Blog salad

Well, I have a whole lot to talk about this post. First of all news of the world hangs heavy this week.I am thinking about those poor kids killed in school THIS week as well as all of the other recent senseless shootings.

I also often think about Russian interference in the election and in general mucking about on the internet. One of the cool things I can do as the owner of this blog is seeing where my readers come from, no, not your home address, but the country readers come from.  Most of my readership comes from the United States. I always have a fair number of readers from Canada, from Israel, and from the UK. Some of those people are relatives and some are friends and others are people I know from the sewing world.

Every day my "audience" page tells me that I have readers from Russia. Sometimes it is just a few. Sometimes it is several hundred. Some days I click on the pages that send traffic my way. Often it is blogs written by sewing friends. often the Russian sites that send traffic this way are porn sites.Even more often, there is no way to track how that Russian traffic is directed here.

I can't imagine why this site is being used by Russians. I think the tallit making factories in Russia are long gone. But there it is --this funky little blog is being used as a conduit for something I have no idea about.

But back to my usual programming.


I just found these in my stash... My mother gave these two nearly identical table runners with great ceremony. She told me that my grandmother had embroidered them.

The stitching is done on linen with a pulled fringe.

 It is perfectly fine work. judging from the colors it is probably from the 1930's.

You can see a shadow of theblue dressmaker's carbon used to transfer the design.

My mother never used these dresser scarves. I don't think that they were exactly her taste. 

I have been spoiled by seeing extraordinary embroidery of the same time period. this doesn't fall into that category. sweet pieces which are going into the rotation to be used to cover some of the wood furniture in our apartment.

Another item my mother gave me with great ceremony is this. It's a matza cover.

The best thing about it is that my grandmother embroidered it. The second best thing about this piece is the stitch used which is a long satin stitch tacked down with a fine stitch.

The odd little dots near the letters are an attempt at eyelet embroidery flowers.  I know that there are many lovely people who feel that if you have nothing nice to say to say nothing at all.I was not brought up that way.

I am struggling between being polite and my true feelings about this piece. But those are sad looking letters. They look even worse in person. I am not talking about a long list of other issues I have with this piece.

I am however done with the pocket squares for the wedding party.

They are each lined and no two are identical.  I hope they look spiffy at the wedding.

Perhaps because it has been a hard week, I decided to put some extra effort into the challah. I rolled and spiced each strand.

Rolling out the dough just makes the texture better.

I make one roll, roll it longer and thinner, cut it into two strands 

that get worked even longer and thinner 

 and then

loop one strand over the other

and braid the four strands

It sounds complicated but it is a fast way to braid.

As I type this the challot are about to be taken out of the oven.

You were dying to know what kind of chicken we are eating? Red chicken made with an array of red spices, I didn't include a photo of the cayenne pepper.

Shabbat Shalom!