All dressed up …with a place to go to

I got my black tie event outfit al put together. The dress is complete. I realized I needed a wrap of some kind. My usual lace or chiffon won’t work with the dress because the sequins will snag those fabrics.

It’s hard to look elegant while extracting ones self from a shawl. This is where being a tallit maker comes in handy. I had a length of Calvin Klein satin in my stash. ( Hurray for www.fabricmartfarics.com mystery bundles!) Sewing it up and top stitching the shawl was quick work. far quicker than pressing all the wrinkles out of the fabric.

I did need an evening bag. My neighbor had given me an evening bag with a cute shape in bright orange.

See, it’s a really bright orange. I made a slip cover out of crinkled metallic silk organza. I hand stitched it onto the bag.

I think the bag is vastly improved. Yes, you can see the orange peeping through. I assume that the room where the party will be held will be on the dark side so the color won’t be all that offensive. I added a large crafted brass and pewter pin to the bag after I took the photo. Now that I realize that slip covering an evening bag isn’t that hard, I will re cover the first evening bag I ever owned, a black velvet that has become rusty looking with age. Once again, my trusty old sewing books come in handy with trifty hints for glamorous living.

I covered the orange part of the strap with more of the organza. My armless dummy is holding the bag through the magic of ribbon concealed by the shawl. I defied no laws of gravity for this photograph.

Despite running away from my family for this weekend, I did cook the folks who remained behind Shabbat dinner. It’s in the fridge waiting for them to warm it up. You want to know what I made? Chicken roasted with sumac and smoked paprika and potato chunks roasted with olive oil, thyme,rosemary and lavender and salt. They can make salad or warm up frozen veggies tomorrow.

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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...

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...

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 ...

sarah in nyc

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