Skip to main content

Ella's corners

When Ella and I first met to discuss her tallit, we had thought that the verse on the atara/neckband would be " And I will increase your offspring, like the stars of the sky."  As we refined the design, we all realized that that text from her Torah reading, would serve better on the corner pieces. We decided that each corner would hold one ( or two ) words, so when Ella gathers the fringed corners in her hands, as we do, during services, the entire verse would appear complete in her hands.

Often, when I do text on pinot/corner pieces, I use a short verse of maybe three or four words. When I do that, I paint each word along one edge of the corner. If I do it correctly, the letters interlock and just look awfully cute. One word on each corner presented a bit of a design challenge. I had realized too late, while working on a previous tallit that the words would look best written in a tight circle around the eyelet that will be in the center of the corner piece.

I tried to think about a good way to temporarily mark that center eyelet. I tried to press a fat crayon into a gold stamp pad, but I was unable to see the mark. I then remembered the large pieces of sidewalk chalk left over from my oldest son's  fifth birthday party. I pressed the chalk into the center of each  corner piece and painted the letters. Then I added stars with a brush.

We used that bucket of sidewalk chalk once or twice  in the park. I have, however used the chalk from that bucket over and over again to mark my sewing. If I were truly an organized person, I would have tossed that chalk years ago.  I'm glad though, to have had exactly the right tool for the job.
Labels:

Comments

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

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

A Passover loss

 My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of  linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin.  You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...
2 comments
Read more