yuletiding and teatiding

Yuleteading? Whatever. Anyway, it's a bit less than a day and a half to the deadline OMG and I wish all of you still working on your Yuletide stories lots of words, in the correct order, coming swiftly from brain to fingers. And if you're having trouble...try drinking tea? :-) (That's my lame attempt at connecting two mostly-unconnected subjects!)

My Yuletide so far:

Assignment: done and posted
PH #1: done and posted
PH #2: within 500 words of being done? I hope? Beta-reader lined up.
Treat #1: outlined, 2 scenes written
Treat #2: thought about? vague idea?
Beta reading: 3 stories beta-read, one in process, one lined up next.

In addition to this, I'm usually hippoing in the YT discord for a couple of hours in my mornings and a couple more in the afternoons. Tagmod duties have been slight after the big work of tagset research/approval, but I've been helping out with the pinch hit spreadsheet here and there. Of course, once the deadline passes there will be story checking, whee.

Other writing/exchanges:

I decided to pass on

past_imperfect but I have a few requests saved for possible treats.

chocolateboxcomm is coming up, and I plan to nominate and sign up for that one. I have not touched my Witcher WIP in, ugh, too long but I really want to finish it because I have way too many words invested.

But what's this about tea?

I drink a lot of tea! And also, I participated in Drinkswap for the first time this year, and so I now have a bunch of small packets of David's Tea which I've been working my way through.

Also, I have started playing with my own blends. Part of this is because

krait sends out some home-blended tea each year and that has inspired me; part of this is because the local fancy tea shop is 1) ludicrous expensive and 2) uses flavoring, which admittedly pumps up the flavor, but also, I think I want to go more subtle; and part of this is because

yhlee sent me some really yummy tea which I think I want to try to duplicate.

So I've been making sort of random blends and drinking them and assessing them, and thinking that if I hit on something really good I will send it out to people to try. Right now it's sort of brute force "I like these things and maybe they make good tea!" Some of the things I've been putting in my tea (I've got Darjeeling black, Gunpowder green, and honeybush as bases):

cloves
bits of cinnamon bark
cardamom pods
pieces of pecan (inspired by local fancy tea shop's "Pecan Pie Pu Erh")
pieces of crystallized ginger (inspired by the maple brittle bits in a tea yhlee sent - I don't sweeten tea but a little sweetness seems to be just the ticket)
lavender
sage

I just like tea, all right? And I like flavors (which is funny, because I am a coffee snob re flavors, please, single origin only - but tea, gimme all the spices!) and it's just kind of fun, putting these small-batch teas together.

tl;dr

How are you doing on Yuletide, or other fanwork exchanges? And what flavors do you like in your tea?

Crossposts: https://isiscolo.livejournal.com/703100.html

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From:

james

I love cinnamon, and fruit flavors in my tea. I don't like it when a tea smells wonderful, but then tastes like water when brewed. So I like if at least one flavor stands out. I recently had to give up black tea, so I've been diving whole-heartedly into many fun types of herbal tisanes and red teas.

Pecans sound wonderful.

I got a rooibos chestnut tea for drinkswap and it is wonderful.

Basically, Hi I am a stranger who volunteers to taste test your teas. ;-)

From:

isis

You're not a stranger! I know you from OTW (I wrangle) and, you know, around.

Rooibos chestnut sounds delicious. One of the teas I sent was a rooibos lavender from the local place. I am definitely playing with rooibos too, though I finished my last bag and decided to get honeybush instead because it's a little sweeter and as I mentioned, I'm digging a slight sweetness in my teas lately.

I will keep you in mind once I feel my experiments are worthy of sharing!

From:

james

\o/

From:

yhlee

I'm so glad you liked the teas!

I love cardamom generally and should resume brewing my own cockamamie chai so I can put in ALL the cardamom (toasted green cardamom pods = yum). The bit of maple syrup/brittle/whatever is also really nice with black tea or rooibos. It's actually driving me nuts right now that my sister and her boyfriend helpfully tidied our kitchen and I have all this tea I want to try but I can't find my tea strainer for loose leaf!!! Ahahahaha. XD

Please consider me for any tea experiments you may try. ;)

I have completed my assignment and two pinch hits, and am hanging around to see if any of the post-deadline pinch hits are things I can do. I may try to do a Treat, but we'll see.

From:

isis

The one you sent with the cardamom pods, I ended up cracking the pods so the tea would taste more cardamom-y. I love that taste, too!

I'm thinking of making maple-brittle-ish-stuff for tea by spreading some maple syrup on a silpat and letting it evaporate. That little sweetness is so nice, and I love maple.

Of course I will send you some of my experiments, once I am convinced they taste good! And I got your postcard today, thank you! ♥

From:

writerlibrarian

I love tea. I get mine from Camellia Sinensis https://camellia-sinensis.com/en their blends are amazing. I'm more a black Indian tea girl.

From:

isis

Ooh, thanks for the link! I like black tea, green tea, smoky tea, fermented tea, non-tea tisanes, you name it! (And coffee, too!)

From:

writerlibrarian

They are *the* tea shop, salon, school in Montreal. They switched to recyclable bags, their tea boxes are affordable. They go themselves to Japan, India and China to get their tea.

I love them. 🙂

From:

stultiloquentia

Good god, you are a Yuletide hero!

I have one Yuletide draft, which has been talked over and troubleshot if not outright betaed. Half of it no longer sucks! Am plowing staunchly through the second half.

From:

isis

Aw, thanks. I always get to writing fairly early, and try to do a number of pinch hits and treats - it's part of my joy in fandom and in Yuletide, especially since I really don't have any big fandoms these days.

Good luck with your draft! I hope the other half no longer sucks soon!

From:

primeideal

...I thought I already posted this but DW ate it. Yuletide is good, treats are happening, had a write-in which was fun. My Past Imperfect assignment should be doable too. Not a tea person, mostly water for me!

From:

isis

Ooh, a write-in. I wish there were more people here who did Yuletide, but the one person I knew who was sort of local (an hour to the west) moved seven hours to the northeast, so. (I live in a "city" of under 20k people.)

I love the idea of Past Imperfect, and I wrote a pinch hit for it last year, but unfortunately my fandoms are small and the added complication of specific scenarios make it tough to find good matches.

Water is good, too! (Especially when your water is good.)

From:

mergatrude

Yay, Yuletide! *twirls you*

I am a tea addict, but I mostly drink lots and lots of strong Ceylon black tea with a dash of soy or almond milk. When I do go fancy, I like soft florals. Green tea with jasmine or mint are traditional, but favourites. Black tea with rose or vanilla flavouring. I haven't tried blending my own, but my two favourites from Adore Tea are their Stockholm blend (rose and marigold), and Blue Mountain blend (cornflower blosom).

From:

isis

Jasmine green is lovely. And my favorite of

krait's blends is a black tea with rose - our tea shop has a rose tea but I think it has flavoring as well as petals, and although I liked it at first, now it seems way too artificial to me.

A lot of their teas have cornflower! I don't really know what that tastes like by itself, or how to get it, but maybe I should try to track some down?

From:

krait

I'm glad you like the rose tea! Mine does usually have a touch of rose flavouring as well as petals; I buy the flavouring at a local Indian grocer. So don't judge your shop's rose tea too harshly. :)

Several years ago I made a "triple rose" tea that included dried rosehips as well, but I haven't found those for sale locally and never seem to think about them when I'm shopping online.

Cornflower doesn't really have a taste, from what I can tell; I think its tea-related traits are "pretty" and "doesn't dissolve into mush" and that is all it contributes. :D But maybe there's a variety of cornflower with more scent to it it than the ones I've encountered in various teas.

From:

isis

Hee, well, you just use a touch, the local place uses a lot.

Rosehips! That would be a nice vitamin C blast. I actually just bought rose petals and hibiscus flowers for some floral experimentation.

From:

trascendenza

I'm getting very into osmanthus, chrysanthemum, rose petals, jasmine, marigold, etc. At first I was mixing with tea but am finding that I like slow-cold-brewed flowers and flower blends on their own quite a bit, too.

Yuletide assignment just needs a few minor tweaks (and maaaaybe a bonus scene but on the fence about that), I have one treat ready, and one treat that just needs a few edits at the very end. I was thinking of trying to do a few more treats but have possibly run out of steam. Yay Yuletide!!

From:

isis

I don't know osmanthus! I like the others, but I've only had them in commercial blends other than

krait's delicious rose tea. I am tempted to make my own rose tea now. I hadn't thought about just brewing the flowers by themselves; how do you do "slow cold brewing"?

Yay Yuletide being all done but tweaks! And yay treats! I had been working on one but got distracted by the PH, but now that that is done I hope to get the treat done.

From:

luzula

I have written one short and mediocre Yuletide story. Well, at least I didn't default like last year...

I do not actually like tea (or coffee), and prefer my hot water completely unflavored. : )

From:

isis

Aw, I bet your story isn't as mediocre as you think - I like your writing, anyway.

I have a friend who drinks unflavored hot water, also. I thought that was very weird, but then I tried it, and actually it's not bad. But I prefer soaked leaves!

From:

luzula

Oh, and did you see my recent book post? I think you would enjoy The Flight of the Heron, if you haven't read it. : )

From:

isis

I did see that, and you're right, it sounds very up my alley!

From:

krait

and prefer my hot water completely unflavored. : )

I prefer my hot water in tea form, but I'll drink it this way, too; I call it "Poor Man's Tea" when I make it. :D

Edited Date: 2019-12-18 04:03 am (UTC)

From:

china_shop

Wow, that's a lot of yuletiding! Yay you! *\o/*

I'm still hoping to manage at least one treat, but ideally I want to get a draft of my final time travel fic (7th in a series) done first, and... that's not looking like it'll be manageable within the next week. I guess I'll decide over the weekend whether to hit pause on it for treating purposes or to just keep soldiering on in the name of getting the time travel series done and dusted.

From:

isis

You've been writing so much! Of course if you are inspired by someone's Yuletide prompt, you can always write for them for the New Year's Resolution collection if you want to keep focus on your time travel project - though I admit that the gratification aspect of having a story in the main Yuletide collection, where a lot of people will be reading over the holidays, is a pretty big draw, for me. Good luck!

From:

china_shop

though I admit that the gratification aspect of having a story in the main Yuletide collection, where a lot of people will be reading over the holidays, is a pretty big draw, for me.

Yeah, last year I wrote a Yuletide treat and a Madness thing (because I missed the YT deadline), and the Madness thing got very little notice. Of course, that was partly their respective fandoms (the Yuletide one was Guardian), but it put me off Madness a bit.

From:

wyomingnot

That's a whole mess o' ficcing. I couldn't play in yuletide this year because of two previous defaults. Really (*really*) need to get a NYR done next year!

I am doing kylux secret santa this year and have been beset by bears. Story's due Saturday. Well, early Sunday afternoon in my time zone. :) I've got maybe a fourth of the thing written? But i'm off thursday through Sunday, so. There's time. Well, there is the premiere of The Rise of Skywalker on Thursday. But. Yeah. Oh, and I desperately want/need to do several lego illustrations for the story. So. Ugh. I'm in trouble.

Tea. I drank more tea before I came to China. Maybe it's a regional thing, but there's just not a lot of tea happening. High end boutiques here and there, sure. But that's not my jam. I honestly just have Lipton (Chinese Lipton) regular black tea. And Lipton has a nice Jasmine tea here too. Yeah, I'm lazy these days and just go for tea bags. I know the leaf stuff is better. Sometimes I miss having Republic of Tea on hand. But. *shrug*

Edited Date: 2019-12-17 01:18 pm (UTC)

From:

isis

Aw, well, you know there is an app for requests now, so finding a suitable prompt to write an NYR is easier than it used to be!

Good luck with your secret santa! I'm seeing the movie on Friday here, myself - I hardly ever go to actual movies but I'm going with friends.

I drank more tea before I came to China

o.O This makes me boggle! I mean, CHINA! The BIRTHPLACE of tea! But it makes sense it would be regional.

From:

wyomingnot

China's a big place. As big as the US. So. *shrug*

I'm also really lazy, cos I'm sure I could easily get all kinds of tea via the internet (i love taobao), but. Well. Lazy means no research. :)

I saw the movie again today. I think I'm going to go see it after school on Christmas. :)

(Oh, and now I have to work Friday. Just a half day. But it means the rest of the day I really need to get my shit together)

From:

jesse_the_k

I adore tea, and I've been drinking it all my days. I have to limit caffeine intake, so I've taken to brewing Oolongs lower and shorter (180°F for 2 minutes). Oolongs take well to resteeping, so I get four mugs out of one tablespoon.

I've ordered five times from Upton Tea Co. this year. I was just wondering what I might do with packets I tasted and decided were not-for-me? Can you tell me more about "drinkswap"?

There's a nifty herbal mix from Frontier Coop called Luscious Licorice which is nice on its own and is an excellent supplement to other drinks. My JK Mint is 40g spearmint, 40g peppermint, 15g dried ginger, and 10g Luscious Licorice. 212° for 5 minutes, and it's also nice iced with a shot of lemon juice in warmer weather.

From:

isis

Drinkswap is a Yuletide-adjacent activity for Yuletide participants who choose to do it - there's also a bookswap and a candyswap. There's a form to fill out with preferences and what you are willing to send and to whom (like, international shipping y/n) and then the mods match people and you send drinks (coffee, tea, and/or hot chocolate) to someone, and someone sends drinks to you.

I'll tell you what, though - if you have teas you don't care for, send them to me, and I will send you some of my experiments.

Our food coop gets herbs from Frontier, but I didn't see that mix there - I think they get teas from somewhere else. A bummer, I love licorice tea. I drink the Egyptian Licorice Mint from Yogi Teas, mmm.

From:

jesse_the_k

somehow it took the congruence of tea and Yuletide for me to fall down the YT rabbit hole.

So, just in case someone's reading this in 2021, All about the Yuleswaps: Candy- Book- and Drink. Also, Fanlore's intro

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