Getting Back to Work

All of our Passover stuff got put away. All of our during the year stuff is back more or less in its place. This could not have been done without the gracious good spirited help of my kids. We had a slight blip when none of us could remember where we had put our dairy silverware. I was at that point so tired that I couldn't even remember what the silverware looked like. My husband found the giant tote bag. And if you were wondering what our dairy silverware looks like it is a mix of silverplate from as early as the 1920s and as recent as the 1950s.

Yesterday our older son baked our first loaf of bread.

While I really hadn't missed bread during Passover,  eating my first slice of home-baked bread in a few weeks, I was reminded about what a truly wonderful thing bread is.

With the holiday over, it was time to get back to work.


I spent a long time yesterday typesetting text for an atara.  My client wants a selection of prayers that are meaningful for him on the atara. I plan to print all of the prayers onto treated silk. Getting them all set up properly with appropriate typefaces sized and spaced properly is persnickety work.  I currently have all of the text set up, but in the incorrect order and with some funky space issues but I have figured out the hardest piece of the job which was to get the computer to lay out what I have envisioned.  So I would say I am more than halfway done with the computer piece of THAT job.

Technology has come in handy with my next job. I have been asked to make a pillowcase to be used at a brit milah. One thing technology has done is to let the parents know what gender baby they are having.  Technology has also come into play in my work with the client. This piece has been designed with my clients entirely by text message. This for me is a first.

We decided on this text

which comes from the brit milah ceremony. While this text was in my prayerbook, it was not available online so I copied it out for my client and took a photo which I sent to her. It asks that this child have a heart wide open to the learning of Torah and that he want to learn and to teach and to keep the mitzvot. It further asks that this child have length of days and years, a life filled with fear of sin, a life filled with wealth and honor and a life in which the desires of his heart get fulfilled.


My client had shown me a piece with blessings set against a cosmic sky that she had loved so I could get an idea of what she was thinking about.

I sent this sketch.

There will be more heavenly bodies in the finished piece.

Today I began dyeing the cotton for the pillowcase. The dyes are still damp and they will be lighter when they dry.

  In real life, the fabric reads as bluer than my camera can capture.

In a few more layers of dye this will look like the cosmos.

The other day I saw this sign which at times could serve as the front door to our apartment.

I am ending this post with one last photo from my walk in the park. Today was actually kind of cold and nasty but with the help of a bit of technology, we can pretend otherwise.