Skip to main content

Blog salad

The other day I received an email from a friend. They are cleaning out her late mother in law’s apartment. They found this wedding dress would I want it for my work. SAM_5355

I had assumed that the dress would be in bad shape. In that case I would be happy to cut it up and use it in my work.  What I discovered was a dress that was slightly discolored but in nearly perfect condition. Apparently it was purchased from Henri Bendel’s in 1952.

 

I think my daughter, as slim as she is is too large for this dress. I called a  wedding dress gemach in Brooklyn.  Gemach  is a contraction of the phrase g’milat chasadim  the doing of good deeds, and is a community organization with  a mandate to do good. We will rendez-vous  in the garment district next week and I will give the woman who runs the gemach the dress Some Brooklyn bride will be wearing this dress at a wedding soon.

This morning one woman got to services early and was happily working away at  a needlepoint before services began. When I noted her work she mentioned that she just loved doing needlepoint and found it deeply relaxing. I noticed that she was working on the background of her piece.

 

I used to do needlepoint back in high school. I found working on the blank backgrounds of pieces to be a test of my endurance.  I have been thinking about those sorts of test of endurance because I stupidly decided to hand embroider around all of the letters of the verse that will be in the lining of the tallit bag I have been working on.

Visually it’s a good idea.

SAM_5354

It’s time consuming, and to tell the truth, deeply boring work. I amused myself by listening to many podcasts.

 

The task is at last, done. Now, I can finish constructing the bag.

SAM_5356

I rewarded myself with a walk outside. fall is actually here.

SAM_5357

We don’t have too many red maple trees here but we do get a fair amount of bright yellow to announce the change of the season.

SAM_5351

And because I have been paying attention to light as I go about my way.

I took this while waiting for the elevator in my building.

SAM_5338

Looking east on 100th street just after morning services. I was trying to capture the reflection off of the building that a block away on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue. My camera was unable to capture the reflection of the sun off the new glass and steel building, but like so much of my life,not exactly what I expected but pretty good anyway.

SAM_5353

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more