Persisting Past the Errors

Your know that lovely adage, "measure twice cut once"? I know it but I did the opposite--twice.

Last week I posted about the lovely waves I have created using oil paint sticks and bits of a cut up tissue box as a stencil.

I no longer remember if I had also posted about another bit of ocean that I had painted onto a dobby woven silk.

Well, I had stupidly cut not one of those pieces but BOTH too narrow for the tallit. Instead of wallowing in self hate I made lemonade out of both of those self created lemons.

For the oil stick strip, I cut it all all apart and pieced it together again.

I loke how the waves are broken up and look more like the actual ocean.

This strip is going at the bottom of the tallit so I have only bound the top edge at the moment/

Now it was time to turn to my other cutting error.

Using the same principle that if you need to seam something to make it long enough, it makes a whole lot of sense to make lots of seams so the seaming looks like a deliberate choice and not a boneheaded move on my part. I didn't have enough of the dyed dobby silk but I did have a bit of similarly dyed silk left over from another project.

It is a good thing that I began my sewing life in the land of quilting during the late 1980s. So I did a variant of Seminole piecework.

In order to give the strip a bit of extra durability I quilted it to a bit of the sheet that is too worn out to use on our bed.

The quilting gives a bit more of a sense of oceany movement to the strip.

Once again, my bone headed errors have led me to a better place. I actually love the mix of the hand and machine stitching. Why did I start doing the hand stitching??? Someone who had made an appointment to meet with me called five minutes before we were supposed to meet and rescheduled for an hour later. I had already put my machine away and I didn't want to waste the hour. All hand stitching would have been too much work. The hand stitching catches the light in a really good way. You have to use the circumstances around your work to your advantage and pivot when necessary.

Speaking of pivoting, a change of topic is ahead.

The trees along Broadway have committed to springtime. This crazy shade of green will stay for just a little while and then will settle into a much more sedate darker green, but until then enjoy the moment of this outrageous color.

One of the reasons that I fell in love with my husband is how deeply silly he is. It sometimes takes us a little while to decant the 25 lb bags of flour that we use into more manageable gallon bags. Until then, my husband has committed to dressing up the bag of flour as our long lost daughter, Floury.

This is Floury in her latest iteration.

I claim responsibility for her eyes and hair. We had some discussion about what to make her eyes out of. You can tell that we are well matched when I countered one of my husband's suggestions with, " Why don't I just make her eyes out of paper, like a normal person?".

Floury's hair is made out of a bad purchase of terrible coffee filters that are of no use as coffee filters but do make an excellent wig. This iteration of ,

our girl, Floury will probably go away later this week.

It is Friday and I have cooked.

Tonight's chicken was stuffed with

dried limes that were soaked in warm water before being stuffed into the chicken cavities. The limes pack a flavor punch. There was also a bit of black pepper, sumac, Bell's seasoning and a few shakes of cayenne pepper.

A salad is yet to be made and our quinoa

has been both boiled and then toasted in the oven. The toasting makes the quinoa actually fun to eat. I plan to add more cut up goodies to the quinoa before serving it.

Since we are on the topic of food....

These zucchini pancakes were dinner earlier in the week. I had actually planned to make something else as well but we couldn't stop eating them. I put them together while I was on the phone so I can't swear to what I actually put into them.

In honor of Yom HaAzmaut, Israel independence day...

The first ever recording of Hatikva--from 1904.

Shabbat Shalom!

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

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