sarah in nyc

  My friend asked me to update a flower girl dress for her daughter. I was charged with adding flowers to a vintage flower girl dress. I asked my friend to buy the flowers from a craft store. I pulled apart the flowers. So I could combine them and make new ones. The skirt of the dress was made of several under layers of tulle covered by a layer of organza. My fried had asked that the flowers be sewn  to the top layer of tulle. I began with a row of large blossoms. I then created smaller blooms that I scattered further up the skirt, and that added two smaller blooms to the waist. Both my friend and the flower girl were happy with the results. Last winter I wore my mother’s 1950’s fur lined coat to the theatre. It was a frigid night and I was glad for the warmth of the fur.  unfortunately the big corded decorative button fell off the coat. In desperation ( it was really cold out) I bought a big brooch to use as a closure in a store on the way...

Jean and I went shopping for the fabric for her tallit a few months ago. She had chosen a delicious black ribbed silk for the body of the tallit. Jean also fell in love with a complex striped silk that included stripes in satin , and gold brocade. The stripes silk was expensive. it was sold by the panel. The stripe pattern didn’t repeat. My original plan was to have the stripes continue to the inside of the tallit.   Once I got the fabric home I realized that this was not possible.  there simply wasn’t enough of the same element of the stripe pattern to have the same bit of the stripe pattern on both the face and the lining of the tallit. I spent a little while feeling completely stymied by the problem. Jean, ever gracious, was prepared to find new  new fabric.  I was not ready to give up that easily. She had invested a fair amount of money in the fabric. I didn’t want to see such beautiful fabric go to waste. Also Jean is a really careful decider. It takes...

This morning at services some of us were in down coats. Some of us were wearing spring coats with sweaters and scarves.  One of my friends was complaining about the April chill  and Marty responded with these lines from Robert Frost. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March. It’s very nice to daven each morning with an English professor. Even without today’s perfect lines of poetry Marty makes morning minyan into something quite wonderful. My son offered to make the chicken and the ribs for tonight’s dinner. I have not taken photos of his handiwork. I do want to say that the house smelled so good that I ought to have charged people to stand in the hallway and in...

I probably wore this embroidered blouse every year on Israel Independence Day between seventh and twelfth grade. Most of the girls in my school wore a variation of this blouse to celebrate Israel's birthday.  At school we would have had an assembly complete with lots of songs from the time of Israel’s birth. We may have watched a movie some years.  Certainly part of the celebrations included Israeli dancing and eating felafel in pita. The blouse was worn to express my solidarity with Israel. My blouse came from an older sort of cousin. I believe that this particular blouse is from the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. The fitted nature of the blouse, it’s short length, meant to hit just at the waist, and the zipper in the side seam all seem to date it to that time period. The embroidery is fairy fine. Similar blouses that were new during my high school years, the 1970’s, were made with much larger, cruder stitches. By the 1980’s similar shirts were made with machine embroidery ...

After a long and difficult winter, it is finally spring, not just by the calendar but by the weather as well. The street trees have begun to bloom. I am also doing the spring time task of catching up on ironing all of the table cloths I used during Passover. Well, I actually haven’t gotten through all of the cloths.  I have done about half of them. I also ironed most of the napkins we used for the two Seders. Unlike my mother who was a big believer in using matching napkins at a meal, I use a mix of similar napkins. Some in the stack are from my mother, others I inherited from other people.  All of them are roughly the same size and are ivory linen with taupe cutwork. I think that like the various people at the table, they can get along even if they are not identical.   I also began constructing the stripes for two very different tallitot for two very different people. This black gold and blue tallit is for Jean.   She had taken a  tallit wor...

My husband and I left New York right after Pesach and Shabbat ended to go to Boston to work on clearing out my mother’s apartment. I wanted to share the contents of my mother’s wallet. This is not the wallet she used at the end of her life. I found  the wallet in the place where my mother kept all truly important things, her underpants drawer.  The wallet  was one she had made herself while working in camp. My mother used the wallet in college and perhaps for a little while after that. In case you were wondering, my mother could read, as certified by the state. My mother, was also very serious about voting. she once walked a mile in the snow to vote “none of the above”. I found this photo cut out of a camp year book, along with the note she received with her salary at the end of the summer.  I indicated my mother with a red arrow. I also found some photos. My mother is on the far right. This is probably the best picture I have ever seen of my mother. She is...

Both of our Seders were pretty wonderful. Today though I am really tired. I am so tired that I took a nap in the middle of the day. My camera seems to have gotten overwhelmed as well. I had to bring it into the shop to get fixed. Being without my trusty camera makes me realize how much I rely on it. Friends invited us all to a surprise mid week dinner. It will be really nice to be fed by good friends. Amazon.com Widgets

Well,  the getting ready part of Pesach is nearly over.  My freezer and fridge are packed to the gills with the food I have been preparing. I ground up the horseradish this morning amid much screaming in pain. Tonight’s matza balls are being loaded into the fridge by my son as I type these words. The table cloths and doilies are all pressed. I am slightly crazed with exhaustion and will soon take a nap. Our guests will start wandering in from various directions. I wanted to say how before the destruction of the Temple, worship of God was done in a physical way. Yesterday’s Torah reading reminded me. You brought your cow or your sheep to the Temple, it got slaughtered hoisted up on the alter and cooked. Worship was less about words as it was about intentional hard physical  labor.   This prep time for Passover has been filled with much physical labor. I have been doing those labors in the spirit of our ancestors who di the hard work in Beit Ha Mikdash. S...