I have been otherwise distracted

I had been hoping for the past few days to be able to write about this beautiful batch of ribbons my friend Pearl had dropped off for me.

This is about half of the generous haul. Pearl's mother who died a year or so ago died at well over 100. She was a sewer for all of her life. Pearl's dad was in the children's trimming business. Pearl has been clearing out her mother's apartment. the beautiful lace cloth under the stack of ribbons comes from Pearl's mother.

These ribbons are quite old. the ribbon spools are interleaved with paper to protect the silk. A few have brand labels.

Most of the ribbons are silk taffeta in white or pastel pink or blue.

Quite a few of the spools have never been opened.

I love how the ribbons are pinned to show how they look both flat and gathered. I don't know if you can see the tiny flat headed pins holding that ribbon twist in place. While spooling the ribbons and the paper onto the wooden spoons would have been done by machine, each of those ribbons would have been threaded through the paper slit and then pinned into [place by hand. It isn't surprising that no one sells ribbon packaged like this anymore.

My favorite spool of ribbon in the batch is a partial spool of ribbon binding. it is beyond adorable.

I also didn't get the opportunity to write about my progress on my future son-in-law's tallit. There is more work to be done but it is starting to look like something.

I haven't been posting because I got hit with food poisoning on New Year's Day and am still recovering. As I began thinking about this post that knew that it was really the mother of adult children when it is my kids who were cleaning up my barf off the floor, rather than the other way around. I am on the mend but i am still only up to eating the blandest of food.

We have relatives visiting and many dinners out which I have had to decline.At the moment food is not my friend.

The nicest thing of all is that

the adored baby in this photo, my nephew, just became the father of a baby girl.