Some reviews and some views of fall.

Many sewing/craft blogs out there seem to be run on the review economy. That is, manufacturers send free stuff to the blog owner who gives a positive review about the free stuff and then the blog owner is then sent more free stuff to review...

Amazon.com Widgets

When I write about a fabric store or a book in glowing terms, it's because it is something that I love, not something that I have been paid to love.

Several weeks ago I received an email from a Dutch sewing pattern magazine company asking me to review their magazine on my blog.

Made By oranges produces two magazines,

which features patterns for women and

which features clothing for kids, from preschool to pre-teen.

European pattern magazines, unlike American pattern magazines typically feature a pull out section with all of the patterns for all of the garments in the magazine.You get a whole lot of bang for your buck.

There are a fair number of pattern magazines based in Europe. The magazine with widest distribution is Burda which appears in several different languages. Burda generally features clothing that is fairly fashion forward, or sometimes just fashion weird, but I am a big fan of Burda.

There are also pattern magazine that feature the sort of clothes regular people wear every day, comfy tunic dresses, cozy coats, elastic waisted skirts cute sweaters.Those are the sorts of garments featured in both of these magazines.

We might read Vogue magazine but actually wear clothing from The Gap or Ann Taylor.These magazines are the pattern version of the basic clothing with a tweak that real people actually wear 97% of their lives.

The pattern drafts are printed in the all sizes and many patterns overlapping style common to all of these European magazines. It will seem overwhelming to trace a pattern until you actually do it. Trust me, it isn't as bad as it initially appears. The directions for sewing up the garments appear in English, Dutch, German, french and Spanish. Directions are spare but understandable, and the English seems less stilted than it does in Burda.

It is also possible to download PDFs of some of patterns, you then just print the pattern on regular printer paper and tape the pattern pieces together.

There is seriously cute clothing in both magazines. If you decide to purchase either of these magazines you will get a 25% discount if you use Sarah as your discount code.I was surprised at how quickly the magazines shipped from Holland.

Just before Rosh HaShanah I was contacted by Maria Bywater of sewjewish. She wanted to know if I could review her book.

This is a great book for beginners, both people new to Jewish practice as well as people new to sewing. Maria's sewing directions are incredibly clear. She has some really nice ideas about how to do potentially tricky stuff ( like mitered corners) in a simple way that won't have you cursing up a blue streak.

I particularly loved Maria's thoughtful and thorough explanations of Jewish customs and laws. Maria has spent much of her adult life in countries where her family was the only Jewish life in the entire country. You can see both her commitment to creating Jewish life for her family as well as her fine ability to explain they whys and the hows of Jewish ritual objects to people who are completely unfamiliar with Judaism.

I'm glad that I got to see this book and delighted that I have had the opportunity to get to talk with Maria.

And now a a moment on the weather. Often Sukkot in New York is cold. I had assumed that with Sukkot starting so late in October it would be one of those years where you would eat dinner in the Sukkah wearing a down coat and mittens. It is instead balmy. When I was outside today most people were wearing summer clothes.

This morning as I began my workout I saw the most beautiful sign of autumn. A tree on a nearby rooftop, that had turned color. The sunlight had hit the tree just right. it was a moment of magic.

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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