Skip to main content

a truly stupid idea







I have been working on a batch of challa covers. The text in the center comes from the central poem of the Friday night service. In it we are invited to greet the Sabbat Queen/bride. The challa cover makes a great wedding gift ( a bit of shameless promotion there).
For those of you interested in the technique end of things, I calligraphed the text onto heavy art paper and then cut the letters out with an X-acto knife. I then used that paper with the cut out letters as a stencil on silk shantung, filling the letters in with a Shiva paint stick. Then with a really fine brush I added what I call "hoo-has" the vine and berry pattern , around the letters using a mix of fabric dye acrylic paint and metallic powder. The border fabric is a piece of upholstery fabric that my friend Sara purchased in France.



We have been invited to an engagement party that is taking place on Saturday evening. The groom's parents are good friends. My husband suggested that the challa cover that I had intended to give as a gift for the couple need a bit more something.


I have been doing more hand beading lately. It had seemed ( at the moment) to be a lovely idea to bead a looped fringe all the way around the challa cover to add a bit of light to the edges of the piece. Well, had this been a piece that I was selling, the time I spent beading today would have doubled the price of the challa cover. It's a cute addition, not worth the hours of additional work. Most of all, doing that sort of beading is hugely boring. The only way I could finish the beading is by playing idiotic mind games with myself.






So here it is, a one of a kind I am never doing this ever again piece.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Patti HamelJune 17, 2009 at 4:26 PM

    It looks good, Sarah! You do terrific work. I can certainly understand the boredom factor.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
2 comments
Read more

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...
3 comments
Read more

Revisiting a beloved piece

About thirty years ago I was asked to make an atara to be a gift  for Jerry.  Jerry was one of the founders of an alternative Hebrew school in our neighborhood. Jerry was also one of the people who forged an alliance between the older mostly German members of our synagogue and the young counter culture former ( and still hippies) that were the new lifeblood of our congregation nearly fifty years ago. At that point, it wasn't the easiest marriage between the old guard and the new guard but Jerry helped to break down the barriers between the suit wearing older folks and the ripped up jeans wearing younger folks. Jerry has prepared thousands of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. He is a frequent and excellent Torah reader and for many years he organized Morning Minyan. Jerry had often said that his favorite biblical text is the following: (יא) כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ (יב) לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑...
1 comment
Read more