sarah in nyc

I guess if I wanted to create an umbrella topic for this blog post it would be about the process of working. Amazon.com Widgets When i last showed you the Torah mantle, it looked like this. Clearly, a something in progress. This is the stage when I know exactly where I am going and feel pretty good about myself. I understand that if my client were to see this photo she might have some doubts about how the project was going. I get that it does at this point look like something of a mess. But letter by letter, I stitch down the bits that make up the appliques letters. i then carefully cut away all of the extra fabric with my trusty cuticle scissors. Some of the fabrics are easier to cut than others.  This orange hand stitched  Indian cotton is a dream to trim. The needle-pointed kippah is something of a bear to trim.  The needle-point is dense and has been stitched to a black backing. It's a whole lot of careful snipping with a tool that does not especially want t...

My cooking partner and I set our alarms for 7:00am and started out cooking adventure. Amazon.com Widgets The result is this bit of turkey porn  that I am posting for my meat eating friends married to vegetarians, you know who you are. Happy Thanksgiving to you. The briskit is cooling and waiting to be sliced.  The mashed spiced sweet potatoes and the Brussel sprouts are in the  oven's second round of cooking , now nearly done. I sent out my son to buy the can of ready made jellied cranberry sauce, and made the real stuff in the nuker. After this photo was taken this went into the nuker covered and cooked for 8 minutes. My mother was a big believer in a nice seasonal centerpiece. I went out this morning and bought the flowers and played, a bit of self indulgence  on this busy day. I am looking forward to sharing this meal with our guests.

One thing I learned from my parents was not to leave all of the holiday cooking to the last moment. Amazon.com Widgets Yesterday I made of one my favorite Thanskgiving side dishes, cranberry relish. I loved the jarred kind made by Ocean Spray when I was a little kid. With a food processor it's a complete no brainer. This is such a no brainer of a recipe that I will give it to you nearly all in pictures. You can vary the amounts based on your personal preferences. You can also fancy this up by adding a handful of walnuts or pecans or some spices. I went completely basic here and on the not so sweet side. usually I love the dark flavor of brown sugar, but not here. Cranberry relish does better with the clean flavor of white sugar. A day in the fridge always vastly improves the result. I am hosting Thanksgiving this year, I am also feeding a crowd on Friday night. In order to make my life easier I made a giant rectangular pumpkin pie. I am enough of my moth...

I have been happily married since 1986 but there are a few men in the world that I admire so much that I think of them as being my boyfriends. I haven't met any of these gentlemen but in my mind, they are my boyfriends. Amazon.com Widgets Two of  my boyfriends are writers, David Owen and James Fallows. Anything they write, even an essay on the telephone book is worth putting everything else down and sitting down and consuming that bit of writing immediately. My other boyfriend, Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker died yesterday at the age of 92.  I grew up on recordings of Ben Zion Shenker like this one You can hear it here. When I began making Jewish ritual objects in fabric   I found that designing and sewing while listening to Ben Zion Shenker sing helped me think more deeply about the texts I was using in my work. This recording  would often be playing when deadlines neared and I had to stay focused.  I would often find myself singing along at full...

I am an avid collector and reader of vintage sewing books.  One of the reasons for my minor obsession  is that some of these older sewing books also contain the great secrets of garment drafting without a pattern. Amazon.com Widgets The other day I found  this blog , The Midvale Cottage post which focuses on vintage clothing.  I was delighted to find a large collection of posts focusing on the work of Ruth Wyeth Spears. It's easy enough to find copies of her 1943 book on Ebay and on  Amazon . I was not aware of her brilliant work from the 1920's. Ruth Wyeth Spears breaks down what looks at first glance to be a complicated dress into dead simple steps. With a little thought you can use these methods in a dress that works for today's silhouettes. I just love this dress. Ruth Wyeth Spears seems to have been brilliant at breaking down visual problems to their simplest components. She had a Home Dec column that appeared in newsp...

We changed the clocks so Shabbat once again starts early. Everything needs to get done 20 minutes before sunset. So before my morning workout, I got the meat portion of tonight's dinner going. The roast that looked big raw looks like enough for three or four dainty eaters.  Amazon.com Widgets The seats at our table will be filled with one dainty eater and the rest really love meat and eat like they have been doing hard physical labor all day.   So a mess of wings cooked in a smokey date molasses and mustard sauce should keep my guests happy. I have roasted mushrooms, tomatoes and slices of red pepper to add to our salad. My son made the challah last week. I had to pick up a few things. I couldn't resist take a few more pictures of the trees on the block. The ginko is starting to turn yellow. I loved the way the light hits the leaves. I know one usually doesn't think of nature on the streets of Manhattan, and I know I keep taking photos of the tre...

I have been working on making a Torah mantle for the past while. The mantle is being made in memory of someone named Baruch. Developing the design for this piece was a long, long process that took a few years. The text I am using comes from the daily prayers  Amazon.com Widgets והאר עינינו בתורתך ודבק לבנו במצותיך Enlighten our eyes with Your Torah, attach our hearts to your commandments My client   and I decided to use textiles that mattered to her and to Baruch to create the lettering. One of the textiles was a kippah worn by Baruch during the many months that he was bald from his chemo treatments.  Applique is basically collage on fabric. A few things complicate the task. One is that the base fabric for this Torah mantle is velvet. Velvet is beautiful. The wonderful nap has a tendency to shift when being sewn.  The other technical challenge is how to get the lettering onto the fabric. Early in my sewing career I attempted to attach a backi...