Art, Tea, and Ginger Cookies.

Yesterday I was lucky to help Shiuwen ( www.floatingleaves.com ) at an art opening of her friend and regular customer Bev Byrnes (bevbyrnes.com). The opening  was at Bev's studio located in one of the buildings at G. Magnuson Park.

SMACHA Ancient Red Tea and Pastries

From now on Ill try to update my blog more often, posting pictures from various tasting events I'm attending. That was the plan originally, but I couldn't keep it up until recently.

Today's post is about my visit to SMACHA ( www.smacha.com ) tea bar yesterday. The specific reason for the trip was compressed ancient arbor red tea which I heard is coming in the recent container from China. Unfortunately, the container is delayed till November 9th, so right now there is only sampling available.

Visit to Crimson Lotus

Today I had a great tea time at Crimson Lotus Tea ( crimsonlotustea.com ) headquarters. Probably the best in last few months.Tried several ripe puers and one compressed red tea; I'm quiet positive that King County has a very strong puerh player on local tea scene now.
Very nice stable and clean quality of tea, medium price range (usually I'm a terrible cheapskate, but today I bought a 250g brick; don't know what "tea connoisseurs" would think about it - I love it). If you are into puerh, you definitely need to visit Crimson Lotus for a tasting.

Hope to see them at local tea events more often!

More Vendors of NW Tea Festival

Ok, this separate post will be designated to cover more vendors which had their booths at the NW Tea Festival this year. As I mentioned before, there were lots of new faces.

First, of all, acknowledgement to some of the sponsors of NW Tea Festival I didn't mention before!

Thank you all for supporting our event this year!

  (Clockwise) Tea Time Magazine (www.teatimemagazine.com), Choice Tea (www.choiceorganicteas.com), Harney & Sons (www.harney.com), Perennial Tea Room (perennialtearoom.com)

NorthWest Tea Festival 2014

Last Weekend (October 4th and 5th) Seattle had an annual happening which brought together tea lover from all over the King County and even from other states located further than Oregon. NorthWest Tea Festival, just like three years before that, was a hit. In this post I'll share pictures I took during it and will try to highlight the most fun and dynamic parts of the event.

Lindee Hoshikawa at Stage Door Cafe

This past Tuesday we had a rare event here in Seattle area - Lindee Hoshikawa 

( www.lindeehoshikawa.com ) 

was performing at the Stage Door Cafe from 7 to 9pm. 

( www.facebook.com/SeattleStageDoorCafe )

The evening was not crowded, but the audience was solid and came there for a purpose - listen to Lindee singing. I could only wish she would come to this side of the lake more often.

Gold Leaf and Mezzotint by Katsunori Hamanishi

Today at Azuma Gallery ( www.azumagallery.com ) was happening a master class/demonstration by Mr. Katsunori Hamanishi, one of the most renown contemporary Japanese print makers. Mr. Hamanishi was showing his technique of mezzotint print with application of a gold leaf.
The whole process was performed from scratch (except for engraving of the metal matrix) with in-detail explanation by the artist.

( www.k-hama24.com )