I can't believe that happened!

Ok… the story that inspired this thread… I love making apple cider w/ chai so I decided to make a caramel apple chai latTEA using my beloved Mayan Chocolate Chai that I got from Carolyn. So I put 8g of tea in the bottom of my tea pot, no problem. Then I heated 4oz of apple cider as hot as I could get it w/o boiling it. Still no problem. I let the tea steep in the apple juice for 5 min. No problems here. During the last min of the tea steeping I heated up 1c. of milk and 2TB caramel creamer. This is where my problems started… As soon as I start pouring the apple juice chai into the milk and creamer mixture I realize that the creamer curddled. Crap. Eh, maybe I can still salvage it. But before I can contemplate the possibility, the cover to my teapot (the glass one from Dr. Tea’s Tea Garden, the only steeping vessle I have besides my ingenuiTEA) comes off my teapot and splashes in to the cup. So now I have a hot sticky mixture if tea leaves, apple juice, and milk all over myself, the floor, the table, and even splashed onto the refrigerator! I also had to fight my dog to stay out of the way while I got on my hands and knees to clean up, almost got stuck (I have a very bad back), then had to rinse my clothes before putting them in the laundry and take a shower. And worst of all… I wasted 8g!!! of my beloved chai! I don’t know whether to scream or cry at this point…

Just laugh,you didnt get burned,nothing broke,and the tea was free.It could have been worse…ever take a long swig from a carton of milk only to find out it went bad a couple days ago? Now thats worth a scream or two, lol

Such is the price that genius pays on the road to innovation.

I dropped and messily shattered a beautiful teapot of mine at work one day (Small De Chine Teapot – 19.2oz) that had been a gift :( and yes i’ve poured tea or hot water all over from time to time

I’ve learned the hard way not to get too attached to favorite mugs! They’re more like visitors than permanent residents.

Ceramics are good. If the handle just breaks off, they make great pencil holders or random small-item catch-alls, and if they hit the ground and shatter, at least it wasn’t glass!

If it counts, I recently sat down and glued the top knob of my favourite little teapot back on. I couldn’t very well toss it—it was a gift from my great grandmother. However, apparently during what I thought was a very safe storage, it gained a quarter of a dozen very noticeable chips (they were large enough that I went looking for the lost chunks to see if I could somehow glue those back on too, but alas they seemed to have been lost) and lost its knob. Someone must have knocked it over in the china cabinet. Still usable, and I think the chips give it personality.

In the past I’ve dropped many plates and glasses, but no mugs or tea ware, from what I remember. Hm.

My partner and I have a one-eyed pug named Bruno; yes he only has a single eye. He likes to follow me, very closely when I am in the kitchen, almost right next to my leg, so I tend to trip over him often. I was in the cabinet one morning getting some silver needle from its canister. I turned around, tripped over Bruno and about a third of the tea spilled all over the floor. This wouldn’t really have been a major problem if we didn’t have carpet in the kitchen, or a pug that sheds like mad, however I ended up vacuuming up the tea and tossing it out…was so sad.

A new report on the afore-mentioned teapot, and this story is an actual mishap. I was cleaning said pot out with a rag, when lo and behold, the whole handle (which I had been holding partly for support) snapped right off. And with so much force, that my right hand—which was grasping the pot itself—went flying, and the edge of the pot, where the handle had been, got my elbow, cutting a small, but very deep gash.

Needless to say, I bled everywhere, and I think it is only just now beginning to clot. Porcelain is sharp.

I assume it snapped because one of the many chips the pot already held was on the handle, and the break occurred along said chip. I plan to glue the handle back on as well, but at this point I think I should just look for another personal teapot. I really rather wouldn’t—it was my great grandmother’s; it isn’t flashy enough to be just a cabinet piece.

So, I wanted to make some matcha this morning to help me tackle my pile of homework. But, right before I did that, I washed the teapots from last night, plus the strainer I use to sift the matcha. Apparently I did not dry the strainer very well because when I tried to run the matcha through it, it just ended up sticking to the holes in the strainer. After realizing what was happening, I managed to save about half of what I had put through the strainer by moving the rest of the matcha to the sides of it which were dry. It wasn’t a complete mess, but it gave me a good laugh.

So this is sort of a random story, but I was in Liberia on a humanitarian assignment for a year last year. As such, tea and tea accessories are kind of difficult to come by. I like tea ALOT and so brought my favourite gong fu unglazed clay teapot from Taiwan, a tiny 50cc pot as well as some of my favourite pu erh to make in it. I’ve had this little pot for oh, 4 years or so. Anyway, one morning I woke up, heated some water, put some of my favourite pu erh into the pot, had my little gong fu cups ready to receive it and just as I was sitting down I remembered I needed a tea towel. I turned too quickly, slipped, caught myself on the table but hit the teapot just hard enough to send it skittering across the top of the table and onto the ceramic tile floor where it shattered. As I sat on the floor I couldn’t decide what hurt more, my bum or the fact that I’ve just wrecked my favourite teapot with 3g of some of my favourite pu erh tea. I decided it was an exercise in zen calm and detachment from objects. I quietly swept up the mess and put the rest of the tea things away for the day…