Cavill's tallit, tying the tzitzit

My favorite part of making a tallit is that moment when my client first sees the tallit. That reaction is my real reward for my work. Often clients are delighted. That's great. Cavill was overwhelmed and wanted to take a good long time to inspect and and admire his new tallit. I was really pleased with my work too, so we both really enjoyed that moment.

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Cavill wanted to use techelet, that is tzitzit with the Murex dyed strand. cavil was also particular about which method of tzitzit tying he wanted to use. I normally tie tzitzit either in the Ashkenazi tying pattern,7,8, 11, and then 13 wraps between 5 knots. I often use a variant of that pattern where we use half hitch knots rather than simple wraps. I also have tied tzitzit using the sephardi tie pattern of 10, 5 then 6 and fine wraps between the five knots.

I had seen variations of tying patterns with alternating blue and white wraps on some websites. Frankly they made my head ache just to think about them. Cavill had decided that he really wanted to use the wrapping pattern suggested by the G"RA the Vilna Gaon. It was one of those crazy making patterns.

I carefully read the directions and thought I knew what to do.

The reality was that it was tricky. I have tied lots of tzitzit over the past 20 odd years. This was really hard. it took a while to get my head and my hands to work together to do the alternating blue and white wraps.

Eventually, we both figured it out. I have a new skill.

It does look cool with a blue and white stripes.
Even cooler is how great the tallit looks on Cavill.

I am so incredibly pleased with how this tallit came out.

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