Skip to main content

Feeling an Affinity with Cloistered Nuns

Lots of wonderful European hand work was embroidered by cloistered nuns. Probably , most of those women lost their vision doing  that beautiful work.

maya beading

maya beading (3)

I’m working away on Maya’s tallit.The beading needle has a really teeny eye. The gold beads are miniscule.

Aside from giving me an opportunity to worry about the state of my eyesight, I love how layering the stars, with the paint, the stitching and the beads and sequins creates a layered look to the cosmos that I’m trying to depict on Maya’s tallit.

maya beading (1)

 

The twinkly sequins will catch the eyes of people even in the back of Maya’s synagogue. The fact that the high octane sparkle is sprinkled , rather than paved over the entire surface actually increases  their impact. I have lots more to do.

maya beading (2)

 

I did manage to slice my finger on yet another X-acto knife.   I did  not bleed on Maya’s tallit.

Yesterday, I heard about the death of our friend Peter, a wonderful man who didn’t quite believe in his very real strengths. You can read about him here. http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/87555/stark-loss/ Barukh Dayan HaEmet, Blessed be the True Judge. It’s just so sad.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

  וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים   You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for  giving life to all.  I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of  Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or  the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...