Two days before Christmas I recorded in my Facebook status my wish of getting woollen socks as a Christmas present — my apartment’s temperature being closer to that of a fridge than that of a tropical paradise. I didn’t get the socks, but that’s all right. As I mentioned in September, I’ve begun to knit. I knitted and crocheted things for Christmas presents, and now I feel confident enough in my skills to try knitting socks. We’ll see what the results will be like.
Apparently, knitting is fashionable right now. My sister called it “homing”. Googling “homing” brings up all kinds of unrelated topics, but the two first links in google.fi are homing.fi and a blog entry from two years ago about the homing trend. Homing.fi declares on its front page that the domestic arts are fashionable again.
The English Wikipedia does not know homing in this context, but the German Wikipedia does. According to it, homing as a term was coined in the early 2000s. It is described as a way of life where the home is the centre of social life. Therefore, it seems to me that there are two aspects to homing: valuing domestic arts and preferring the home as the centre of social life. In short, valuing domesticity. Maybe it’s a bit funny that there is a special term for it, but the trend itself is interesting.
But back to Christmas. I was surprised not to get a single book as a present this Christmas. Instead, I got many other nice things, such as a tagine dish and movie tickets. The gift that is relevant for this blog came from my sister: five samples of different teas from Théhuone in Helsinki. I got one oolong sample, Butterfly of Taiwan (Taiwanese), one white tea sample, Tai Mu Long Chu (Chinese), and three green tea samples, Sencha Fukuyu (Japanese), Tian Mu Qing Ding (Chinese) and Shan Tuyet Suoi Giang (Vietnamese). I’ve tried all except Shan Tuyet Suoi Giang and have been happy with all except Tian Mu Qing Ding, with which the result resembled slightly coloured hot water more than tea. However, the fault was probably mine. Maybe I just used too few leaves. The jury is out for that.
All of the teas were unknown to me before, except for the Sencha Fukuyu. I have had Nordqvist’s Sencha Fukujyu before (I presume it’s the same tea despite the different spelling), and I’d had problems with making a brew that was not too bitter. However, I had no problems with Théhuone’s tea. Maybe I got lucky, maybe it’s the tea. Who knows.
ETA: Leo of Valkoinen Leijona writes about Tian Mu Qing Ding. Apparently it’s supposed to be like slightly coloured hot water. Hmmm.
Nice to see you writing again! Keep on. You were assuming that maybe the taste of Tian Mu Qing Ding you tried wasn’t good because of too slightly portioned tea leaves. As you probably noticed, I tried to increase the amount of leaves with no better outcome. So answer is apparently to challenge our sense of taste, above all. Or then just focus on those samples we prefer.
I’m waiting for your experiences of those other teas you got.
I have to say that increasing the amount of tea leaves did produce a slightly less watery brew, but it was still very delicate. I think I like it, though, despite my being used to more robust brews.
[...] and Ceylon black teas, from Camellia Sinensis in London. The small plastic bags contain the five teas I got from my sister at Christmas. And last, the teabags in the plastic bag on far right are some Japanese tea that my Japanese [...]