Benny's tallit done---wings and all

Normally I am pretty good about posting about works in progress as they are progressing.

I had spent so much time unpicking the messy substrate under the embroidered wings that the actual construction of the tallit took place around and between breaks from the mad cooking rush that is Passover.

One of the really beautiful things about a woven tallit is how the stripes n the right and wrong sides of the tallit interact with one another when the tallit is worn. That dynamic interplay of stripes is as satisfying as a really lovely chord progression.

Years ago when I first began constructing tallitot I used to create the stripes out of hemmed units of fabric that I then sewed together. I got that stripe interaction using that method. My main concern was sturdiness. While those tallitot WERE sturdy, they lacked in flowy drape--because the seams were bulky.

Lately, I have been constructing tallitot slightly differently stitching the stripe elements to both the right and the wrong side of the tallit. The stitching used to attach the elements on either side of the tallit becomes a decorative element.

The checkerboard stripe was machine embroidered. You can see the checkerboard embroidery on the reverse of the tallit.

The pinot are black velvet with a row of checkerboard stitching in gold.

Here is the reverse of that section of the tallit with the checkerboard stitching showing up stitched onto the silk.

And now for the neurosis corner of this post. As I post these photos here I see that they don't really do this tallit justice. It is much better in real life.

My husband has been concerned through this whole process that this tallit would look too much like a Swan Lake tattoo tallit. I think that I have avoided that pitfall. Yes, these are wings but hopefully, this tallit won't bring up memories of Black Swan.

With this tallit completed I can work on other projects---including this one.

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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!!!

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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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