Moving along in Covid-19 Land

Well, we made two Sedarim and friends and family joined us virtually for both.

I had written last week (either here on my blog or on FB) about how at the end of nightly 7:00 pm cheering for health care workers and to remind ourselves that we are not actually alone, a man from across Broadway with a magnificent voice has been singing The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.

Well, it turns out that this wasn't just a random man singing out his window, it is Brian Stokes Mitchell who is famous for his interpretation of the song. He had been sick with Covid-19 and is singing to the neighborhood because he is grateful to be back in good health.

Each night the crowd waiting to hear him sing grows. This article appeared in a neighborhood news blog and was picked up by a couple of theater news blogs. A charming magical moment has become a big thing.

If you look carefully you can see people standing in the median strip

I woke up today to two different requests for masks and my stash has dwindled. My college buddy Helene had posted photos of masks she had made for herself and for her husband out of handkerchiefs. I have stacks of old hankies that have been given to me when people clear out their parents' homes after they have died. I spent a little bit of time matching hankies by size and pleasing pattern contrast.

The matching handkerchiefs used were were brand new and even had little stickers assuring the user that they were hand embroidered.

I loved how the pattern on this floral hankie was transformed when it was folded into a box pleat.

Small bits of amusement keep me going when doing an essentially boring repetitive task.

I love the contrast of the floral print with the plaid reverse.

matching hankies in different colorways

two different checks

sweet applique

I have run low on finely woven smooth cotton. My friend Miriam had given me her mother's tablecloth after her mother had died.. Mrs. Novick's tablecloth has been turned into a big batch of masks. I block printed the boring parts of the cloth.

I have made so many masks that my spool of elastic is nearly empty. I think my face mask tally is up to 70.

I'm including the next photo just because I love the light through the punch bowl that sits in my front window.

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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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