I’m back to talk about my November Shop Update, Nifty November!

Why nifty? Well, honestly, I like alliteration and I think a lot of the items are kind of nifty!

Mini Countdown Box

As you might know, the advent/winter countdown box sold out in ONE HOUR! This is insane. It certainly helped my fears about it selling that I always have but I know this was upsetting for a lot of people who wanted to box. In the aftermath, I had enough materials to make 5 extra somewhat smaller boxes and send them to those who claimed them first.

For this next update I am going to offer a limited run of mini countdown boxes. It will be 6 days that you can countdown to whatever day you want or open all at once. There will be one piece of teaware, a complete brewing vessel and 5 teas. The teas will be one of each: pu’er, black, oolong, white and green. All will be lovely for this time of year and all are purchased from some lovely vendors!

I do have enough penguin wrapping paper to wrap these up so you will get some penguin wrapping paper if you missed out on the advent!

These will be released on 11/19. There will only be 20 available and will cost $36.

Gold Plated Ear Cuff

I’ve had so much fun designing jewelry that I decided to try something new! I only have one piercing and it’s on my upper right ear. Often, I will wear an ear cuff on my left ear. Originally, I had my simple leaf design engraved on sterling silver ear cuffs but they ended up not showing up enough.

Since these are gold plated copper, I figured they would show up a lot better and they did! Since I still have all the silver ear cuffs, I will be including a free one of those with every order of an ear cuff while supplies lasts!

Cloud Gaiwan Stud Earrings

This year I came out with 2 new stud earring designs and I’m so excited to be able to bring you a gaiwan themed one. I was inspired to include clouds. I feel like clouds get a bad reputation, they’re often seen as something gloomy. They can be gloomy but they can also be so beautiful and I made these gaiwans light blue so that it looks like the clouds are floating in the sky. I hope you love these!

These are made with nickel free silver with stainless steel posts and measure 1 cm.

Cloth Pouch

A small addition to the shop will be these cloth pouches that you can get for $5 each. The are a softer cloth with a pocket, my logo and a string to tie it up. I think they would be great for storing jewelry !

New Packaging

As I design more jewelry, I wanted to create packaging that is a little bit nicer, keep the goods more secure and if you are gifting, make it a prettier gift! Earrings and ear cuffs will now be shipped in these white drawer boxes that are hot stamped with my logo in gold color!

Digital Journal

I’ve been playing around with designing a physical journal but have run into a lot of hurdles and am pushing it back to next year. In the meantime, I wanted to create something for those who are interested. While I am a lover of paper things, this will be a digital journal that you can download in PDF and either write into it if you have adobe or print pages out.

There will be:

-Tea Tasting pages (a few designs) based more on visual aspects like drawing the tea

-Self reflective journal prompts

-Lists to write what is in your stash and what is on your wish list!

Spider Tea Cup

THESE WILL BE BACK IN STOCK, YIPEEEE!

Puerh.

Puerh is another tea that I was so intimidated by. After reading different brewing methods I was extremely overwhelmed and thought that I may have found a tea that was too "complex" to get it right. I was SO wrong!

Puerh comes in many forms but I'll only discuss a few. As you can see in the photo above, the pureh comes in a round candy like shape. Puerh is often condensed into either a cake (larger shape), a brick or a Tuo Cha which is like the shape of the one pictured above.

Puerh is fermented and the one I'm trying for this post is from Zhi Tea. It's called sticky rice puerh. This puerh is from trees in Yunnan, China that are a thousand years old! This particular puerh has another special compenent which is an herb called Nuo Mi Xiang (Rice scent herb). The fragrance, especially to a rice lover like myself, is powerful and makes it more appealing. It kind of reminded me when I tried genmaicha for the first time.

I brewed this puerh in my gaiwan 3 different ways. Because this was my first time brewing this tea, I only used part of it. Lesson learned. I should have used the whole thing since I like dark tea. I also poured the leftovers from each brew into a glass that I would then sample as my 4th tea.

Tea wash: As discussed in my post about using the gaiwan for the first time, you need to "wake up" the tea. Pour the hot water into your pot or gaiwan for a few seconds and pour it out.

1st brew - 10 seconds: Most fragrant. Perhaps because it was the first and "freshest" brew but it certainly smelled the best. The fragrance of the "rice" really traveled up to keep my nose company as I sipped.

2nd brew - 15 seconds: Surprisingly, even though I brewed the leaves longer for this round the result was the sweetest. This also may have to do with me not putting all of the tea to brew.

3rd brew - 30 seconds: After 30 seconds, I could really taste the boldness of the puerh. It wasn't quite bitter yet but it was strong and dark. I will opt for this type of brew in the future. Although it wasn't as fragrant, I loved the taste the best.

Combination brew: I thought it might be interested to try the leftovers of each brew mixed up. In reality, this was just an experiment and the tea for this was diluted and weak. Where as each individual brew discussed above has it's own unique flavor, this one was all over the place.

I'm glad that I have now documented this puerh session because honestly, it's difficult to enjoy the ritual, take pictures and write notes. I filmed my session as well, you can check it out on my instagram!

Puerh is said to have some incredible benefits such as detoxifying and lowering cholesterol. It also has a very unique taste and I'm excited to try different ones. It seems that because this tea is coming from ancient teas, each cake or brick will be different.

My lessons + tips from my first experience:

Do not over brew
If using a larger cake or brick, break off the tea gently
If using a smaller "cake" use the whole thing if you want a bolder flavor
Give yourself time and quiet to enjoy the brewing process
Remember to pour out any extra tea from your pot or gaiwan if doing multiple brews so that the tea in the pot or gaiwan isn't continuously brewing
Don't over complicate and enjoy!

Nifty November Update

Brewing Puerh Tea.