A little bit of work and I am easily amused

The time has come to create a binding for the atara begun here. My client said he wanted a silvery blue to contrast with the white on white. I suppose that I could go scour the fabric district for exactly the right shade of silvery blue. Given that this is for the binding on a not very large piece it means that I would need to purchase a full yard and I only need a small fraction of a yard to nicely bind the atara it makes a whole lot more sense to take a piece of fabric that is sort of close in color and then make it read like it is the right color.

I had some lovely silk shantung in a silvery blue adjacent color.

I then mixed up a little pot of paint in a silvery blue and block printed the silk using a large rubber stamp.

I had a strip of block printed silk but what I needed was a bias strip of silk to bind the atara. For those of you who are not sewing geeks, a bias strip is one cut on the diagonal. It is great to use for a binding because it is flexible and can go around corners without causing one to be forced to tear out their hair and curse.

Nearly every sewing book written has at some point in the book directions on how to create a bias strip. Creating long, even bias strips can be tricky and can be done in as many ways as a cat can be proverbially skinned.

This is how I tackled the task today.

I cut my strip of fabric into squares by folding the short edge of the fabric until it touched the bottom edge. If the edges lined up properly and the corner was perfectly bisected, the result was a square. This is how I was taught to square up paper in third grade. Perhaps you too were taught how to do this in third grade.

I pressed the diagonal fold into the fabric with an iron.

So I could use that pressed in line as my cutting guide.

So now instead of a rectangle of fabric, I had a stack of perfect triangles of fabric.

I sewed the triangles together as indicated by my messy drawing, and had a nice bias strip.

I chose this method because it required the least amount of complicated figuring for the task at hand. This is just one of dozens of perfectly good methods of creating a bias strip.

Yesterday my husband and I were in a suburban supermarket and wandered by the international food shelves.

Yes, I am always delighted to see the Jacob's products.

I have no idea why I found this brand name to be so amusing. if one or more of my kids were with me Mi Wadi would have been the subject of most of the ride home, because like me, my kids are easily amused.

When are canned peas NOT mushy? and who would see this as a desirable thing?

Tonight was another evening of dramatic skies from our living room window.

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...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

sarah in nyc

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