Various sorts of work, and also some real pleasures

This has been a busy week. Monday I made a tea for one of the people who hosted my son during his years in Israel. I don't think that our guest got that the table setting was an oddball homage to my mother and her elegant hostessing style. This dishes and the linens were a mix of things that had belonged to my mother and stuff that ended up in our house.I think everything played together nicely. I think if my mother had seen my table on Monday she first would have been a little put out by the mix of dishes and linens and then she might have decided that it looked a little crazy, but OK.  

Tuesday a dear friend was in town. She was my mentor at my earliest jobs here in New York. I think that we haven't seen one another in 15 years. My poor friend hasn't experienced a New York winter in a long time. I met her near where she was staying.

As I walked east on 73rd street I was completely puzzled by this white terracotta mid block building.

It stuck out like the proverbial thumb. It was probably put up at the same time as it's brownstone neighbors, in the 1890's. Perhaps a real estate speculator guessed wrong.

It's such an exuberant facade.

Visiting with my friend was a real pleasure.Hopefully there won't be quite so much time between our next visits.

I have put in more time on the tallit made with the vintage linens.  But I also have more work on my plate.

I am putting together a tallit for Jack with blue, gold and red stripes. Today I began on the blue and gold element of those stripes.

At the moment my work consists of sewing strips  of silk together, folding the long strips in half and then sewing the shorter halved together and repeating the procedure. This is actually the quickest way to get the task done. the stripes will be built up element by element and then pieced into the silk base. These colors make me very happy.

I also had a video chat meeting to help someone who has known me since before I was born make her tallit. Unfortunately the video quality was not great so I took these photos of possible materials to see what she liked.

These wonderful ribbons are no-doubt quite a few decades older than I am.

They are beautiful but the colors may be too strong for my client. 

I await her opinion. 

One of the things I love about working with clients is that I learn to work with colors that I might not otherwise think of using. Working with clients has taught me a tremendous amount about color.