more tallit workshop work

Sarah is one of the participants in my never ending Spring tallit workshop. She came by today to finish doing her lettering for the corner pieces, ( the squares) and to outline all of her letters with metallic paint.

Sarah is a smart kid who is a deep thinker. She just came back from a Great Books summer camp. ( That would have been my idea of an ideal summer camp when I was a kid.) Sarah does great work but she is very much of a perfectionist and it got in the way of getting this piece done.

While Sarah was working I took out a piece that I was working on that needed a bit of help.It felt very companionable with both of us working together. I showed Sarah how to outline the letters using just the tip of the brush, and not the side so she could get a finer line.

As she was working she asked me lots of questions about my own work, how I improved. I Talked about how I was not particularly good at making art when I was her age, but by plugging away, I improved.

When she worried about particular brush strokes, I told her not to judge until the whole thing was done. She actually listened.

After she finished outlining her letters, I asked her if she wanted to add anything else to her pieces. she practiced a couple of different ideas on a piece of scrap fabric and settled on making a simple star. She asked what if she make a mistake? I assured her that we would figure out a way to make the mistake work.

As she finished each piece I held it up at a bit of a distance to see if she was satisfied. She was. this was the first time I saw Sarah really pleased with her work.

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog