sarah in nyc

It snowed all day yesterday and all night as well. This morning, after morning services,  my friend Leah was celebrating her 90th birthday. Leah is one of the world experts on transgenderism. Margaret Mead was her thesis advisor, and gave Leah bad advice. I haven't been going to morning services lately, because I think that my son does better getting out in the morning with my grumpy company. I really did want to go the services this morning to celebrate Leah's day. So, I planned to leave the house just before my son did this morning. I had the distinct pleasure of waking my son up, I wasn't sure if school had been called off or not. And then sending him back to bed as soon as I had heard that school was cancelled. So he had the pleasure of lying in bed and knowing that he was home, and not on his way to school. When I walked to synagogue, the sidewalks still hadn't been cleared. Broadway was barely plowed. I walked to synagogue up the middle of Broadway. It was jus...

Sloppy wet snow has been falling all day. It is beautiful from the window but a slippery mess while walking.

If it weren't for Caleb, my son probably would have flunked middle school. My son keeps forgetting to write down his homework. Each time he forgets, he calls Caleb, who is gracious enough to give my son the assignment, time, after time. Caleb is exactly the sort of friend you want your kid to have. He's smart, he's funny and above all, he's just a nice kid. When the invitation to Caleb's bar mitzvah arrived in the mail, I really wanted to make something for him. Last week, Caleb came by to hang out with my son. I stole part of their time together to meet with him about his bag. We looked at the texts around tallit together, after all, the bag is to hold the tallit. Caleb asked lots of really good questions. He's one of those kids with a slightly skewed perspective on the world. His questions got me thinking as well. The verses from Psalms that we say before we put on the tallit really evoked the cosmos for Caleb. He drew me a little sketch of a super nova sur...

In a perfect world, people won't need to promote themselves. Work will arrive at your doorstep because people value what you do. One of the guests at Deborah's kid's bat mitzvah fell in love with the kippot I had made for Deborah and her daughter. She wanted to know if I also make tallitot. I was happy to tell her that indeed I do make tallitot. She continued that her son's bar mitzvah was in June, would I be willing to work with him? Indeed, I would. Then she asked if I ever worked with old fabrics, she had a weaving from Tibet that she had hoped might be worked into the tallit. I explained how I loved working with old schmattas and it all sounded good to me. Josh and his mom met with me on Sunday evening. Although I was dying to see the fabric, I asked that we not look at it until after we had looked at the texts about tzitzit together. I find that learning about the sources of tallit and some of the history means that my clients are on the same page I am on when we b...

First of all, a follow-up on Friday's dinner. Dinner was delicious. But,  our guests didn't show up. The misunderstandings were all cleared up at Saturday morning services. The ice cream went along with my son when he slept over at a friend's house. They were happy to have the ice cream. We were happy to have a kid free evening. Switching topics here. Purim is fast approaching. My student had seen this costume on  line. My student is 13. She has enough brains to know that a full-on sexy pirate costume is not exactly appropriate for her, especially since she is planning to wear the costume when she reads from the Megillah at her Orthodox day school. We found a piece of white cotton gauze in my stash. My student made a raglan sleeved peasant top out of the cotton. We added big cuffs and elasticized the join creating a gathered cuff. My student wanted a vest like garment to mimic the corset like garment in the photo. Although the gauze peasant blouse is an actual wearable...

Another dairy Shabbat. Yes, the home made noodles and cheeseand pickled salmon and a green salad yet again.  The noodles are made and so is the cheese. The salmon can wait until just before Shabbat. Dessert for this week is white chocolate and orange scented ice cream with mini marshmallows. We were given a hand me down ice cream maker from a neighbor when his old one was replaced.  We were given the machine during the time that my in-laws were joining up each Friday night. My mother in law, like lots of demented folks, was just mad about ice cream and wasn't much interested in the rest of the meal. She was nearing the end of her life and food in general, with the exception of ice cream, had very little appeal for her. Frankly, my mother in law would have eaten almost anything cold and sweet. But I had fun inventing flavors, because what's the point of having your own machine if all you make is vanilla? Some family favorites are fig  and pomegranate.   Our trusty ice...

a new widget on this blog. Different people learn in different ways. Lots of people I know learn new techniques by taking classes. I learn new techniques by reading.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a town with a wonderful public library system. The Thomas Crane Public library  has a large collection of hand craft books. My family's usual Friday afternoon routine was to come home from school and then to load up on books for the weekend.  This image of the Thomas Crane library comes from Quincy Daily Photo, http://www.quincydailyphoto.blogspot.com/ a blog that I visit daily for glimpses of my home town. Architecture geeks may recognize this as being a H.H. Richardson building. The building is a gem, beautiful even when unrenovated. It has recently undergone a spectacular renovation. My usual load of books would contain a mix of trashy novels, a couple of collections of classic plays, a book or two of etiquette from the 1920's , maybe a book on the fight for women's ...

For those of you who don't know, Pattern Review is a website put together for people who sew. The owner of the site comes from the world of computers where review sites that let you know if a piece of software or hardware matches up to the hype or not. As she began to sew, she was surprised that there was no equivalent in the world of sewing. She started the site to the to address that lack. Pattern Review is a huge site with more than 100,000 subscribers. The site has reviews of  sewing patterns, stores, sewing machines and the like. My favorite part of the site is the discussion boards which has created something of a world wide community of people that sew. Yesterday, several of us met to shop the garment district. Pattern Review has held several New York weekends over the past few years, but shopping the fabric district on the weekends is less than satisfying, because so many of the stores are closed on the weekends. Several of us decided to get together on a Monday Holida...

A meat loaf the size of Cleveland. Made out of ground chicken and ground turkey. I attempted to both counteract the dry nature of ground poultry and to infuse the not very flavorful chopped poultry with vegetables, by including a slurry of sauteed, pureed onions, carrots and tomato. I was actaully planning to make meat balls out of the mixture but they just fell apart. Thus the massive Mount Meat-o. Mount Meat-o so big, it is a little terrifying. I will probably pour a sauce of some sort over the whole thing while it heats up for Shabbat. The sauce essentially be a doctored up barbeque sauce.It will form a crust on Mount Meat-o giving the all essential crunch factor and some addiional flavor. To go along with Mount Meat-o, baked shredded potatoes, a green salad and sliced oranges with a liquor poured over for dessert. But the real center piece of our Shabbat dinner is home baked challa. Yes, it is really, really good. When I invite guests I usu...

One of the ideas that I have been playing around with for the past many months is the idea of layering sheer fabrics to create something new. ( The wings tallit is one example of that sort of layering of sheers.) The spotty dress is made out of a semi - sheer mesh. it is meant to be worn with a black slip that I have already made. I can see in the photo that it looks like a ditsy floral print. The print is really made up of superimposed rectangles. The fabric came my way in a www.fabricmartfabrics.com mystery fabric bundle from a couple of years ago. I don't think I ever would have chosen this fabric on my own, but I liked it as soon as I saw it. I edged the dress with adorable scalloped edged black elastic. As soon as I finished the dress, I realized that it would be a perfect match with my new sweater. The two prints compliment one another. The fabric for this blue and black dress was purchase in the mad shopping for fabric I was doing during the time my father was dying. It...

Sometimes working on a tallit feels less like sewing and more like construction work. The "Not Mets" orange and blue tallit is no exception. I have been working on constructing the stripe which are being made out of four different colors of silk shantung. The four colors are also four entirely different qualities and weights of fabric. If you were someone taught to sew by a home-ec teacher, you would know that this is not a good thing to do. You are supposed to sew fabrics of similar weights one to another. I am self taught, so I am going to pretend that I don't know this piece of sewing wisdom. One of the major reasons for this feigned ignorance is the fact that it is impossible to find four colors of shantung in the same weight. While the Shantungs that I purchased, are probably not hand woven, the tangerine colored silk feels like it was made on not quite mechanized looms made with silk threads that were not particularly closely inspected for uniformity. It looks a wh...

arrived at my house earlier this week. It was sent by my friend Ann. Laurie Colwin is just a wonderful writer. The book is a collection of essays about cooking and eating. A good choice for me, as I like doing both. I love that this is a food book with no orgasmic close up photos of perfect food. There are some sweet line drawing though. I love that Laurie Colwin is so bossy and opinionated. I don't always agree with her opinions, but I love how she formed those opinions. Reading this book made me feel like I was eating a bowl of perfect apricots at the peak of their season.

My sewing student often uses fabric that I have on hand, in my stash for the garments that she makes for herself. I have also introduced her to the wonders of Internet fabric shopping. I thought that it was time that she was introduced to the wonders of the fabric district. We went to both stores managed by Kabbala Man. My student loved hearing the lecture on the Torah portion of the week that was being broadcast  on the store's PA system. My student found a black sheer knit with a solid stripe. Budding designer that she is, she knew exactly what that fabric needed to be as soon as she set eyes on it ( a sheer over dress to wear over a black slip dress). She wanted two yards but there were three left on the bolt, so my student was introduced to the wonders of bolt end pricing and got three yards for $5. In the end she spent every penny she brought with her. Her other purchases were a turquoise rayon jersey, a black rayon/poly jersey  for the under-slip for the dress she has de...

Last week I was in the Garment District. Do I actually need fabric? I did need orange shantung and blue shantung for a tallit that I'm working on. I really didn't need this beautiful wool knit. It is a lovely soft wool blend with some fur content. I can't tell you exactly the fiber content because I bought it at a store where they have no idea what they are selling. The store is housed next door to Paron, in what used to be their half price store. They had a few bolts of these art deco- ish autumnal prints. I fell in love and bought me a yard for $6.00. I thought I could make myself a cardigan. Do I really need a cardigan? Something that is my current "trying to learn" plate is set in sleeves. My usual method of learning how to do something is to read a whole lot about it for a couple of years, look at diagrams and then attempt to tackle the task. Last summer I kept reading David Coffin's shirt-making book. I also have a blouse making book from the early 1980...

There have been requests for my "Stewart" recipe So here it is more or less. No, this isn't being given in standard recipe format. In a heavy bottomed pot brown one chopped onion then add meat and brown.There was lots  of meat so I browned it in small  batches. I transferred the browned meat to a slow- cooker. My husband isn't a fan of onions, and it was his birthday so there was just one onion. I then looked in my fridge and found a whole bunch of vegetables . I hacked up most of a massive bag of carrots into large chunks. I also had most of a celery which also got hacked up. Our Internet grocer had sent me sweet potatoes the size of Cleveland a few weeks back, I cut up the last one or two into the stew. There was a bit of whiskey left in a bottle, I threw that in, a stew is always improved with a bit of booze.. I think we also had a couple of bottles of red wine in the fridge with a few ounces of wine left in the bottle. I threw the wine dregs into the slow-cooker a...

One of the things that always frustrates me about most American sewing patterns is that they always seem to do things in needlessly complicated ways. One example of this is a cowl neck. Many, many patterns show it as a complicated insert into a regular neckline. The prettiest cowl neck tops though, are made from a neckline that is made wider and deeper than the body, so it drapes gracefully. Japanese sewing pattern magazines tend to have a much simpler approach to garment construction. The magazines, rather than coming with paper patterns to cut out, give diagrams and measurements so you can draft your own garments to fit your body. There are several different sewing magazines published for the Japanese market. Some feature clothing that is not all that appealing to me. The Japanese seem to have a much greater love of adorable than this cynical New Yorker. So far my favorite of the Japanese sewing magazines is "Ms. Stylebook".   Each of the issues that I have purchased h...

 I know that most adults act like twelve and thirteen year old kids ought to be locked up for a few years and let out once the hormones reach an even keel again. I love working with that age kid. That's probably a good thing, because most of my clients are exactly that age. I love how they, like cartoon characters, are in the process of walking off that cliff that is childhood, and into thin air. I really love how when I get it right, with one of my bar- mitzvah kids, whatever their prickly relationship might be with their parents, they are so completely happy when they pick up their tallit and realize that they have actually been listened to. All this by introduction to Natalee's  giant ear to ear grin when she picked up her tallit today. Natalee, her mom, and our mutual buddy Lorraine, who purchased the tallit as Natalee's bat- mitzvah gift came by to tie the tzitzit. Lorraine is an accomplished knitter. Natalee, like every kid who has gone to camp in the last twent...