A little work and a little bit of play(finally!)

The work part of my day was being interviewed about the possibility of a teaching gig. Things are looking good and it should be a nice addition to my summer.

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I had planned to visit the Musuem of Art and Design with my youngest after the interview. He met me at the museum. I was dying to see the Judith Leiber exhibit. The last big exhibit of her work was at FIT just over 20 years ago years ago. When THAT exhibit was up I took my older son who was then really little to fill up the time between the end of his day at day care at the time we had to pick my daughter up at her school bus. My son was so enchanted by the exhibit that he asked to go back several times, and we did.

The current exhibit was fine but had none of the magic that the brilliant Valerie Steele adds to every exhibit at FIT. We saw cool pocketbooks, but no magic.

We stopped by this exhibit. I might not be clever enough to understand the premise of the exhibit. It seems to be made up of random clothing-ish related pieces. I did LOVE this installation sleeves.

This would have been cool enough on it's own but an accompanying film explains how designer Lucy Jones is making clothing specifically to meet the needs of people who have physical challenges. These sleeves have been designed for women who can't straighten their arms.

I expected to hate the exhibit on Counter Culture Clothing. Instead, I was completely delighted by it.

Some of the garments were clearly made as stage-wear.

Some were familiar to me from craft books and articles I remembered reading in the 1970's.

I was entirely smitten by the dense large scale cross stitching on this old army coat. The mix of the subtle colors and the rough stitching was so sophisticated and unexpected.

Some garments suffered from a bit too much of too much.

I was struck by how labor intensive so many of the garments were.

This skirt and top were made out of bed sheets completely covered with spectacular embroidery.

At first glance, I thought that this vest was simply faded denim.But it has been embroidered to mimic faded denim.

Clearly, people had time to embellish.

I remember some of these garments because I wore similar ones. Oh! the great lure of prairie dresses for those of us who attended bar and bat mitzvah parties in the early 1970's.

Versions of this denim skirt made out of jeans have appeared in every DIY fashion book since 1969. This is a particularly nice one that has been made with real skill. My cool friends were wearing short versions of this skirt in 1974.

One of my older sisters sewed and I believe that she owned the Vogue version of this pattern.

Even my mother in law owned a dashiki shirt.

There were garments that were deeply familiar to me.

My older sister used to embroider ready made men's chambray shirts for herself. . This is the sort of woerk she might have done in the early 1970's.

We all embroidered our jeans and our denim skirts.

Some of my parents' cooler friends might have worn something like this. I don't quite understand the mania then for body armor like jewelry. It does look cool but it must have weighted a ton, I also assume that your friends couldn't hug you if you wore that assemblage.

My son dubbed this "sexy grandma clothes".

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...

sarah in nyc

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