A Little Time Out for Home Improvement

Sun and natural fibers are not friends. Usually that isn't a problem with clothing. But when you are dealing with curtains that hang in a sunny window, you basically have three choices. You can put up synthetics, or you can put up many layered draperies that take a long time to develop sun rot, or you can replace your curtains fairly often.

My bedroom is one of the two rooms in my apartment that actually gets sunlight. I have gone the, replace often, route with the bedroom curtains. The last pair were blue chambray ones from Target. They lasted surprisingly well.

As the house will be filled with company for Thanksgiving, some of the many flaws the the apartment are becoming unbearable. We have been doing some clutter purging and organizing. I also noticed that the bedroom curtains have fallen prey to sun-rot. It was time to replace them

I stopped by Target yesterday, and hated all of the curtains they were selling. Friday, a box had arrived from http://www.fabric.com/. I had purchased two fabric to be table cloths. One was adorable. The other looked great on my computer screen, but was kind of horrifying close up. I was thinking of giving it away. But then, thinking it over a bit, I realized that it would be fine as a curtain for the bedroom. You don't have to have your face as close up to a curtain as you do to a table cloth. It's isn't exactly my first choice, but it will do until it rots away.

Had I planned to make curtains with the fabric, I would have purchased twice as much so there would be a little gathering action.The gathering would have minimized the effect of the print some. So, it's more in your face than I prefer in a bedroom. I am please by how well the pattern matches up.

New curtains with afternoon sun streaming through. I bound the edges with black twill tape

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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