Working while sick

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 purchase book if you can find it.

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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!!!

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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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