Snow , a small bit of work and the birds

 Well, we finally had a real snow.

Once again I am grateful that the task of shoveling didn't  fall to me. According to city laws shopkeepers are legally responsible to clear the sidewalks in front of their stores.

 

This hard working employee of the health food store across the street had to come out every hour or so to re-shovel the sidewalk.

It was also bitterly cold.

The snow piled up on my window frame.

The next day this gentleman tried to free his car from the snowbank using only his bare hands and his cane,

He was successful but hasn't yet moved his car.

I haven't just been hanging out by my living room window. I even got a bit of work done.

I first met Darone right after I moved to New York. I was just barely an adult and he was one of the kids in the afterschool aftercare room that I ran. Now I am fully an adult and so is he. A couple of years ago I talked Darone through the process of designing needlepoint tallit bags for his twin sons who ere about to have their B'nai mitzvah. Darone made the bags because his mother was no longer alive to make them. The calligrapher who would have done the lettering, a close friend of his family was no longer living so darone drafted the lettering for his son's names . I loved the process of walking him through some of the technical issues. I was an obsessive needle pointer from the time I was eleven until late in my college years. Darone would ask me questions about technique or yarns and the answers would emerge from some long unused corners of my brain.

Anyway, Darone thought that it would be wonderful if he added pinot/corner pieces to his tallit that were miniatures of the tallit bag he had made for his wife, his sons and he also made a new corner piece for himself.

Darone's tallit and the corner pieces her had completed arrived at my house a few days ago.

The first thing I want to tell you is that his work is beautiful.

Each of the corner pieces needed to be backed with fabric. I thought that it would be nice to have different backings on each piece.

Before I did that, I had to block each piece. Actually, a full blocking requires a complicated process with T-pins and lots of steam and taking time for the needlepointed pieces to cool.

I pressed each square with lots of steam and heat and a press cloth and when the canvas had softened pulled the distorted pieces into alignment.

As the squares were colling I selected a backing for each one.

Mostly these choices won't be seen except for a sliver of a peek of fabric.

I interfaced each piece of silk and cut it to size. I then stitched around the edges of the needlepoint from the reverse with the backing fabric over the face of the needlepoint.

Then I cut the backing fabric so I could turn the little corner package inside out.

Needlepoint is fairly stiff and heavy so I had to trim the excess quite closely so the edges would look sharp. I had to retrim the corners several times.

Here are two of the corners after being turned and bet=fore they were pressed and topstitched.

My husband thought they looked like old fashioned change purses.

Here they are pressed and topstiched.

I would have sewn the pinot onto Darone's tallit...but I stupidly ate a handful of  chocolate covered espresso beans that my husband had brought home after dinner. I was up until 4:30 am.

The birds were out in force in the trees on  Median strip this morning.