Working in an imperfect world

I am still figuring out some aspects of Charlie’s atara. The design calls for sprigs of wheat. If I lived in a perfect world there would be a place nearby that sold high quality embroidery threads. When I first moved to this neighborhood in the early 1980’s I would have had several choices of places to buy embroidery thread all within easy walking distance.

Many many factors have combines to make a nice selection of embroidery threads an impossibility not only in the neighborhood, but even the notions stores in the garment district have pallid selections.

I have been working on solving this problem on a back burner of my brain for the past week or so. I suppose that I could order threads from a specialty store online and wait until they shipped my order to me. I also have to figure out how I will be creating those stalks of wheat. I wanted to get my hands working on the problem.

I had a gift to deliver further up on Broadway while I was walking home I figured out the solution to my thread problem.

I decided to use two sewing threads, one in brown and the other in beige along with a fine gold thread.

This is the result. It’s not bad. But I think I will add a yellow thread to the mix. That ought to tweak the color to be the right wheaty shade.

Clearly I’m still figuring out how to create the wheat grains…but I am further along that path. Think of this embroidery as a sketch rather than being the finished product. I am experimenting with about four different factors all at once so don’t be alarmed if this is not your vision of wheat. it isn’t exactly my vision of wheat either.

I also am now dealing with two technological mysteries.

Mystery #1

Why is my camera resetting itself to 2011 every time it is re-charged?

Mystery #2

Why is my clothes dryer not producing heat ?

I would be grateful to answers to either one of those questions.

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!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

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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