sarah in nyc

My hard drive died on Friday. I'm really lucky that my husband was smart enough to purchase an extended service plan for the computer. That's the good news. The bad news is that the company taking care of the service plan has probably one of the worst voice mail systems I have ever encountered. I have spent about two hours on hold  over the past two days. That is two  hours by the clock, not what it felt like, which felt more like six days. The good news is that my hard drive will have a new set of brains soon. The bad news is that I'm using my son's old laptop with it's ancient operating system. My mother had a small stroke last week. It felt like for a couple of days her brain was not properly plugged in. Happily, her brain is now plugged back in.  Clearly I would rather that my hard drive's brains be permanently fried than my mother's.  Life will so return to normal on both the human and the virtual fronts. Despite having to spend t...

When you visit New York museums during the day you often see older women  decked out in wonderful clothing. They aren’t putting on their regular designer duds to wear to a gallery but rather something arty.  They might be wearing fairly nondescript black trousers and and sweater, but they are wearing a serious piece of sculpture piece of jewelry .  They might wear an artist made shawl or scarf or perhaps a dress that looks like it may have come out of Miyake’s atelier or the atelier of one of his followers. For the last several weeks Fabric Mart has been showing a sweater knit in an amazing circle print. The fabric was listed as polyester. I am not a big fan of synthetic knits. The print was just so great.  I kept visiting the fabric on line. Fabric Mart had a half price sale. I had had a hard week,. I caved and bought the fabric.  The package arrived a few days ago. The sweater knit was soft and drapey. It feels nice on the skin. I had planned to make a li...

I was invited to exhibit my work at this conference What to Wear- Women, Clothing, Religion .  I’m really excited. It’s a good fit for me. Much of my work is made for women. When I was asked to exhibit  at the conference, I came up with this piece, a head covering to wear while lighting Shabbat candles that is covered with  the prayer recited by women with special requests from the divine. Several years ago I came up with this. Arba kanfot, Tzitzit for women. Yes, it is a very limited market, but it’s my market. Anyway, I needed to make some more sets  of Arba kanfot.  I decided to use a silk camisole that was a hand me down from a neighbor.  I liked  the camisole because the construction was so cool. It was cut in two sections, but not as one might expect with a front and a back, but rather two entirely differently shaped  wedges that fit together to make the garment. I cut apart the camisole, copied the pattern pieces onto newspa...

The only connection between the items mentioned in this post is that they were all made by me in the last couple of days.   These cherry pillowcases were made in a day of domestic goddess-hood. I’m posting the photo because these pillowcases look so great with my red flannel sheets. Feel free to admire.   Maya came by with her mother to tie the tzitzit. Maya was really happy with the tallit (as was her mom). I love this close-up shot of the atara/neckband.   I’m not sure why, but my photos of Maya in her tallit were less than stellar. Maya’s tallit is smaller than  the usual tallit.   Maya, being a veteran of may nears of camp was able to tie her tzitzit with ease after I said the words “ Chinese staircase”.  It is a knot well known to girls making friendship bracelets. Maya’s mom, having gone to camp in an earlier era and havign spent her arts and crafts time in camp was set on the right knot tying path with the words “ half h...

A couple of months ago my oldest and youngest joined forces and began to subscribe to Netflix. Now, every night after his shower, my youngest and I watch an episode of “Intervention”. My son claims that he is now addicted to the show. Yes, the show does make doing drugs seem like a really icky thing to do. I’m not complaining.   Netflix has caused other changes in my household. I used to work out during the week to “The Today Show” for about 30 minutes. That was about as much patience as I could muster up for the  “Today Show” mix of teeny bits of actual news mixed with lots of grisly murder and how to save money.   These days I will watch three episodes of “ Say Yes! to the Dress” in a row , which come to 66 minutes.  Today I decided to watch this documentary. Trailer for “Between the Folds     When I was in grade school several of my friends were seriously into origami. I learned how to make a couple of forms but didn’t really get into or...

The building below is 555 8th Avenue. My great uncle’s factory, Charlotte Frocks was on the 19th floor  of 555 during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Uncle Louis factory made high end private label dresses. Charlotte Frocks supported my uncle’s family. Uncle Lou also hired his younger, and difficult sister Becky to be his bookkeeper. Becky was quick to anger and didn’t like to work 9-5.  She showed up at work when she was good and ready to. Uncle Lou also supported his mother, my great grandmother. I believe that this photograph of Uncle Lou was taken during the late teens or early 1920’s.

Yesterday was a Domestic Goddess day. I did many loads of laundry. I unclogged the bathtub drain. I unclogged the bathroom sink drain. My daughter wants more blouses to wear to work. Unfortunately, the style for cute young things like my daughter that is currently being sold are in our family parlance,” too foofy”.  For people that speak standard English, that means too frilly. Ruffles are now hot. My daughter is allergic to ruffles. When my daughter was younger I had found directions on a now defunct blog on how to transform a man’s dress shirt into a woman’s blouse. I have re-made my daughter several blouses  out of men’s dress shirts over the past many years. I made this one for her yesterday. I cut the shirt two buttons below the collar and cut in a continuous oval. I then serged the raw edge. Then I folded the serged edged to the inside of the shirt and zigzagged 1/4 inch elastinc inside the fold.  I shirred the waist onto four rows of stretched elastic. I cut th...

After yesterday’s near disaster of making the pinot/corner pieces too big, I went back to the drawing board. I recut  smaller pieces and then did the calligraphy yet again. I needed to figure out how to edge the pinot. I noticed a ball of gold Lurex yarn in with my threads. The yarn had been given to me by my friend Yoki. It’s really flashy and glittery. It’s perfect used in small doses.     Yes, the tallit needs a good pressing. But here it is more or less complete . The eyelets still need to be done. The mis-sized pinah. I also cooked dinner for tonight. Broccoli roasted with sesame oil and rice vinegar. Vegetables roasted  until they are nearly charred are just so good. Broccoli on it’s own is not so delicious. Roasted it’s just amazing. Fingerling potatoes roasted with olive oil lemon juice and I forget which spices- I’m guessing that it's vaguely European in flavor.   Chicken roasted with an Israeli schwarma spice mix wit...

I wanted to iron interfacing to the back of the pinot/corner pieces for Maya's tallit. This would add a bit of stability to the corners which need a bit more support. I was thinking about how to iron on the interfacing and avoid the inevitable sticky goop from the interfacing ending up on the sole plate of my iron. It just isn’t fun to clean that gunk off.  Since I do my ironing in my kitchen, I thought of laying parchment paper between the interfacing and the iron.   My solution worked brilliantly. It was easy to cut away the extra interfacing from beyond the borders of the pinot. I was feeling awfully clever. I stitched on the border, and put the pinah on the tallit. FAIL!!!! The pinah while beautiful is just entirely too big  in scale for the tallit. I had to start the pinot over at 1/4 the size.   I couldn’t use a square tipped brush for the lettering because I was working on such a small scale. Grrr! My husband suggested that I save the pinot f...

  I once read that a person dies completely when their name is no longer remembered.   After my mother in law died four years ago, my husband had the job of cleaning out his parents’ home.  My in-laws, like many others who came of age during the depression were thrifty. They also liked to stock up on certain items when they went on sale. Their basement was lined with packages of toilet paper, cans of tuna fish, cans of frozen vegetables and boxes of store brand breakfast cereal. As my husband cleaned out his parents’ house many of those items came home with him. My in-law’s house was build on swampy land so some of the items had to be thrown away because they smelled, well swampy. We ended up with many packages of aluminum foil. Each day I wrap my son’s lunch in foil.  Anyone who cooks ends up using a fair amount of foil to wrap cook food.There were many packages of foil.   I have been feeling oddly sentimental about coming to the end of the foil...

  I often use the four verbs associated with Tzitzit/ritual fringes, on the pinot/corner pieces of a tallit ( have, see, remember and fulfill). I can usually make the letters  interlock in a really pretty way . It usually comes so easily that it almost feels like a parlor trick when I make the pinot. Well, not this time. It took several tries, and many failures on Friday. Today I sat down to do the pinot first thing in the morning when I was fresh , not tires and hopefully wouldn’t mess up.  Today I got the lettering on the pinot right. Whew! My next task was to begin embroidering the ribbon that will border the pinot and the atara/neckband. I have two nice but boring ribbons.   I layered the two ribbons and embroidered a diamond stitch in gold. it’s already better. I will add another layer of stitching  to the diamond.  Embroidering the ribbon is both really boring and vary satisfying. Don’t worry, pressing will remove the ripple from the rib...

  Maya’s tallit is now turned right side out. I had purchase the blue satin ribbon thinking I would use it in a previous tallit.  I love the gold diamonds  embroidered on the ribbon. They do double duty, they are both decorative and also attach the ribbon to the tallit. I keep thinking about what Maya would like best. If I were making this tallit for me might have chosen a more complicated look. But Maya likes a cleaner more simple look. She goes to an Orthodox school and goes to a Conservative synagogue. Most of Maya's classmates are not used to the idea of a woman in a tallit. Maya wants it to read as a tallit with nothing too wild  going on. I totally get where she is coming from. I wore a tallit at my Orthodox day school back in the 1970’s.  It will be enough for Maya's classmates to wrap their heads around the fact that she is wearing a tallit and reading Torah.  Asking them to take in something too visually alien as a tallit will make it harder f...

Today I stopped by Paron . They are moving one block south and are making everything down  so they don’t have to pack up quite as many bolts of fabric.  I wanted to see if they to see if moved anything neat into their $3/yard bins. They had one barrel filled with slinky printed with patterns in silver. So not my thing. Sometimes though, a fabric looks cool for the moment. I gave a bit of thought to purchasing a stretch with a snakeskin print and a sequin overlay. But I came to my senses and left it in the barrel.   I also left the lining fabrics. But for the past few years I have seen a bolt of this fabric, a puckery white knit.   I’m not exactly sure why it appealed to me so much. I can’t tell you how often I have pulled out the bolt and nearly bought some. Finally, at $3 for a yard, I bought the four yards left on the bolt. I’m not quite sure what I will make out of it. It’s slightly sheer and has a beautiful drape. Any ideas?   The other white t...