Reaching the finish line

When I finished typing this post I realized that it actually has a theme---stuff that looks like a disaster while in process and then looks good when completed.

Many of the projects I work on spend much of their time under my hands looking like kind of a mess. There is a large number of small tasks that need to get completed each in the proper order ( or at least what feels like the proper order to me). While that process of many small tasks is going on things can look like they may not have a good end.

Then, there is a moment when the project goes from looking like DIY gone bad to something quite terrific. This week two pieces made that transformation within hours of one another.

Arianna's tallit --now looks like a tallit.

It is complete with the fringes and corner pieced from Grandpa's tallit. I still have to sew on the atara and make the eyelets.

I am happy for every inch of the many yards of of machine embroidery that went into this piece.

From a distance this tallit may look like a regular Judaica store tallit. It gets more interesting the closer you get to it.

I wasn't sure if I would be able to include the original knotted fringe.

I am delighted that I could.

As I have worked on this piece I keep being reminded about the deep love that this family has for Grandpa Isiah who is no longer living. Each bit of his tallit is being reused by members of his family.

One trend in the world of fashion is Zero Waste. There are dresses and coats that are cut so every inch of fabric is used and not a bit goes to waste. I turned the stripes of Grandpa Isiah's tallit into kippot several years ago. Each member of the family got one of those kippot. Isiah's son and his boys each got a strand of his tzitzit ( which I dyed blue) tied into one corner of their tallitot. There is one strand left for Arianna.

Grandpa's tallit has been transformed because of the love that his family had for him. My sewing buddies sometimes joke about inch-age as opposed to yardage of fabric. I have a tiny bit of inch-age of Grandpa's tallit left. This is an almost Zero waste tallit.

Terry's tallit too now looks like an actual tallit.

I chose to embellish the Petersham ribbon that edges the entire tallit with a machine stitch that echos the cross stitch embroidery done by Terry's mother.

Each of the four corners are neatly Miterd---on both sides.

I still need to make the pinot ( from napkins) and the atara ( the lettering is drafted, cut out and stenciled but needs a bit more work before I show it to you.

I baked challot today. Inspired by a You-Tube video I got a little creative with the braiding.

To be honest, it may not have been worth the extra effort. Yes, some of them are stuffed with a mix of date spread, pomegranate molasses and unsweetened cocoa.

My friend Alan writes a worried post each week about his beautiful challot. So in the spirit of my dear friend, the kitchen was too hot as I braided the challot. Some of then looked quite lumpy and ugly as I set them on their final rise. I had expected the challot to look as pathetically ugly as the challot that your kindergartener bakes that you eat with love because you love your child but you really know that they are both ugly and taste kind of terrible. The challot actually looked OK when I took them out of the oven. So like Alan, my anxiety was for nothing.

Shabbat Shalom!

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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