sarah in nyc

When I start to cook Shabbat dinner I usually discuss the menu with whoever is hanging around the kitchen before I start cooking. Today, it was my husband.  His face got all soft and he talked about how much he loved last week's chicken made to taste like a better version of the rotisserie chicken his mother used to buy. It was hard to refuse so I mixed up the spices, rubbed them on the chicken and let the oven do its thing. We are also eating barley cooked in last week's chicken juice, gazpacho, and a big salad. This is Labor Day weekend. As I walked home from some of my Friday errands I noticed that although it is still warm out, the trees are showing the first colors of autumn. Shabbat Shalom!

no one in our family is preparing to go back for the first day of school. Our youngest finished the last of his college requirements a couple of weeks ago. I had friends who finished college on the seven-year plan. My mother had a cousin who was never quite able to finish off his bachelor's degree despite taking classes for decades. So our son's need to just take one class this summer seemed like not a bad thing at all. Our youngest had missed out previous adventures at Angela's restaurant in Boro Park. We all agreed that this was the perfect place to celebrate this milestone in his life. We planned to have all of us meet at the restaurant. We parked a few blocks from the restaurant. It was pretty clear that we were not in Manhattan anymore. First of all, most of the buildings had little driveways in front. It made parking a little difficult for us. As we walked we saw more signs. A dear friend is a descendant of this Chassidic dynasty. We finally...

This seems to have turned into the summer of hand work. Because the ends of an atara  frame the face they often have a bit of extra embellishment going on. My client mentioned that he wanted silvery blue. Like me, my client grew up surrounded by Jewish ritual art. Couched metallic cord was a big part of how Jewish ritual objects were decorated.  I chose to go for a free-form sort of a look. I wanted an old technique to look contemporary. There is something oddly soothing about doing this work. What you see here isn't quite finished but it is well on its way. The materials used to create this work are pretty simple, metallic cord, sewing thread, and a needle.  I have also been working away on a sweater for one of my great nieces. So far I have made a front and a back and have done a bit of one sleeve. It's a pretty acrylic yarn because babies get messy, it's their job. Wool is nicer but it isn't fair to expect parents of a baby to ...

I recently got a message from a woman who had heard that I was a good person to turn a shawl into a tallit.  I told her that I was and we met later on that day. She brought me a beautiful olive green woven shawl woven with a lovely diaper pattern ( that's the pretty diamond woven design) and with a truly lovely woven band in red, blue and orange near the fringed ends. When you look at the photos in this post, please be aware that for some reason my camera had trouble with the colors in this shawl and the green that looks chartreuse in the images is really a soft olive. I wasn't able to use my photo editor to get the colors to read properly. You really do have to trust me on this one. My task with this tallit was to create corner pieces that worked with this lovely bit of woven wool. I had hoped that I might find a bit of vintage embroidered woven or embroidered textile in my stash. While going through my pretty bits of vintage goodies was fun, nothing worked wit...