sarah in nyc

Yesterday afternoon I arrived in Boston. For a chunk of the trip I had my doubts if we would ever leave the Bronx. For all of the pokeyness of the early part of the bus trip, we only arrived 30 minutes behind schedule. Amazon.com Widgets My sister was kind enough to treat me to a simple yet satisfying dinner before our journey to Costco to buy supplies for our mother. The main goal of this shopping venture was kosher meat so I could make several week's worth of meals for my mother and her care giver. Today was cooking day.My mother used to have a really well supplied kitchen. When my mother moved she seems to have left behind stuff that makes cooking easier... things like large bowls or sharp knives.  I have done more than my share of cooking under less than ideal circumstances. I was up to the challenge of doing serious cooking in a very attractive kitchen with virtually no counter space and with an odd array of cooking implements.  Each item I make also had...

I had bought the fabric for this dress from the dollar fabrics at Fabric Mart , as a segula, an amulet so I wouldn’t die during surgery. I guess my $2 investment in magical thinking worked. I didn't die.  I thought it was time to make good on the magical thinking and make the dress, especially because I’m going to be spending most of the week in Boston with my mother. If I want to wear the dress for Rosh Ha Shanah I had better get to work. This is the basic diagram for the dress. This dress is most easily made with a knit but could work made with a bias cut woven. The back and front are cut the same. I cut both layers of fabric at the same time. Most of the shaping in this dress is not done by complicated seaming darting, but by the shape of my body. I cut the dress with a bunch of ease at the bust, so it drapes, less at the hips so it clings. Here is the version I made last night out of a fabric that had come from a mystery bundle a few years back.  The fabric cost near...

Even though we live in the middle of Manhattan, there is usually enough nature around that it does not feel oppressive. The beautiful church around the corner has the feel of a country church. Actually, it was built as a vacation church for church members who vacationed uptown in the late 1800’s. Yes, my neighborhood used to be a resort community. Continuing on the same nature in the city theme, my husband went for a walk in Riverside Park late in the afternoon. Looking uptown, you get the iconic view  of the George Washington bridge. I like that the Hudson always smells a bit like the ocean.  That ocean smell always make me feel like I’m home. I grew up hearing fog horns at night. The community garden was in full late summer blowsy bloom. Before the real-estate boom, our neighborhood was dotted with community gardens.  They have mostly all been turned into condos. This garden in Riverside Park is one of the last ones left. I just loved the late afternoon ligh...

This was my dinner last night. Home made kale noodles turned into my grandmother’s staple, lokshen mit kaese , noodles with cottage cheese and eggs.  Last night was the first time I had ever added greens to noodles. I added cooked kale rather than the more traditional spinach. I had kale in my freezer and not spinach. I discovered a few things while making these noodles. First of all, I discovered that my new stick blender from Costco does not work. So the kale puree is not as refined as I had hoped it would be. The failure of  my stick blender is not particularly useful information to any one out side of my household. My other discovery is actually of more universal usefulness. I realized that vegetables were probably added to noodle dough to make them easier to work.  I used semolina flour which is normally hard to work, kneading semolina flour is one of those household tasks that are better than going to a gym. You really feel that burn in your biceps as you knea...

Of two different down town adventures. A little while ago, my husband and I went to a play at the SoHo Playhouse. We got there early and walked around a bit before the play began.   I discovered this. A relic from when pattern publishers were  a big deal in the publishing world. The lobby was mostly renovated, but I believe that the beautiful marble around the elevators is original.   An old image of the building. Butterick Building and a more contemporary view in this blog   As we continued our walk, I realized that I have another piece of history with the building. Many years ago while I was unemployed, my friend Steve, an architect, asked me to help measure the store at the front  wedged end of the building. He had the job of renovating the space into a Crate & Barrel. The store was then being rented by a carpet warehouse. Steve and I spent two days climbing carpet rolls nearly to the ceiling to get the space measured. It was a wei...

A while ago ,I found a really interesting link on this  blog . Julian Roberts, that is Julian, not Julia had an incredibly cool way to create visually complex yet easy to sew dresses.  Julian is clearly a quirky guy. His website was open only two days a week  so it wasn’t always  easy to track his method down and try it.  The other day I saw that the   Julian Roberts book is now available as a PDF.  I downloaded the book. It’s a space hog but  completely fascinating.   Some of Julian's ideas are really easy to assimilate, others feel like trying to master  advanced mathematics when you have trouble with simple arithmetic. But on one foot, his method starts with a long pillow case of fabric. You sort of randomly decide where the front and back bodices go, cut then out and then twist,  and turn those bodices and stitch the dress together.   Here you see stage 1. Here are two views of the finished dress.  it...

This photo was taken yesterday of me and three of my cousins. Two years ago we didn’t know of one another’s existence. Their father and my mother were first cousins.  Their grandfather, and my grandmother were brother and sister. The last previous contact was in 1965. I discovered yesterday that my grandmother and her beloved older brother died within weeks of one another in the late winter of 1968.   My family is one that suffered many drifts and rifts over the past century. Over the past dozen or so years I have worked on finding relatives and piecing together family history. I have had the very real pleasure of connecting with people with whom I share a deep bond.  I have been learning that I understand the causes of many of those rifts, but those old hurts are not my own. I love that my family is now so much bigger than it was when I was growing up. I’m sure that it’s easy for you to see how dark haired Leslie and I are related.  When I look at my cousi...

Sunday evening I indulged in a bit of magical thinking. I knew I was going in for surgery early Monday. I bought  fabric to make myself a Rosh Ha Shanah dress. I figured that buying the fabric would ensure that I wouldn’t die on the operating table.     OK, the rational part of me knows that the chances of dying during the operation were in the close to zero range. I get that. But despite mostly being a rational sort of a girl, part of me clearly is not fully 100% rational. I bought the green boucle to make a Rosh Ha Shanah dress. It cost $1/yard. I guess if I had died the waste of the fabric wouldn’t have have been too tragic.   The other two fabrics, the grey rayon knit and the white textured knit will either be t-shirts or nightgowns. Once I was buying fabric, the siren song of mystery bundles was just too difficult to resist.   This is what arrived. I think the green boucle may have made the nice folks at Fabric Mart think that I was a red-h...

I’m having some surgery tomorrow. ( Don’t worry, it isn’t major.) I realized that I needed a bit of ocean time to keep me on an even keel before tomorrow’s events. I suppose if I were the sort of girl who had a house in the Hamptons  I would have been there today. Since I don’t have a house in the Hamptons or Block Island I did the next best thing, or perhaps the even better thing, and  my husband and I took the ferry to Governor's Island.  We had gone last summer and it was beautiful. One of the most extraordinary things about the island for me, aside from how beautiful it is, is that once people step off the ferry they all instantly become mellow, calm and polite. Visually they all look like the polyglot that is New York but as if they traded souls with, say, Iowans.   Today was no different. One of the things that’s lovely about the Island is that they shift around the attractions from year to year.   This year one new thing was an administration bu...