sarah in nyc

Yoni’s tallit is complete, except for the tzitzit. The pinot /corner pieces are stitched to the tallit using a buttonhole stitch. I like the way it mimics the look of a hand stitch. I thought many kind thought’s about Yoni’s savta/ grandmother as I stitched those pinot . Yoni is a deep thinker.  He chose powerful  texts from his haftara.   Of all the kids I have ever worked with he has understood most intuitively about how using texts wisely can change the experience of wearing a tallit.  Most kids ( because after all they are kids)  need a fair amount of hand holding to select texts, and more importantly select texts that work.  Yoni dove right in and made  smart selections.   Tomorrow I go up to Boston. My mother is now in home hospice care.

Yesterday I finished adding color to the Isabel’s thank you notes. Tying her tzitzit was scheduled for the late afternoon.  as delightful as this project was,I am glad to put it to bed. Isabel was really delighted with her tallit. Her father joined her for tying the tzitzit. The two shared the task with  much teasing between the two of them.   Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough with my camera and I missed Isabel’s jumping for joy moment. I am also working on finishing up Yoni’s tallit.   I have had to abandon some ideas that didn’t work. The text for the atara just didn’t show up on the rock pained fabric. the little green snails are of no theological importance but will make Yoni’s favorite color more dominant on the atara.   I also had a similar false start with the pinot. I still have to sew the corner pieces onto the tallit and make he eyelets. Once I trim all of the loose threads the tallit will be complete.

Our dear friends Alfie and Judy live in the mid-west but have often been guests at our house, and at our table.   They stopped in new york earlier this winter while on their way to France. When I got my mail yesterday, there was a small package from Judy. It was this package of couscous spice purchased at a Paris market.   I made not couscous, but a quinoa and rice pilaf and added the fragrant spice mix to the to the pot of grains. This is a week when I wish I had the ability to digitize smell and attach it to the blog post.   Our meat too, is enhanced by Alfie and Judy’s love. The coffee used in the spice rub was a gift from Alfie from his time in Costa Rica. it’s de-caf coffee, so unfit to drink ( in my opinion) but perfect in a meat rub.   Smelling all of those good loving smells is pretty wonderful. I am feeling very much in need of that love right now.  My mother is now, as my dear friend Linda and I have often quipped, on that great...

Isabel’s tallit is complete. We just have to schedule the tzitzit tying. I am pretty delighted with this piece.   The atara came out exactly as I had hoped. You can see much of it before it was sewn onto the tallit And here it is on the tallit.   I could not be more pleased. I did more work on Yoni’s tallit.I found a spool of army green thread and realized that rows of machine embroidery in the army green would be perfect. Things were going so well that I decided to add a decorative stitch to the edge of the  rock stripes. I forgot how the stitching will stiffen up the edge of the stripe in a really unpleasant way. I had of course chosen a stitch that was fairly dense.   I had a crazy amount of unpicking to do. Unpicking stitches is probably one of my least favorite activities. I would rather clean toilets. If there were a way to NOT unpick the stitching, I would have done it. Eventually, after several episodes of crappy re...

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...

Yesterday the twins and their parents came by to tie the tzitzit on their tallitot.  Unfortunately, the twins grandmother was snowed in and could not join us. When we had met earlier it was pretty clear that the twins’ mother was worried that the tallitot would look like some sort of a camp craft project, far too wild and wooly for her taste.   One of the things I really do pride my self on as an artist is hearing what my clients want and incorporating the needs of the client into the final piece.  I have noticed that lots of figurative painters make every portrait look  something like the artist rather than like the client. One of my long time clients once quipped that each of my pieces is a portrait of the client. I take that as a big, big compliment.   So here are the two tallitot. Here are some details: I set the girls up side by side to tie the tzitzit. like most kids who have gone to camp the knots were familiar to them, albeit with a...

It was now time to tackle the atara/ neckband for Isabel's tallit.   I went back to look at my sketch. I had forgotten that I had planned to make an atara with the priestly breastplate in the center.   So I had to get to work creating it.   Last week one of the local thrift stores was selling a roll of Joe Fresh gold knit fabric. It was a really really shiny bathing suit knit. If I wanted to star in a 1980’s aerobics video I would make myself work out clothing out of this knit. It was a silly amount of fabric for a silly price.  I had made myself a slip out of some of it.   I realized that it would be perfect for the breastplate for Isabel, the girl who loves bling.   I cut a rectangle of fusible fleece, and drew the stitching lines on the fleece with a marker. I backed the fleece with the shiny fabric and stitched. I then added twelve different shiny bits as the jewels. I then tidied up the little breastplate.   ...

Yesterday, my buddy Eve took me out for lunch at the fancy new Indian place in the neighborhood. It was really good. The meal was probably one of the top three Indian meals I have ever eaten, and that includes the lunch made by my Indian friend.   What struck me during my lunch was how so many of the dishes had one flavor when you took a bite of the dish and another layer of flavor as you exhaled.  It was like getting two dishes in one.   I thought about that wonderful quality as I put together this week’s Shabbat dinner.   I started my cooking last night with dessert. I made ginger parve ice cream.   Chis is more or less the list of ingredients, candied ginger. and about a can of water less than a cup of sugar because the candied ginger is, well candied.   I stewed everything in a pot for a couple of hours. I also added the rind from an orange and some vanilla.  I also added some corn starch to the pot to thicken things u...