Small improvements

I know, I posted the pictorial panels

yesterday. I had thought that they were done and just needed to be bordered in the luscious heavy black silk. I was wrong. This is also why work always takes me longer than I expect. I end up making unplanned for improvements along the way. The pieces take longer-- and it is so worth it.

First of all, baby Moses needed simple facial features. The fastest way to add those was via Shiva Paint Stick and a stencil. The little round mouth stencil was courtesy of a hole punched with a standard hole puncher. The eyes, Exacto knifed out of the same piece of paper. Voila... Moses has a cute baby face.

Then I noticed that I hadn't covered the outer edges of the panel in fabric. So I cut watery shapes out of shantung scraps. My clever buddies at the Creative Machine list taught me the brilliant trick of using a glue stick to hold down fabric for applique. No, you don't need to use a fancy made for fabric only glue stick available at a premium. Regular .99 Store glue stick works just fine. Our apartment is just upstairs from a .99 Store so I love using supplies from there when I am in need of something right this minute.

The additional watery bits looked great, but they made the burning bush panel look a bit bleak in comparison. So I added some random hilly shapes in those lovely not quite colors that shantung comes in, a sort of grayish green, a sort of yellowish grayish tan. All colors that would make me look ill if I wore them but look wonderful together and have that southern Israel desert look.

If I were writing for an art magazine I might say that the biomorphic shapes lend a certain congruence between the panels. But i don't write for an art magazine so I can say that it makes the two panels look like they belong together.

When I was working on the arts and crafts staff at Camp Ramah in 1982, Channa, one of my fellow staff members told me that any art work you do will be vastly improved if you frame it, and even more improved if you frame it in black. I can't tell you how often I have followed this wise piece of advice. It makes mediocre things look good and good pieces look amazing. The panels are now framed in black 40 momme charmeuse and now I'm working on getting the rest of the tallit constructed.

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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