sarah in nyc

I tend to get sick the same way over and over.  My throat hurts and I feel generally icky. Yes, I’m drinking lots of fluids and I have upped my intake of vitamin C. I’m taking horrible herbs, I’m not worse.. so I guess that’s good.   Being sick is no excuse not to work. So I have been embroidering the letters for Danielle's chuppah. As you can see, I’m about half way done with the second verse.   If Danielle is reading this, she should not be worried about the un-pressed  piece and all of the stray threads. This will look all tidy and beautiful when it is delivered. I also have been  playing with a new book. The clothing shown in this book is now being seen again on the street in many variations.  I have shown some of the illustrations. The author wrote the book assuming that most people would follow the illustrations rather than the written directions. This dress is clearly a version of a walk-away dress.   Anyway, a worth it to pu...

  Vacation is over. It’s time to get back to work on Danielle’s chuppah.  I cleaned up all of the threads on the first verse.  I got the lettering transferred for the second verse. This is all very old fashioned work that might have been done exactly the same way fifty years ago, and with  slight variations a century and a half ago. Between doing post vacation laundry, and baking  bread ( two batches, because the boys inhaled the first batch of pita) time for sewing was fairly limited today.   I’m looking forward to making more progress tomorrow.

And now that I have access to my own computer and a bit of photo editing programming, Here are some of the images that I wasn’t able to post while we were away. A chipmunk in the driveway The cute house, now color corrected. An incredibly New England house. This beautiful church is for sale. I love how in the front view it looks like it belongs in an Edward Hopper painting. No trip to New England is complete without an image of a falling down barn. My son wanted to go to a shooting range, so we did. My husband found this drowned monarch butterfly during his swim. My sister and I did a canal tour of Lowell. I now have a favor to ask the more computer savvy of my readers.I have been having trouble  with an Amazon search box that is showing up   inside my blog postings. I need help figuring out how to remove it. if you know what I need to do, please be in touch.

Sometimes getting things organized with my family can be difficult. We are dealing with five different sets of needs and five different sets of obligations that all need to be aligned, so we can all go away together. As I ,looked at the calendar looking at the week that seemed best for our vacation, I realized that  my father's Yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death fell  in the middle of our vacation. <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fsewnewyork-20%2F8002%2Fc9740cf1-a6e4-494e-89ec-a9fc91e49951&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> Yarhzeit is usually marked by reciting Kaddish. One of the truly brilliant practices n Judaism is that Kaddish can not be recited in isolation. It is a call and response prayer. It needs to be said within a group of at least ten. You just can't do it alone. My fathe...

 One of the great pleasures of being in New England is the opportunity to eat some of the local products. One thing I miss in New York is the world's best cottage cheese. Hood's has the perfect combination of curds and wet stuff. The curd size is perfect.  When I was a very little girl my usual at home lunch was a bowl of Hood's cottage cheese with raisins. Sometimes I added a dollop of sour cream. It's a very old fashioned Eastern European sort of a meal. Sustained by this snack my older son and I did the two mile walk to town. We saw a chipmunk near our drive-way.  These were some of the views along the way. This is probably one of the cutest houses on the planet. I think a fairy tale character must live here. Another beautiful New England farmhouse. We got to Keepsake Quilting. I discovered that I am no longer a quilter. the store and the thousands of yards of beautiful quilting cottons had no interest for me. Quilting is how i go...

 This is where we are spending the rest of the week. I did my morning stretch while looking at this view. Not a bad way  to start the day.  I have always loved how the curve of the shore and the verticals of the skinny pines always make for a perfectly composed landscape. I don't know if the rest of the pond  creates such perfect views but our view is beyond compare.  What you are missing is the auditory element of this photograph. This pond is a loon preserve. You need to hear the plaintive warble of the loons as you look at the image. And now, for something completely different..... Yesterday, my youngest showed me his favorite thing to do with a Tootsie-Roll. Yes, it is repulsive. But I expect nothing less from an adolescent boy. <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fsewnewyork-20%2F8002%2Fc9740cf1-a6e4-494e-89ec-a9fc91e49951&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com W...

For a week. Visiting family some of the time, and being out in New Hampshire's Lakes region for  the rest of our vacation. <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fsewnewyork-20%2F8002%2Fc9740cf1-a6e4-494e-89ec-a9fc91e49951&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> I am looking forward to both. I may be able to post during my time away, but I'm not promising anything.

I watched this movie this morning during my workout. It's on Netflix , so if you subscribe you can watch it too. I was struck by the parallels between how they make a Steinway, tuning by ear, doing measurements mostly by eyeball. They hit warm perfection in a Steinway by being just slightly imperfect.  &lt;A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_sw&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fsewnewyork-20%2F8002%2Fc9740cf1-a6e4-494e-89ec-a9fc91e49951&amp;Operation=NoScript"&gt;Amazon.com Widgets&lt;/A&gt; I'm working on a piece with lots of hand lettering. I don't mark out lines. The piece will achieve a kind of harmony that isn't possible if I had simply screen printed computer lettering onto the piece. The irregularities of  the human hand give the piece a warmth and vitality. I'm not done yet, there are still embellishments that I need to add.

    This book just arrived at my house yesterday. It’s from 1987 and the clothing has the look of the mid 1980’s. Actually, this isn’t the neon leggings and splatter print sweatshirts that teens may have worn but the sort of easy classics that  a grown up woman would wear. much of that look can still be worn today. Clearly we tend to like a more fitted look in 2011. But it’s easy enough to take in the side seams a bit or to add a couple of darts to a garment.   The patterns are well drafted and the directions look  pretty good. I love her directions for a swing back coat. I may end up making one  this winter. I saw one sweeping down Broadway on a blustery day last winter and I got a serious case of coat-lust. The question of if I actually need another winter coat is not on the table. I don’t. For some reason, wonderful winter coats keep appearing at my house.  I guess I’m just willing to wear folk’s dead relatives coats.  I may have to...

I have been doing genealogical research on the internet on and off  for the past several years.  I found the  civil wedding certificate for my father’s grandparents in their town in  Konin, Poland.  I discovered that my very snooty maternal grandmother was snooty for a good reason. She came from a really illustrious family.   Yesterday I discovered that a really sad family story was even sadder than any of us knew. My grandfather was one of many children, but only three made it to adulthood, Jacob, Dina and Fanya, Feige Tzivia in Yiddish.   Fanya married Nathan.  Fanya’s story was told to me over and over as I grew up. Fanya and Nathan had one son, Sol. Three years later, she gave birth to her second son. a few days later, she developed “ child bed fever”. The midwife  then took a herring, wrapped in in red flannel and put it at Fayna’s feet in hopes of drawing away the fever. It didn’t work. The midwife then  called in the...

I completed both baby jackets.  This one is going to the more local baby. I’m impressed that I managed to install a zipper and have everything end up even. One of the downsides of being self taught is that some basic home-ec type skills have been learned with massive degrees of difficulty.  I cut down a longer separating zipper. This is jacket for my new cousin in Israel. The buttons are from my stash. The elastic is from a large roll I had gotten at the Boston Children’s Museum nearly twenty years ago. Maybe it wasn’t such a good purchase. I think this is the third time I have used any of the elastic  from this large spool.   Both jackets are lines in a striped shirting . Fabric Mart's label says the fabric is from Ann Taylor. Regardless of the provenance, it has a really nice smooth feel. Just right for smooth baby skin. I used this magazine To figure out how to plot the dress for Shira, my Israeli cousin’s older sister.  No, I can’...

Our friends Ira and Ruth just told us that they have a new grand son. My cousin in Israel and his wife just had a baby.  It’s time to make baby gifts.   I had thought that  a dolman sleeved baby jacket like this one, Francis Blondin baby jacket , would be just the ticket.  They are easy to make and work well for babies and are easy to put on and take off. I looked through my stash and found a length of baby blue fine whale corduroy that I had gotten in a Fabric Mart mystery bundle a few years back.   I thought that the fabric would feel nice but looked a bit dull. I decided that a stencil  would jazz up the fabric. I drew a small collection of stars on a small piece of cardstock. I then cut the stars out with  an X-Acto knife.   I used a blue oil paint stick and a stuff brush with the stencil. This is the result. I will be able to cut two jackets out of the yardage.  I still have to heat set the color and decide on the lin...

My friend Vivian is an only child. Her mother had been born in Austria, her grandmother, in Germany. They had come  the the states early enough before the war so they could bring lots of stuff. Vivian’s mother was a collector.  She died a few years ago. A couple of years ago, Vivian's father died and she has had to go through an apartment that has held memories and mementos that go back generations. It hasn’t been an easy task. I admire Vivian for being so good at making the hard decisions about which things really matter to her, and which she is happy to send to other homes. Earlier, Vivian gave me bags and bags of textiles. Some I use. Some I still haven’t sorted through. Vivian’s grandmother, Irma, clearly loved red and white. I inherited a couple of wonderful red and white linen table cloths that had been hers.  They are oddly sized, but very beautiful. I love using them. Today Vivian asked me if I wanted some framed embroideries. At first, I declined.  Th...