sarah in nyc

I am writing this post not from my New York home, but rather from the business center of a hotel in Florida. We flew down today. Our flight was on Nickle and Dime Airways. It wasn't quite as skeevy as taking inter- city busses was in the 1970's but not a whole lot better. There seem not to be out and out bums flying these days. I suppose that is a plus. It means that the planes are on the whole less smelly than the busses in the old days. Nickle and Dime charges for everything...it's quite something. I know I risk sounding like a complete old fogie here, I don't expect people to necessarily to dress up for a flight. Maybe I'm showing my age, but I don't wear my pajamas out of the house. Seems to me if you are obese and elderly, wearing a tank top, skimpy shorts and no bra, maybe not such a good idea. It could be  that my style sense is skewed after spending my morning at a funeral at Temple Emmanuel. But then again, maybe not.

When one of our kids is about to go away for a while, they get to choose the menu for their last Shabbat home. Not surprisingly, my youngest chose , what we call “Caveman Shabbat”, that is, beef ribs. My youngest takes after my husband. He is one of those people who forgets to eat. He would for the most part be satisfied with a diet of mac and cheese and cereal and milk. My youngest does adore eating ribs in barbeque sauce. My two other kids really enjoy cooking. my youngest has not shown a whole lot of interest, probably because he doesn’t care a whole lot about food. I thought that it might b nice if my youngest cooked the ribs. So while I worked on Rosie’s tallit, I talked my son through the steps of preparing the ribs. So here is our Shabbat dinner, with the main dish prepared by my youngest. I’m also making a vaguely Asian salad, sliced cucumber, celery and fennel dressed with rice vinegar and toasted sesame oil, couscous and of course , challah. Yes, the ribs do smell amazin...

As I wrote earlier, this tallit is a collaboration between Rosie and me. She did the silk painting. Around the time that rosie completed her part of her tallit, her mother’s red tallit arrived.  her lovely painting looked a little simple and bleak against the expanse of white. the desert side before I understood Rosie’s panic, but I also knew that her tallit was far from finished. the dead white of the silk did make her lovely paintings look a bit bleak.  With Rosie’s permission I added a sky blue between  her two painted panels. Rosie also loved the stenciled stripes on her mom’s tallit. So I added a stenciled stripe but not on a red, but on the light blue grey.  it worked with both the lush tree side and the desert side of the tallit. We decided that we would line the tallit with the night sky. I usually paint thin layers of dye, allow them to dry and then add more layers of dye. it has been really muggy here in new york. the silk that usually dries in a few...

My youngest leaves for camp in a few days. He needed five more pairs of boxer shorts. I have deadlines for my clients.  My son mentioned how much he loves the silk boxers I had made for him. his face got all wistful as he talked about how comfortable they are. The silk for his boxers is from the Robert Talbott tie factory. Robert Talbott makes beautiful ties. A few years ago, www.fabricmartfabrics   was selling bundles of Robert Talbott silks.  I bought several bundles. My boys own several pairs of boxers made from the luxurious silks.   I made three pairs of boxers out of the silk and two out of a very soft very bright orange cotton shirting. My son was impressed with the smooth hand of the fabric.   I don’t use a pattern for the boxers, I usually copy an existing pair. This was no exception. These boxers have no side seams and a crotch gusset.

My wonderful sister in law, Beth, sent me a terrific birthday gift. It's taken a while for me to upload the photo though. She sent me a mystery bundle from www.fabricmartfabrics.com . The fabrics are going from left to right, a heavy stretch satin in dark blue, a poly suiting with a pin stripe on one side and pin dot on the other, a rayon cotton jersey print and a silk lining fabric in beige. The satin, I think, looks like it wants to be a dress to wear to a black tie event in my future.  The pin stripe is looking like a less fancy dress. The print will be a dress to wear in warm weather. There is nothing more comfortable to wear than a rayon knit. As for the beige, at first glance, I thought this is my least favorite color. But it will be perfect to line a laser cut  black  cotton fabric I had purchased last summer. The mystery bundle is one of those gifts that keeps on giving. there is that joy at opening the box and discovering what goodies are...

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl  in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born,  Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...

So, here I am in the dress and the scarf. You can also see the remains of the excellent felafel and Spanikopita on my plate.

Rosie is Shaun’s daughter, that is Shaun of the red tallit. When I first met Rosie she reminded me of an old man in the schmatta business. Most of my clients don’t react to tallit  fabric choices all that strongly until I drape it over them. Rosie first fingered the fabric in an old timey knowledgeable way.She she rubbed each fabric and did her mental calculations I was reminded of my cousin Sol who was a knitting machine engineer. When he would see you he might pull back the neckline of your blouse to see how it was constructed, or touch your sweater to figure out the fabric. Like Sol, Rosie collects information about fabric with her fingers. She is a kindred soul. She also draws really well. I encouraged her to do the fabric painting for her tallit. before she sent her work off to me for finish off she went through the same thing I do when I finish a piece. When I finish, all I can see is what does not work right. With Rosie’s permission I am dud ing up her work a little bit, a...

A blue tank dress with purple lace half circle godets . I plan to wear the dress with this cowl scarf. I made the cowl out of a very fancy remnant that I bought probably twenty years ago. It’s a burn out  printed silk  chiffon. I don’t remember what I paid, but the fabric was both out of my budget and out of my sewing abilities. I had completely fallen in love with the gossamer fabric.  I don't even normally like the colors, but I was completely smitten. I bought the silk hoping that one day I would have the skills to make something out of it. Today was the day. All I did was make a French seam. I guess one part of skill is knowing when to go simple. Here they are worn together. The godet

Shavuot starts tonight. There is a tradition to eat lots of dairy of Shavuot. My youngest informed me that he loves Shavuot food because it is so plain. He came home from school just as I had finished making the pancakes for the blintzes. He then asked me what flavor blintzes I planned to make. As far as I am concerned, there is only one flavor of blintzes worth making and that’s cheese blintzes. One of the nice thing about being the mom is that I am free to indulge my culinary quirks. I suppose if one of my kids begged for a blueberry blintz I might relent, if I were in a particularly good mood. The blintz recipe comes from my mother’s almost relative Adele. Adele and my aunt became close friends in high school. Adele then married her High School Hebrew teacher,  a distant cousin of ours.  We always loved claiming  Adele as a relative.  She was so cool. She was serious about museum and gallery going. She was really smart and fearsomely opinionated, and usually r...

I often consult my kids on what to make for Shabbat. My daughter is hankering for Jerk Chicken. I would happily comply but my husband is feeling a bit delicate in the stomach, so we decided to make something a bit gentler and save the Jerk Chicken for another week. My daughter then mused that chicken made with rosemary and lemon is always good. So, in a bowl I mixed dried rosemary, parley and oregano. I put the chickens in their pink enamel pan, squeezed a lemon and a live over and then rubbed the chicken well, inside and out with the herb mix. I cooked until it was brown, and then turned the chickens over. There is lots of juice , which I will  fortify with wine and then reduce and pour over the chicken when I heat it up. it smells heavenly. I also cooked a bunch of grains in the matching pink enamel pan with dried mushrooms, olive oil and salt. and covered the pan with foil ad let it cook in the oven with the chicken. Today’s grain mix is wheat berries, barley and  large...

from the back and the front a bit of beading on the atara with the tallit draped down the stripe on the underside  

I pushed the bundle of strands through the eyelet. Then I began tying the knots. Not surprisingly, there are many traditions of how to tie tzitzit.I use the traditional Ashkenazi wrap pattern but with the additional embellishment of adorning each wrap with a half hitch knot. I love how using this method makes the wearer of the tallit aware of each and every wrap. it also looks so pretty with the half hitch winding it’s way around the strand. Here is the wrap set of seven wraps completed. another nice thing about this half hitch wrap method is that the wraps don’t get undone if you stop in the middle of wrapping. One corner is now complete. You can see that my fingers are stained blue by the murex dye. it washes off easily.

Usually, when I write about a piece  I have it next to me so I can refer to it. but earlier today I shipped off the wedding tallit. It’s made out of silks tussa, a rouch textured silk that looks like a rough woven linen or burlap, but it has the sheen and luster of silk. I love working with it because it drapes like wool, without the itch. The blue tussah came from the Touva on 40th street.  That isn’t actually the name of the store, but it’s the name on the sign. The  owner pulled the blue silk out for me when I told him that I made tallitot. The owner kept pulling out fabrics that he thought I ought to buy. he wouldn’t give me the individual prices for the fabrics but the total was something I was pleased with.  This isn’t my favorite way to shop, but sometimes the fabric district experience isn’t exactly a first world shopping experience. It is a wonderful silk with a beautiful color and a lovely hand and it was perfect for the wedding tallit.   The groo...