sewing and drinking thé à la menthe

Not at the same time, as I am bound to spill whatever I am drinking on what I am stitching.

My cousin France got me started on mint tea last year, when she and Edmond were visiting us in Florida.  C'est un digestif, so she drinks it after dinner or later in the evening. No caffeine. It has grown on me and it's especially good when I throw in some fresh mint leaves (which I always have growing in a pot). I find these days that it's in the realm of comfort food.

Now why am I showing you this picture?  The cup. It was a giveaway in the 1950's-60's by Nescafé if you sent them a coupon or a label from the jar; I can't remember which. A map of the world is etched on each cup. 

Need I say that Molly W. Rosenberg, collector extrordinaire, had countless numbers of these cups?  This is very strange, since she brewed coffee every day and I can't imagine that we had enough instant coffee to acquire thousands (ok, a dozen or more) of these cups.  

We drank our tea out of them -- never coffee. We always had tea after dinner, with or without dessert; with lemon, never sugar. I took all of them when I cleaned out her apartment and brought them to Florida, where there were MORE.  Phil fell in love with them, so I gave him a few.  And I just discovered that I have two more in NJ.  They are selling them on ebay and Etsy for various prices - and yes, there is a sugar bowl with a cover.  

 Glass retains heat, so your tea (or coffee) stays hot longer. My grandparents used to drink their tea and coffee from a yartzheit (memorial candle) "gless."

It didn't take me long to digress from sewing and mint tea, did it?  Now that my break is almost over, I will have some salted caramel ice cream in my Elsie the Cow glass (as long as we are on the subject) and then I will go back to my sewing.  

OH - almost forgot.  The link to my tjap page is now working, so click on the Studio Sale link at the top of the sidebar and see what is there.

the eyes have it

This out of focus picture of scarves drying will give you an idea of how everything looked to me for a good part of the day. The retinologist super-dilated my eyes at 8:am and it's a good thing Marty insisted on coming with me. I could not have driven home. Back of my eye is swollen, so 2 different kinds of drops for 4 weeks and hopefully, it will go down. We came home and I lay down for a nap mid-morning: what else could I do? This afternoon was Marty's turn to go to the eye specialist. He drove, I navigated. I hate to say it was the blind leading the blind, but that was more or less the story. By tonight, my world is pretty much back to what passes for normal. Last night I finished taste-testing that wonderful dark chocolate we bought at Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago. See? Empty wrappers. I think the chocolate from Ecuador was the winner. The Venezualen chocolate was excellent - but the stuff from Ecuador was more bitter - my preference. But just to make sure I'm not wrong, I need to go back and buy some more to double-check. I finally plugged in the new iron tonight because I needed to iron one of the scarves I had washed. I ironed this chiffon scarf while it was wet because it shrinks in the dryer, so I didn't need to use steam. It was fine. I have another iron that won't work unless it is on steam - annoying. The tjaps I wasn't going to buy any more of, arrived today. I'll take them to the studio tomorrow and play around with them on another scarf. Oh, good. Here they are. Very geometric. My eyes are closing - I was up till 2:am finishing a book I couldn't put down. Will get to the books tomorrow. I have another early app't.