A Tallit for Mike

If there were some sort of a world wide competition for the nicest person our friend Mike would certainly be one of the finalists.

My husband first met Mike when they were in Hebrew High School together back in the 1960’s. Our son’s ( who share the same first name) became at kid’s services when they were maybe three. Since then, we have been fortunate to have Mike in our lives.

 

Mike broke his foot a few months ago in a pretty spectacular way. He has just become mobile  a couple of weeks ago.

 

This past Shabbat, Mike told me that he wanted me to make him a white wool tallit for the high holidays. In my experience beautiful thin white wool is what my Southern friends call spendy.  

 

Yesterday I went to the garment district with an out of town sewing friend.  I found several wools that might work for a tallit.

They were all beautiful. They did have a really wide price range, I could have spent anywhere from $180 down to $18 per yard.  I chose an $18 /yard wool.

 

Mike was happy with the choice.

I have jury duty later in the week. I thought that I would use the time to fringe the tallit. Fringing is not a job I look forward to.

What I hadn’t anticipated is that it was much easier to fringe wool than it is silk. The wool is much thicker than silk filament. I cut a bit into the selvedge  and then used blunt needle to nudge the wool threads away from the   body of the fabric.

After a surprisingly short time I was done. I then zig zagged along the edge so there would not be further raveling while the tallit was in use.

 

This was some of the pile of discarded wool.

 

Here are the adorable fringes.

I need to finish the other two sides of the tallit. (the raw edges are now serged)

I hope that the rest of this project goes as smoothly.