sarah in nyc

  Yesterday I was invited to a suburban synagogue and  asked to come up with some ideas for their ark curtain that badly needs to be replaced.  The synagogue is quite beautiful. I think that the a good ark curtain design can make their sanctuary work a bit better both visually as well as symbolically.  it’s nice to work on something that will tweak a good thing to better, rather than working in a space that is terrible. The synagogue has acquired some real treasures of Jewish ceremonial art. My jaw was on the floor seeing both what this synagogue has for regular use as well as what they have in their museum. They asked me to come up with a few ideas for them. I came up with five. ( I could come up with more ideas, but five is more than enough.) I’m being coy because I want the powers that be at that synagogue to have the first crack at looking at the designs I came up with. It’s only fair. I am, however showing all of you snippets of each design.   I a...

On on the board of my building. One of my jobs every year is to work with the kids on decorating the lobby for Halloween. Before this was my job, the decorations were all store bought.   There are large apartment buildings in Manhattan that pay a florist to decorate their lobbies .   I thought that the building would be more charmingly decorated if the decorations were made by the kids. Usually, starting in the summer I ask various kids what they think this year’s theme ought to be.  One girl suggested that we make trick or treaters in costume.  My job was to figure out how to do this in a way that it could be done by kids, even small ones. In general, I like the idea of having these decorations which are thrown away made out of recycled materials. I thought that we could construct the basic figures out of cardboard and wire hangers.  I had envisioned that we could hang the  completed figures from stings strung between the large light fixtures ...

It’s another Caveman Shabbat at our house. The table will be full tonight. One of our guests is a butcher and the son and grandson of a butcher.  Meat cookery is a fairly new skill for me. It makes me a little nervous to cook meat for him. The ribs and the wings are cooked. They will be bathed in another layer of sweet/salty vinegary/ smoky sauce as it all warms in the oven. Some of our guests is a family we don’t know very well. We warned them not to wear their best clothes so they could enjoy the meal without worry. Our guests are bringing most of the rest of the meal. I still have to make a starch. I think I will go for simple, perhaps rice.  I would have baked potato spears but one of our guests is potato allergic. The house smells goooooood. And now , for no particular reason a photo of an adorable house in Chelsea. Who doesn’t want to live in this house?

I remember having an epiphany about clothing manufacturers back when I was in high school. Many manufacturers kept re-making the same shape over and over again in different fabrics. Now that I know a bit more about the manufacturing process, economically that makes a whole lot of sense. Perfecting a pattern is expensive business. I often repeat the same  dress shape over and over again. For me it isn’t a matter of economics. Once I get a shape that works, it’s nice to play with the possibilities of what it can be. Also if you are a bit of a lazy dress maker, like I am it becomes possible to cut out a garment without a whole lot of pre-planning or thinking.   I do however cut differently depending on the fabric that I’m using. This red dress is made out of a heavy weight stable knit that isn’t very stretchy. It was cut with a bit of negative ease.  ( the 1/4 width of fabric was  1.5 inches smaller than my hip measurement)   I cut this back version o...

As a New Englander, summer was always followed by autumn and then foliage season. Late autumn and winters in Quincy were often dreary. When we came back from  two weeks in Israel in November of 1970, by father noted that it took six weeks until he saw the sun again. The fabulous colors of fall were like color insurance against the drear of the cold weather months. There was a maple at the end of the block that used to begin turning  color before Labor Day.  Most of the trees turned color later in the fall. We used to go for walks to take in the color. As a little girl my sisters and I  used to collect leaves and press them in books. Often those leaves would fall out of books as I reread them months or years later.   While Manhattan has lots of trees, there are not all that many sugar maples in my neighborhood. My trip to visit my mother has fed some of my hunger for the changing leaves of the season. I didn’t get to go on any hikes. But the highway provi...

Amazon.com Widgets

I'm here in Boston. My mother is having what the doctors are calling a procedure. I 'm waiting in the elegant family room until it is over. Before they took my mother into the operating room she was very sweet. I hope it all goes well.  Amazon.com Widgets

  A while back I was full of my cleverness in repairing my bathrobe . I thought that by reinforcing the worn out edges of the robe I would get a few more years of wear from a beloved garment.   I realized that I had mad the same error that many of my clients do. they bring me a beloved textile and assume that with just a bit of a nip and a tuck it will be as good as new. Often though, I have to be the bearer of bad news and inform my client that their beloved item is too far gone. That when I looked carefully I can see that the textile is on it’s last legs and it really isn’t worth putting in the time and effort into repairing it. I bought the red and white striped seersucker to repair my robe, gave it a new nifty trim…but that robe began to disintegrate within a few weeks of my completing the work on it. It was time for a new robe.   I did look around for some nice white waffle woven cottons… But given that I have a closet overflowing with fabrics I decided...

My nephew is in town and is coming for Shabbat dinner with his Canadian girlfriend.  I realized after I had put the chickens in the oven that it was Canadian Thanksgiving.  It was too late to make the chicken any more Thanksgiving like. So in honor of the Canadian girlfriend I roasted winter squash in olive oil and maple syrup. Cooking for my nephew always takes a bit of thought. He is severely nut allergic.  I am one of those cooks that thinks that nearly any food can be improved with the crunch of nuts. I don’t want to kill my nephew though so I had to plan the meal carefully.   One food that is emblematic of Thanksgiving is cranberries. I had purchased the first bag of the year earlier in the week. I love cranberries and would keep a supply in my freezer at all times if I could.   I decided to make a cranberry pie. I started with a crust made with wheat germ, brown sugar and white flour and a pinch of salt. The wheat germ is for crunch not for i...

One of my goals in making Jewish ritual art is to make the ritual and the text come alive for the user. The pivotal text during the Passover Seder is   בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים In every generation each person needs to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt. I want this matzah cover to put you right in the middle of the split sea. I want you to feel the dampness of the water on either side of you. I had added blue cording along the edges of the water.  it looked pretty, but too static to my eye. So, my slobby storage methods came to save the day. Some chiffon I had painted a while back  to look like water, was sticking out of a pile of fabric. I tore the chiffon into strips and gathered and stitched it to the Matzah cover. I love how it expresses the feeling of the water being held back with great force. Yes, it’s a little over the top. But something that is used two nights a year can be a little outrageous...

This year my kids decided to go as the three kids in the cartoon series “ Bob’s Burgers”. My youngest is going as Louise Belcher, the youngest child in the family. I was drafted into making the costume. I made the bunny hat last night. I used the hood of my older son’s sweatshirt as more or less the pattern. The cotton lycra jersey was in my stash. I’m really proud of the bunny ears. I used cardboard from a granola bar carton to give the ears shape. I didn’t own any chartreuse knit fabric so I paid a visit to Kabbala Man and bought the rayon jersey. I used an existing T- shirt of my son’s to draft the dress. He’s pleased with the result. I think my son may keep the beard although I will be drafted to put his hair in pigtails. While I was in the garment district one of the stores on 8th Avenue was selling  big spools of gold metallic thread and other notions in industrial sized rolls. They charged me $6 per cone ( and $5 for the opened blue cone). I have paid as much as $...