Skip to main content

Connected ---at least in my brain

 Right now I am working on two projects that on the face of it have no connection to one another, a baby quilt and a creation-themed tallit. However, both of these projects are getting me to use the same part of my brain.

My work tends to be more symbolic and abstract rather than pictorial. The baby quilt is a memory piece and I am creating iconic books and toys from the childhood of the expectant father.


So far, I have built a car,




and a fire truck out of clothing that had belonged to the late grandmother of this not yet born baby.

Yes, all of the loose threads have pulled to the back and knotted off.

I am also building some books.


The Snowy Day is nearly done. I have to add the other lights to the traffic light, and perhaps refine the face a bit.

I am also nearly done with this 

take on the Mr. Man books. I will be making a few more of those because they are less labor-intensive than Ezra Jack Keats's lovely work. Part of my challenge is just creating the fabric collages. The other challenge is working with the fabric that I have been sent that actually belonged to the woman we are remembering in the quilt.

While I am working on the baby quilt I have also begun work on a creation-themed tallit. The tallit will have seven stripes. Each stripe will be an abstracted representation of what was created that day. Some days are easier for me to figure out than others. The first day is figured out in my head but not yet made. in a truly Jewish way, I began my work with the stripe representing the second day--the separation of the waters into the waters above and the waters below.
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים יְהִ֥י רָקִ֖יעַ בְּת֣וֹךְ הַמָּ֑יִם וִיהִ֣י מַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין מַ֖יִם לָמָֽיִם׃ 
God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.”

I began by creating the רָקִ֖יעַ which according to ancient mythology was a copper bowl.

I used a line of copper stitching. I then cut a stencil and stenciled waves in various shades of greens and blues using oil paint sticks. Today, I used a hot iron to melt away the oils and waxes and set the colors and then overpainted the strips both above and below the  רָקִ֖יעַ with diluted blue dye.


I don't have a photo of the dyed strips you will have to wait until tomorrow when the dyed strips are dry to see what it looks like. Actually, I will have to wait until tomorrow to see what the final result looks like.

I am now completely changing the topic. My husband and I were in a suburban supermarket and saw



these two unfortunately named products.  Aside from the awful names---how hard is it to put a couple of spoonfuls of either mustard or sriracha into mayo?






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I love hearing from my readers. I moderate comments to weed out bots.It may take a little while for your comment to appear.

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
8 comments
Read more

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 ...
2 comments
Read more