that has cropped up with regards to some of the first quilts to be submitted to participating shops is that the quilts haven’t been completely complete. While the quilts are quilted, bound, and do have a label per the contest rules, many of the appliqué elements aren’t necessarily stitched into place. Sometimes none of them are. They’re just ironed on with a fusible webbing product. Anyone who’s worked with raw-edge appliqué knows that if it’s not stitched down it will eventually release from the project and might even fall off completley. Ask me how I know this. If you don’t believe me I can show you an example of what happens to a quilt when the appliqué elements are not stitched in place.

I can honestly say that every element on Stacy’s quilt was stitched in place as it should be. In fact, not only were all the appliquéd pieces stitched down, she even added quite a few extras. For example, the mermaid has some lovely golden tresses thanks to the Razzle Dazzle thread that has been couched down. Even her eye and lips are stitched around as are all the little bubbles.

Then there’s the sugar bowl. It has “sugar” beads pouring out of it and into the lemonade pitcher. The pitcher looks like glass because Stacy used a clear plastic for the pitcher. The bottle of water that helps to make the lemonade was also made using that plastic. Look at all those little drops of water pouring out of it that were stitched around, not to mention the stitching done on the lemons to make them look like they’ve been sliced. Makes my fingers tired just thinking about it.

The first row had lots of raindrops. All those raindrops were pieced! It would have been much easier to make each raindrop from one fabric, but I love the effect of the pieced raindrops much much more. In fact, I love that technique so much that I’ve been working on a project that does something similar with a couple of the appliquéd pieces. That will be show-n-tell probably when the snows of winter are falling.
Stacy even got extra creative with our row. The designer had used a blue fabric for the background and we had suggested you could also use tan to simulate sand thanks to a suggestion from Jo. The first weekend of the RxR hop a lady came in and suggested that the row could be split in half lengthwise with tan (sand) on the bottom and blue (water) on top. What a great idea! I wish I’d of thought of that. Stacy took that idea a bit further and split the row into three parts – sand, water, and sky. I love it! She said she carried out my idea of using scraps in the sunbrellas and pointed to a bright piece of fabric with jungle animals that had been used in a special quilt that she’d made. You can see it in the circle on the sunbrella as well as in the section on the right of the photo.

There was another row with pieced umbrellas and she hand embroidered the handles on each one of them. The more I looked over her quilt the more I wondered if she’d even been sleeping for the past several weeks.

Last, but not least, her label listed the name of each row, the shop it came from, and the city and state of the shop. The edges of the border around the label were stitched down by hand with a blanket stitch. I told her Miss Martha would be proud of her because I know for a fact she would.

You can tell Stacy put a lot of time and effort into her quilt. She’d hoped to get it further along with the rows she had on hand before her daughter and grandson visited in July but said she spent too much time cleaning house. Why do we do that for our children? It’s not like they’re real company or anything. But I digress… Amazingly, even with the welcomed distraction she managed to get her rows put together, embellished, and quilted before anyone else around here. Yes, I am impressed to say the least. Can you tell?

Now, before you get the impression that Stacy is Wonder Woman, I must tell you that the quilt was actually quilted by someone else. Yes, Stacy had it longarm quilted by Rhonda Griner who did a great job, as always, and got it done in record time. I don’t even want to think how much more difficult it was for Rhonda to quilt given all the little extras Stacy added, but she rose to the challenge and did a fantastic job. Well done Miss Rhonda!

So, put your hands together and join me in a big round of applause and a heartfelt congratulations to Stacy! Oh, yes. Feel free to give a long and loud whistle while clapping if you know how. If you don’t know how I’ll be glad to teach you next time you visit.

Until Next Year…

Our second annual Shop Hop is officially over! Were you able to visit all the shops you intended to? Some folks visited here more than once during the hop so I expect it might be a while before we see them again. Hopefully, it won’t be too long, but I bet it won’t be before the end of the month.

While our physical shop hop has ended you can still enjoy some great freebies by going on a blog hop sponsored by Quilting Gallery. Once you go to their site just look for the Autumn Block Party button on the right hand side. Click on that and you will discover and learn about designers you may have not heard of as well as be able to enjoy a free 12” block from each of 45 designers over the coming weeks made especially for the Block Party. There will be three different designs posted each week along with three different deals of which you may wish to take advantage. So far there have been designs posted for three weeks (nine blocks) so you’re a little bit behind. Choosing a block to start with won’t be easy. I’ve had a little time to think about it though, and I think I’ll start with Hide-n-Seek by Shelly Pagliai of Prairie Moon Quilts. It is sooo cute and absolutely purrrfect for this time of year! Best hop on over there pronto! You won’t want to miss anything!

Now, back to our local shop hop. I owe you two door prize winner names – one from Friday and one from Saturday. I wish I could give everyone something special, but then that might take the specialness out of winning if everyone was a winner. All in all we had eight winners in this shop, and I’m guessing the other shops had multiple winners as well. It would be nice to compile a list of all the winners and see how many folks actually ended up winning something.

Okay…without further ado the winner for Friday was drawn by Miss Martha when she came in Saturday morning. Yes, I forgot again. Our Friday winner was Heather St. Clair. Congratulations Heather! The winner for Saturday was drawn by Victoria after she came in from playing at a wedding in Tuscumbia. The name she drew was Rhonda St. Charles. Congratulations Rhonda!

We’re open to feedback on your hop experience. Tell us what you liked and what you think could be improved upon. Tell us what things might entice you to hop again, or hop at all, next year. Did not having a specific pattern to pick up at each shop bother you? Did having smaller prizes from each shop bother you rather than having one or two big prizes? Did you visit a shop that you’d never been to before, or did you stick with the shops you have frequented in the past? Was sufficient time given to allow you to get to all the shops you wanted to visit? Since this event is meant to get your creative juices flowing for the long winter months ahead, we want to make sure that you were sufficiently pumped after you left the last shop on your list. If that didn’t happen for you please let us know what to change so next year will be even better.

OK…I can’t stand it…How about one more winner? If you leave a comment before 9:00 p.m. CST Saturday, September 29 answering some, or all, of the questions above I’ll randomly pick a name from those who comment and award one last prize. Put your thinking cap on and help us make future shop hops well worth your time and effort to participate.