sarah in nyc

 My feet are, as or dear friend Father Blute, used to say, "My cross to bear".  Unless they are perfectly shod, they get cranky and let me know what is wrong in no uncertain terms. I have owned the boots pictured below for many years.  I bought them , a vintage pair of Larry Mahan boots at an online auction. They are really comfortable. Unfortunately the delicate snakeskin on the foot part of the boot has begun to break. I had repaired two other pairs of boots a couple of years ago by covering broken leather with leather patches put in place with barge glue. I did the same operation again last night, but instead of using the thin and flexible metallic leather that I had used for the patches above, I pulled out a heavy olive green skin that I had purchased somewhere a really long time ago. Last time I draped newspaper over my boot tops to create a pattern. This time I was more clever and taped strips of painters tape over the boot parts that needed to be patched. I careful...

 I love old sewing books. I know that there are lots of women who love to buy shoes,  or clothes or jewelry or fancy kitchen equipment. I love to buy old sewing books.  I will often go through the sewing book auctions on eBay to see if there is something that I want to add to my collection. A week or so back I bid on this book published in 1975. I liked that it had diagrams and sizing charts for children's clothing. There is currently a crop of young relatives that I have been sewing for.it is useful to have such a book for when I make the next batch of gift-garments. I won the auction. The book arrived yesterday. I opened the package. The book was well wrapped in cardboard. Inside the cardboard there was  this excellent booklet from 1941 with directions for lots of different crochet, knitting and embroidery stitches as well as directions for at least a dozen projects. Tucked into the 1941 booklet was this instructional booklet for making crochet toys. I was already ...

  Our 25lb bag of flour was decanted into gallon bags .  Some of that flour was turned into eight challot. Those challot got baked. Two chickens got cooked. They are flavored with lemon and lime juice and some spices. I no longer remember which spices I used. The beautiful okra i bought yesterday is now looking like this. The sweet potato fries are nhot pictures. perhaps they were feeling shy.  A salad is yet to be made. And a bit of work even got done. Please ignore the passive voice. It has been a busy day.  For your Shabbat Listening pleasure---a song about Jerusalem from the mid 1950s. and a romantic summer song. Shabbat Shalom!

 I had planned to write a detailed post about the rest of our train adventures. But I think that instead I will do a quick photo dump. But before I do, a quick introduction. Any of you who know me, either just as a reader here or as someone who knows me in person, there is nothing that makes me happier that seeing beautiful things.  We traveled through landscapes that made me understand while people might worship mountains. So may of the mountains that we passed were simultaneously rising out of the ground and eroding at the same time. We learned that Coloradans have a custom of mooning the AMTRAK train as it goes by. This was just one of many times we were mooned while going through Colorado.  It was impossible to not think of the people who crossed these mountains in wagon trains.  Eventually, we got to the Pacific Ocean. This wasn't the fastest or least expensive way to travel. It was, however, pretty wonderful.

  My doorman just let me know that there was a cache of sewing supplies waiting for me in the lobby. It was a laundry basket filled to the gills with spools and cones of threads, two to three dozen zippers, many of them long separating zippers, a pair of dressmaking shears,   an excellent hip curve ruler and most of a roll of four inch elastic. A hip curve is one of those nice to have tools that I haven't been willing to spend money on. The zippers are the kind of thing that are expensive to buy and are great to have on hand. Four inch elastic is just the thig for a lovely wide waistband. Dust can be hard on thread and can cause breakage. I will see what is salvageable and what is not. I just discovered that this fabulous haul came to me via a cousin who had a hoarder tenant.  One never knows the proportion of treasure vs. trash that shows up in such hauls. I rule this haul to be enough treasure to be a win.

  I was planning to write my next post about more of our train travels. However this weekend I learned some news that I really need to write about. I was probably nine or ten the first time I met Lisa Fliegel. She went to Solomon Schechter along with some of my friends who had recently transferred to my school, I lived in a universe where one had to be contained and follow the rules. Lisa was a giant presence. I had never met a girl my age who was THAT funny, THAT outrageous. You just knew that if Lisa showed up in a room the PAR-TY had arrived.  I knew that Lisa's mother had died when Lisa was in elementary school --and despite that  Lisa was always the most fun person in the room. Lisa went to high school and was involved with Young Judaea with my closest friends. We attended some of the same parties. We hung out in the some of the same living rooms. She was the most essential friend of some of my dear friends. When I went to college and during those early weeks when yo...