To start, I apologize for the fact that this is heading out late. The shop reopening, as light on numbers as it was, still managed to take a lot out of me and completely ate almost all of my waking hours for a handful of weeks. Still catching up on a number of things in the aftermath.
Short version of April – a sizable handful of teas advanced through various stages of the release process, there were ink test posts, the Tea of the Month Club got an explanatory post, I had to start a new tea journal, I finally ordered (and received) medium boxes, I started the process of full release posts for several of the teas for the reopening, and a ton of pre-listing and writing and label-making happened in preparation for the reopening.
More details follow.
As far as tea work goes, there’s almost too much to list. I lost most of a blending day fixating on batch sizing and testing things – LV-426, Monster Slayer (Mimic), and Face the Day got their batches finalized. Face the Day and Green Standard had their decaf versions tested.
2-97, 8-410, 8-390, and 8-429 got their names – Coming Home, Pillow Fort, Face the Day, and Fathoms Below respectively. I had definitely missed the Twitter Tea Naming Threads. They are almost always a joy and a pile of digital inspiration.
8-431, Monster Slayer (DMG), and Monster Slayer (Purple Worm) had their initial tests and ratios decided on. The Monster Slayer series is the first set of teas I am making with Guarana. There is a story behind the name and a reason for the D&D theme of the sub-names – but those details will come out more fully at another time.
8-451 went from “found on an old tea of the month club writeup” to “why doesn’t this tea exist anywhere else” to “hey, look, I figured the tea out again” to receiving the name “Lost in the Mists” – quite possibly the fastest progression from inception to done but for the paperwork of any tea I’ve crafted thus far – if you ignore the several years it was lost per its name.
The ink posts were for Diamine’s Night Sky, Herbin’s Amethyste de L’Oural, and Pelikan’s Star Ruby. Still just the oldest format. The sorting of the files on the hard drive has taken a back seat to catching up on all of the various tea work.
The Tea of the Month Club (Beta) post was a first stab at explaining the two versions of the club, and went into a fair depth of detail about the process. I have a TLDR version with some answered questions in the works, but it is waiting on the launch of the Discord server.
I was a little shocked that Journal 10 had to be started. I think I’d forgotten how fast and furious the ideas can come when my brain is less adrenaline-flooded and exhausted. It is a happiness, though, as is the fact that some of the older journal pages are going to have usable space on them again as the Naming of Teas is progressing more smoothly than it had in quite some time.
It feels like I’m missing some of the bits of update, but so much of what happened in April came to fruition in May it should be relatively easy to catch up on anything I missed in a couple of weeks when the time for the next update rolls around.
I will close by expressing my glee that the shop is open. The selection is more limited than I had hoped for, but it will not remain that way. If you’ve been missing teas, you should drop by and have a look – if I’ve not re-released what you are looking for, let me know, and I will add it to the list.
Going to stop this here before I start adding May’s chaos into it. Here’s hoping your April contained some peace and distinctly less pollen than we’ve been dealing with here in Albuquerque.
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