I finally got round to posting a picture of Thom and Angela from Halloween… everyone else sneakily avoided the camera. Thom’s the one with the face paint!

We’re launching our Knitting Circle on Thursday 15 Oct (5.30pm till 7pm). Our initial aim is to knit goodies to put with other gifts into shoeboxes as part of Operation Christmas Child.

Operation Christmas Child is the UK’s largest children’s Christmas appeal and has been running for over 19 years (it’s organised by the Samaritan’s Purse). They work with local churches and charities overseas to ensure that gift-filled shoeboxes get delivered by hand to children who need it most in Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (regardless of their background or beliefs).

If you would like to get involved, please just turn up on Thurs 15th around 5.30pm (or contact us at hello@eteaket.co.uk if you have any queries). We’re aiming to meet every fortnight after that in the run up to Christmas.

We had our first ever book group meeting last night – thanks to everyone who came along. I’m glad to say we’ve got a real mix of people (including some men) and had fun discussing how we’re going to run the group and what books we’re going to read.

For October’s meeting we’ve given ourselves a choice of two of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker 2009 Prize – The Children’s Book by A S Byatt and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. We’re going to experiment with various ways of chosing our reading list for the first few months to see what works for us. Of course, we had plenty of tea and cakes to keep us going. Must say a big thanks to Sara Sheridan for coming along to chat about her new book The Secret Mandarin, which has just been published. We’ll keep you posted on how we get on.

Finally, we’re taking part in the World’ Biggest Coffee Morning tomorrow (Friday) in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support. We’ll be selling raffle tickets all day for some great prizes, including an eteaket Afternoon Tea for Two voucher, some Missoni goods, a Versace laptop bag and an eteaket gift box. All our tips for the day will also be donated so please pop in (41 Frederick St) and support us. Thanks!

Sara Sheridan’s new book The Secret Mandarin is out tomorrow. eteaket have been working with Sara to create a unique Secret Mandarin tea blend, which we served as tea cocktails at the book launch in the National Library of Scotland last Friday.

We also took part in a discussion evening with Sara at Stockbridge library on Monday – a big thanks to everyone who came along and took part.

Sara has kindly agreed to do a reading from her new book at eteaket’s first book group meeting on Wed 23 Sept. Please get in touch if you’re interested in attending.

Finally, there are still some places left for our Tea Tasting evening on Wed 30 Sept. To find out more and to book, please click here.

We had a lot of fun on Friday serving 100 Afternoon Teas for a special Made in Scotland event at Dance Base as part of the festival. Big thanks to Sophie, Thom and Stef for making all the sandwiches. Here are some pictures from the day – Angela and Mhaire were the stars of the show with their jamming and tea cocktail skills. And where would we be without Margaret’s cakestands – all available in eteaket for only £38.99.

eteaket is delighted to be helping to launch a new tea-related book by Edinburgh author Sara Sheridan. The Secret Mandarin is the story of Scottish botanist Robert Fortune, one of the earliest pioneers to travel to the East to source and transport tea plants from China to India. In a twist of fate, Fortune ended up taking his unruly sister-in-law with him and they had no choice but to travel on their dangerous journey disguised as mandarin and man-servant. It’s an unforgettable story of love, fortitude and recklessness. Well worth a read whether you’re into tea or not.

To celebrate the launch, eteaket has created a special blend of tea (imaginatively) called Secret Mandarin. It will soon be on sale in our tea boutique on Frederick St until end October 2009. We’ll also be serving tea and tea cocktails at the book launch on September 2009. If you’re interested in the similarities of sourcing tea now compared to in Fortune’s days, we recently recorded a podcast with the author – we’ll post it on our blog just as soon as we can work out how. In the meantime, you should be able to find it here www.sarasheridan.co.uk. 

eteaket spent a lovely afternoon at Molton Brown on George St on 30 July. Molton Brown had arranged hand massages for specially invited customers and we treated them to some tea and cake afterwards.

There was a lot of interest again in the health benefits of tea (not to mention the benefits of a delicious scone with clotted cream & jam – what could lift your mood more than that?) Amy certainly seemed in rather a good mood afterwards so we suspect some of the mini scones disappeared in her direction…

eteaket was at the Healthy Living Show in Edinburgh in July. Thanks to our fabulous Sophie who spent the weekend teaching people about the health benefits of tea and sampling some rare green and white tea and herbal infusions.

eteaket is hosting the 6 degrees networking event on Tuesday 30 June.

17.30 for 18.00 start, ends around 20.00. Guest speaker Dominic Coupe from Signposter.
Book tickets here. Members of 6ºN can book discounted tickets here.

Come along for what promises to be a fun and rewarding evening.

30 June : eteaket 41 Frederick Street, Edinburgh

eteaket has teamed up with the Edinburgh Junior Chamber of Commerce (JCI) to host the Links@Brunch events. Anyone working in the Capital is welcome to come along to eteaket on Wed 17 June from 0830 to 0930 to attend this informal networking event and grab a tea/coffee and some breakfast on the way to work.

Links@Brunch is for people in their 20s and 30s who want to meet great people, create new business links and is part of the wider programme of varied events run by JCI Edinburgh.

Whether you’re the sales guru in your department or new to networking, self-employed or part of a large team, Links@Brunch is a relaxed business event aimed at you.

If you are interested in attending, please contact links@jciedinburgh.org.uk.

For more information on JCI Edinburgh or eteaket, please visit:

www.ejcc.org.uk/events/ 

http://www.eteaket.co.uk