blogging while ill

I haven't been posting because I have been sick.

Here I am staying warm.

I am still not sure if this is food poisoning or some sort of s stomach bug. The only remotely good thing about this is that I have lost some weight. It would have been nicer to achieve the same result by going to a luxurious spa. Last night I stupidly chose to eat an exciting supper---some chicken soup with big chunks of vegetables. It's back to plain rice and white potatoes for me...what could I have been thinking?

Anyway, I couldn't have Miles and his family come by on Sunday as planned to tie the tzitzit so i tied them on my own.

I also made Miles a tallit bag.

I used this heavy upholstery weight striped denim in my stash. It wears like iron. I had made myself a skirt out of some of it a few years ago and know that this will wear like iron. Ihe decorative panel is made out more the woven ribbon panel that I had made for the pinot/corner pieces. I edged it in more of the gold and blue striped ribbon and added a few rows of machine embroidery for good measure. The zipper is edged with more of the striped metallic ribbon.

I lined the bag in African printed cotton.

I am going to indulge myself here and add a few other shots of the tallit.

I love the free motion embroidery on the atara.

Hand couching the gold cording for the lettering was actually easier than I had anticipated. I finally realized that you don't need to cut the cording between the letters and can just float the cord on the underside between the letters. doing that cuts down of bumpy knots and joins. had i seen this in a book fifty years ago? or had it just taken me fifty years to figure this out?

Later today Miles' father will be picking up the tallit and it will no longer delight me each time I pass it in my dining room.

A friend had hand surgery and can't wear a standard coat. I suggested that she needed a warm cape to wear. After a short discussion about turning an old blanket into winter wear for someone with limited had usage...I remembered that I HAD a fabulous wool cape in my closet. It had belonged to my friend Alix's elegant mother.

The cape looks rather like

and is almost too long for me to wear. My friend is seven inches shorter than I am.

I used a twelve inch ruler as my hemming gauge and safety pinned the new hem into place. this needed to be functional rather than perfect so I aimed for good enough rather than perfect sewing.

I hope that this keeps my friend warm.

The following is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time.

sewing machine dance

Comments

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog