Skip to main content

A gift from Mrs. Dee

Mrs. Dee was my friend Meggy’s  grandmother. She lived  in the apartment house that was next door to my house.

When my parents used to go out for the evening, Mrs. Dee used to babysit. she introduced us to the wonders of both Lawrence Welk and  Liberace.

 

Usually when Mrs. Dee would  babysit she would also bring  a bag of handwork. Most often she would make afghans, generally doing what I now know is called Tunisian stitch.

 

I used to hang on Mrs. Dee’s arm as she worked and asked her lots of questions about what she was doing.   The two of us really liked one another. Mrs. Dee made me this afghan for  my eighth birthday.   She made it in green, because it was my favorite color, and brown, because that was the color of my room. I actually hated ( and still hate) sea foam green, but I love that Mrs. Dee made it for me.

afgan

This afghan lives on my youngest’s  bed.  It has faded some from the strong sun in my childhood bedroom.

My youngest left for camp yesterday and all of his bedding has gotten washed .

 

My husband and I are child free for about a week.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Meg @ Mood FabricsJune 23, 2012 at 8:05 PM

    Lovely story. Enjoy being child-free. My youngest heads off to camp for a month next week. Am I being a mean mom to say I kinda look forward to the break?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sarah JacobsJune 25, 2012 at 12:34 PM

    No Meg, you are not a mean mom.

    For us, though it has been so long ( nearly 24 years) since we had a chunk of child free time that it's taking some getting used to.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more