getting stuff done

Well, I am finally feeling productive again.

Two of the challah covers I had begun several days ago are now done.

The text comes from a liturgical poem that is part of the Friday night service.

English translation	Transliteration	Hebrew
Chorus:
1	Let’s go, my beloved, to meet the bride,	Lekhah dodi liqrat kallah	לכה דודי לקראת כלה‬
2	and let us welcome the presence of Shabbat.	p'ne Shabbat neqabelah	פני שבת נקבלה‬

The center medallion had started out life as a scarf that I had made to give as a gift to one of my husband's relatives in Israel. I had unfortunately forgotten to pack it. It is now the centerpiece of a challah cover.

If you are thinking about how fortunate I am to have found exactly the right ribbon to finish off this piece, you are half right. I embroidered the ribbons that edge this challah cover.

I used the same text on the other challah cover that I completed.

The ribbon, in this case, is a vintage striped satin ribbon. I added the gold embroidery.

This challah cover with the sun/moon

is now looking a bit more dimensional

I have continued working on the purple tallit, I will probably write more about it in another post.

I do sew but people who live in this house also need to eat.

These sourdough rolls will be served with tonight's leek soup. Before you get too impressed, sourdough is essentially leaving some of yesterday's bread dough in a bowl in the fridge with a bit more flour and water and then using that sloppy gloppy dough to start today's bread. I know there are more complicated ways to do sourdough but this does make a really nice bread.

Tomorrow calls for more cooking and more sewing.

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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...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

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