This post is about economics. And rationalizing.

I went to order my usual English Breakfast tea, expensive but worth it, especially since they don't charge shipping. It says so, too, on the website shipping free on all orders. 

Then I get to the checkout and suddenly there's a large shipping charge bringing the total beyond what I want to pay for tea.

So I flounced away, emailed them to ask wtf,  only more politely, then ordered a different tea from a different supplier, half the price and no shipping either.

Left to right, tea department: new Ceylon tea, occasional lapsang souchong tea and usual tea now nameless because I'm mad at them.

That's part the first.

Then I checked in on YouTube with Marion's World, where she gave us a virtual tour of this show

Where I saw a terrific idea I'd never heard of, based on ancient stick spinning, the spurtzler, from Natural Born Dyers, a lovely northern firm, very ecologically careful and just nice people.

This will be easier on my hands than a spindle, I think. And they're hand made from wood which has fallen in storms or is otherwise upcycled. I chose ash, which I think is #3 or #4 and, this is where the rationalizing gets into gear. 

What I saved on the tea paid for my spurtzler. The shipping cost from the UK is, whispers, more than the selling price. But I'm worth it.

I didn't realize I'd be shopping along with Marion when I switched on. I paused her video long enough to investigate the new toy, I mean tool, then came back to continue!

I have to plan for the darker winter evenings ahead, after all. I have quite a bit of roving to spin. And other such completely invented reasons. 

Happy day, everyone, do what you want then the reasons will follow.

Misfits, tea rescue, and Snow White

 Yesterday's Misfits arrived early

 

Which gave me plenty of time to roast the chicken and prep the  broccoli to go with it.

And this is not a very over-roasted chicken, it's a nicely roasted one with tamarind paste and berbere spice spread on it. That, with steamed broccoli, blue cheese crumbles flung about, worked out well. 

Speaking of food, did you know that in WW2 Britain, when rationing was at its most stringent, the prospect of starvation very real in the island nation,  food supply shipping being mined and torpedoed, the Minister of Food (yes) said tea must be supplied, no matter how.

He stated that whatever hardships the national morale could withstand, bombing, family separation, food and fuel shortages,  being deprived of tea might very well break people down.  Yesterday I remembered this when I used the very last spoonful of tea in the breakfast pot. The new order still hadn't arrived, despair lurked.

Then, a thump at the door, and the clouds parted, birds started singing, the supply ship, well, USPS, had arrived to save us all.

that rationing feller knew his onions.

I finished the jigsaw puzzle, and found one piece missing but it didn't really matter.

Ah, the sermons you could wring from puzzles, how one missing piece isn't so bad, how the piece that fits is often nothing like what you expected, all these  insights into life, aren't you glad I grew up in a religion without lay preachers..

And just so we don't get over excited about good things, here's a modern look at the happy ever after fairytale where marriage is the key.

Happy day everyone, knitting group today, where I'll disappoint everyone by knitting a sock rather than exotic underwear. I might be wearing it,  though.