sarah in nyc

at breakfast making good use of gift basket candy

My oldest came back from her semester in China and threw herself a welcome home party last night. She invited camp friends, high school friends and college buddies. Amid the chatter and the laughter, my job was making ice cream and washing dishes. I won't bore you with the dish washing, but I did make three batches of ice cream. We had some pomegranate ice cream left over from our Christmas Eve fondue dinner with friends. So Saturday night, I made pumpkin ice cream, chocolate ice cream and espresso ice cream. I made the pumpkin and the espresso with a mix of half and half and milk. It was teeming last night and I hadn't the energy to run out and buy more half and half for my daughter's charming friend, who begged me to make him espresso ice cream, so I made it with the 2% milk we had on hand. The espresso expanded at an alarming rate, so now we have three containers of espresso ice cream waiting to be eaten. We own an electric ice cream maker, so making ice cream is not all...

Our friend Michelle invited us for dinner. I didn't have to get up early and so didn't get out of bed until 10:00 am !!!!. I am usually out of bed by 5:40 am so I really loved the luxury of sleeping late. We have two couches in our living room. I had covered one with a mix of red upholstery fabrics. Our green couch has boxed cushions and is a bit more complicated to do nicely. I had covered two of the cushions in a reasonable manner. The third was a mess. we hare having guests spending several days next week so I too advantage of today and made a new cushion cover for the center pillow. The boxing strip fabric comes from P+S, downtown. The beautiful chenille comes from http://www.fabricguru.com/ . Clearly not an exact match, but it all works together. When I get braver I will tackle the back cushions of the couch. The hardest part was getting the cover on the cushion. It makes my hands feel old and sore. I also discovered why my serger has been wonky for all of these months. I...

I have a tallit due at the end of January. The silk for that tallit still has not arrived so I decided to begin work on a tallit that isn't due until the end of the spring. The late spring tallit is being made out of a fawn colored charmeuse. The stripes are being made out of what I call "crazy stitching". I had first seen crazy stitching in an article by the brilliant Bird Ross in an old issue of Threads magazine. In the article Bird Ross described a brilliant way to make a reversible vest. She sewed the vest and the lining together right sides out. She then covered all of the raw edges with squares of fabric set on point and folded over the raw edges. After securing all those fabric squares, she then stitched over those now triangles ( diamonds folded in half) with multicolored threads zigzagging back and forth. The vests are great. I have made several of them. But that multi colored wild stitching technique is something I have used over and over in my work, not just...

My oldest his home from China. Unlike her father and little brother, she actually enjoys eating. So, once again, cooking is actually fun. She was craving eggplant parmesan during her last weeks in China, so that was waiting for her to eat as soon as she walking in the door. She requested pomegranate meat balls for Shabbat, so I made them , with bulger wheat as the starch that holds the meat balls together. Right now I have sliced potatoes, onions mushrooms and carrots cooking in the oven bathed in the gravy from last Shabbat's chicken. It feels somehow Chanukah appropriate even though it isn't latkes. The challa is on it's second rising. I was lucky to find a bag of King Arthur flour. So my challa dough has enough gluten in it to have that muscular feel when you knead it, meaning that it will be nice and chewy when we eat it . If I can't get King Arthur flour, I add gluten to the dough. I hate cakey/doughy challa. There is a pot luck lunch at our synagogue so I made so...

I am the third daughter in my family. As a consequence, a large percentage of my clothes were "pre- worn", handed down from my sisters. For many people, handed down clothing are a source of shame or embarrassment. I never felt that way. First of all, my mother who grew up poor, took beautiful care of our clothes. Dresses that my older sisters had out grown were laundered, starched and ironed and laid out in large coat boxes. So when the dresses were taken out of the box, they looked beautiful. The boxes, marked by size were all on shelves in the basement. There were dresses that I anticipated wearing ( The deep turquoise Polly Flinders with lots of smocking and black velvet ribbons trimming the sleeves was one I remember visiting before it fit me, by peeking into the box. It had looked so pretty on my sister and I looked forward to wearing it myself. ) My sisters were born 13 months apart. In those days, it was popular to dress one's children thematically. My sisters were...

Several years ago I saw the most amazing fabric at New York Elegant Fabrics. It was raw looking varigated yarn in various thickness and wild colors embedded in a mesh background. I was in love, but it was really ( as my Southern friends say) spendy so I admired it, a lot, and left it in the store. Later that year, I was able to purchase a teeny remnant of the fabric from B+J's remnant table. I made scarves for a couple of people I really loved, there wasn't enough to make a garment. Last year, www.fabricmartfabrics.com was selling the same amazing fabric for an affordable price. I bought some. Then they put it on sale. So I bought some more. The fabric has been sitting in my stash. i was to o afraid to cut into it. Last week I decided that it was time. I wrapped the fabric around me, cut it slightly bigger than my hips, and then cut curves from waist to hips. I cut the opening for the zipper just long enough for the zipper, and inserted an industrial looking metal zip...

Fridays are my usual big cooking day. We usually have guests for Shabbat dinner. It's the only meal during the week where we all eat together, so I like to make it into something of an event. Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. My multi-talented cousin, ET, is a lawyer for the State of Florida for her day job. She has also done a fair amount of food writing for various Florida newspapers over the years in her spare time. I believe that she was, for a while, food editor for one of the Florida papers. A couple of weeks ago, she asked me for any unusual recipies I might have for Chanukah. Many years ago, a bunch of people were coming over for latkes for Chanukah. I decided to get a little funky with the latke varieties. I'm really not a big fan of potato latkes. I made zuccini and sweet potato latkes in addition to the regular Maine potato latke. I served them with cranberry sauce and realized that it is the perfect taste combination. ET loved the idea and asked me to write u...

arrived at my door yesterday. My friend Mori, works for Victoria's Secret. They have an annual sample sale for their corporate employees. While many of their employees grab the clothing during the sale, Mori selected fabric samples and trims for me. The fabric samples are 11 x 18 inches for the larger ones and about 11 x 10 inches for the smaller ones. Any ideas about what to do with them???? I was thinking that I could piece several into a shirt. Any other ideas out there?? The trims are amazing. The metal chain surrounded with black crochet is screaming to be shoulder straps for something. The wide black eyelet just sets my head spinning., overlay, hem on a black skirt...The ideas keep coming. This terrific gift was a thank you for me and for my husband ( who will get to see me in garments made from this treasure trove). We helped her son before his bar mitzvah by studying traditional commentators with him ( me) and using what he had learned to write his talk ( my husband).

This necklace and earrings were made with pearls, coated wire and crimp beads. Making jewelery is just a blast to do. I think that both will work well on the bat- mitzvah girl.

This is the latest dress that my student made. She drafted the bodice herself out of cotton jersey. This was a first for her. The bodice also sports an 6 inch metal zipper in the back, sewn tapes out, as is the current fashion. Today, she gathered the skirt and attached it to the elastic waist. It looks completely adorable on her. It's entirely age appropriate and does not look either too little girlie or too grown up. My student plans to wear the dress next weekend. Hurrah for her!!! We also cut out two pairs of knit boxers for us to make next week.

The bag was looking a little stark to my eye. So I added some glitzier gold thread to both the circle around the moon and to the wolf. That addition seemed to have brightened up the bag enough so it no longer looked depressed. My friend Sandy, commented that she liked the simplicity of the landscape. I liked it too, but it was just a bit too dour as it was. My Art History professors used to talk about balance in a painting. The bag just a bit off balance in it's deep darkness. I also added a blue seed bead for the wolf's eye. You can't see it in the photo, and it isn't even that visible in real life, but it just catches a bit more light and brightens the bag up a bit more. The wool flannel seems to absorb all light around it, so I need do do what I can to counteract that a bit. I fused both the front and the back of the bag to fusible fleece so it will have a bit more heft. I also managed to sew the bag together incorrectly three times. I inserted a light blue zipper a...

I hope that the bride and groom like it.

This is my sketch for the bag. Yes, it is an ugly and rough sketch, but it is good enough to serve as a map for my work. I decided to have wolf in a landscape. The verse makes up the low, rolling hills. The moon will be made up by the boy's Hebrew name. I drew a curving guideline onto a piece of Bristol board and then wrote out the verse using the line to help me place the tops of the letters. Hebrew, unlike English, is written from the top down. So this was an easy way for me to figure out the placement of the letters. I then cut out the letters with an X- acto knife. After the letters were cut, I then taped the stencil to the wool and filled in the letters with a stiff paintbrush that was loaded up with pigment from a gold oil paint stick. Here is the wolf embroidery plunked down on the lettering landscape. The big gold dot is where I tested out the oil paint stick out on a scrap of the wool. I don't have enough extra wool to be able to cover failures, so unlike my us...