The end result of an adventure in graphics

Noah's invitation, closed. the text comes from God's promise to never again destroy the earth after the flood.
The text is written in the form of a stylized olive leaf.

When I work in fabric I control the entire process. Doing graphics, I work in collaboration with the printer. I was lucky that Diane, Noah's mom chose to work with such an excellent printer. Marissa, from Quad Rite has a great eye and worked to make my part of the invitation just look better.

Marissa suggested the muted olive green ink. Diane who loves muted colors found a sage green envelope.

Other times when I have done invitations, my work has been begun by hand, but then I manipulate the art work on the computer. This time, I worked the old fashioned way, completely by hand. Each draft was begun anew with pencil and rolling ruler. It was actually pleasant working this way. Marissa shrunk my work down by about 20% . Both Diane and I were grateful to Marissa's experience which made both of our lives much easier. The paper is a yummy textured ivory paper. It just feels good in the hand.

I like to have invitations feel a little cinematic, to have the story of the invitation transform as you open it up. I also try hard to have an invitation work both for Hebrew readers and for those who can't read Hebrew, all while trying not to be too obnoxiously pedagogical.

When you open the gate-folds of the invitation, Noah's full name in Hebrew and English fills the center of the leaf.
God's covenant with Noah forms the top line of the leaf. The bottom line of the leaf is made up with a Rabbinic description of the Biblical Isaac.

The invitation text is on the inside of the two gate flaps.

The back of the invitation text is the translation of the Hebrew texts used inside the invitation.

Noah's thank you card makes use of the same leaf motif

Comments

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 יְהֹוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ M

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 read a batch of recipes and the

Chanukah

Last night we lit the first candles of Chanukah. We were joined by our dear friends Alfie and Judy. My husband met them during his college years. I am new to the game since we have only been friends since 1982. I made latkes, lots of them. I took the opportunity to use last night as a dry run for the latke dinner with our kids later in the week. Our kids are eaters. My my original plan was to make the latkes in the air fryer but I realized that it would take too long to do the many small batches needed. Instead I baked the latkes in a hot oven with lots of oil on my baking sheets. I made potato latkes. As a kindness to my husband I did the blasphemy of leaving out the onions. I did add shredded carrots for texture and lots of smoked paprika and black pepper for flavor. I made carrot, apple and dill latkes. I also made summer squash latkes with amba powder and sumac. Unfortunately I had baked them at 350 and not 400 which I discovered is the sweet spot for crispy oven baked latkes. Th

sarah in nyc

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