For a Hard Week: Thinking of You Gift Set

1. In the evening, trim the wick and light the candle for as long as it takes to do nothing much. Put it out before you leave the room.
2. In the morning, before the messages, put a teaspoon of tea in the infuser. Steep it for three minutes in water that has cooled a little, to about 80 °C.
3. Keep the sphere on its stand by the kettle, or carry it in a coat pocket, where a hand will find it on an ordinary afternoon.

• A rose quartz sphere from India, 40 mm across, on a low round stand; the pale veils inside differ from stone to stone.
• A soy wax candle in a printed tin, 6.5 cm across, tea and English rose with jasmine and citrus, about 23 hours; the floral print on the tin varies.
• 50 g of loose gunpowder green tea from China with mint, rose petals and mallow, in a kraft pouch.
• A stainless steel mesh tea infuser on a short chain, with a small piece of raw rose quartz that hangs outside the cup.

The pieces arrive together in one parcel. They are not gift-wrapped, and we cannot add a card: send your own note separately, a day ahead.

Rose quartz owes its pink to microscopic fibres of a second mineral, related to dumortierite, inside the quartz. Julia Goreva, Chi Ma and George Rossman of Caltech described them in American Mineralogist in 2001.