sarah in nyc

 I haven't been posting because I have been hit with Covid again. This photo was taken my last day out of the house. I wasn't sick just feeling a bit odd. I'm not as sick as I was earlier in the week. I have been too sick to work and mostly not feeling well enough to even do recreational handwork for more than a couple of moments at a time. Reading has hurt my eyes too much. I have been watching lots of British home renovation shows on YouTube. They are soothing enough so I can doze on and off through the program.  If you watch American Home renovation shows you will hear endlessly about subway tile and cheerful grey kitchens. The British solution to every renovation problem is to add an extension to the back of the house with giant bifold glass doors. This extension will always contain a kitchen against one wall a dining table in the center and a couch and a couple of chairs along the wall opposite the kitchen. Perhaps there are no insects in England but they love opening ...

  נר יהוה נשמת אדם God's candle is the soul of man Our older son sent us this photo this morning with the header "First Night in Ashkelon". Every year when I light Chanukah candles I take photos, sometimes of the people joining us that night but more often of the flames.  In an oddly primitive way it feels as if I am taking photos of the souls of the people who have joined me that night. I was so touched that I woke up to this photo in my inbox. It made my son feel so close despite the physical distance. Tonight it was just the two of us lighting together. We own a collection of Chaukiyot. This year we each chose the one that feels most like an Ur- Chanukiya. My husband chose the chrome Chanukiya that his parents used when he was little. I chose to use the antique Eastern European Chanukiya my parents found in a Quincy antique store. The owner of the store had no idea what it was . My parents spotted it in the window of the store during a Shabbat afternoon walk.  My paren...

  Today, like yesterday was grey, dreary and cold. I could stay focused on the bone chilling grey dampness. A post by my dear friend Racheley, who manages to find beauty at the edges of her urban environment, inspired me to do move past the slate skies and the damp sidewalks.. My telephoto lens brought the bright umbrella into focus. Flowers are being bought and sold at the health food store across the street--even in the rain. Yesterday a convention of pigeons gathered across from the subway station. Perhaps they were discussing the best way to deal with the uptick in the rat population.  What I assume is one of the last roses of the season was still blooming in spare change plaza---in front of the subway station. I went downtown to buy fabric to make some gifts for people I love. I am not showing those gifts before they have been received. During the week I baked cookies for my building holiday party. I more or less followed the recipe from Joy of Cooking for refrigerator co...

 A couple of years ago, and you will have to forgive me because I can't exactly pinpoint when, I needed to make a dress for an event. As I type this I think it may have been for a wedding that took place a year or so before Covid. I purchased a length of dark silver sequin on mesh fabric to make the dress. I no longer remember exactly what I paid for the fabric but it cost more than what I normally spend on fabric I had wanted the dress to have lots of movement so I cut the  dress out on the bias. Stupidly, I hadn't purchased quite enough fabric so the dress was a bit short for my taste and my less than wonderful legs. I thought that if  I added a couple of inches of  this puckery silver fabric to the hem then  my too short of a dress problem would be solved. The color of the puckered fabric looked terrible with the sequined fabric. Laid flat the two fabrics actually don't look terrible together. Sewn together though the combination was awful  I had created...

 Some weeks seem to be driven by a big project. This week was filled with bits of odds and ends. Tanta Marcia brought over her late husband's tallit. The fringes had gotten grotty with time. Some of the woof threads knots had gotten untied with time and others had simply worn away.  My plan is to cut off  the fringes---I used one of the stripes as my cutting guide. I reinforced the cut edge with a machine zig zag stitch. I will probably hand roll the hem---I had made one messy attempt that I will not show you. i pulled out that stitching and will try again soon. I also bought some thin wool yarn and will make knotted tassels to edge the tallit. I am just talking things through to myself here, but some of the tallit wool has worn quite thin so I will need to keep the individual tassels quite lightweight. I ordered the yarn and it arrived the other day. i can start figuring THAT out next week. I have made more mending progress on the  tablecloth. Most of the mending is...

 This morning I woke up to the news that  Bob McGrath  of Sesame Street had died. I once had a phone conversation with him. January of 1986 I started a new job as the assistant program director of my synagogue. In those days my synagogue ran a giant event called the Hanukah Arts Festival. The festival included a juried craft show, films, a book sale and a big concert for kids. The festival was such a giant event that you started to plan for the next year almost as soon as the old festival was put to bed. Someone had passed on Bob McGrath's number to me and asked me to call him and ask if he would be willing to perform the following December. I had assumed that I had been given the phone number of his management office. I was stunned to hear that the voice on the other end of the phone was the great man himself. I stuttered and stammered and fan girled  for several minutes. Bob McGrath was lovely. He was unable to perform at my synagogue though . He already had a gig ...

 I was hoping to write and post this before Shabbat, but Shabbat started at 4:11 and so this had to wait until now. Our older son has been working in Israel since May. He usually calls us on either Thursday or Friday. This week he called us on Friday morning. I put my phone on speaker and my husband and I chatted with our son. As we spoke, the glass on the  1927 framed photo of my father in law with his family reflected the buildings just to the north  and west of us. I look at the image above and see the family photo, the rippled reflection of the buildings and also recall the conversation we had with our son. After the call, I began to cook Shabbat dinner. The spice package label claims that Amba is Arabian. I believe that it is Iraqi . I decided to use this spice mix with the chicken. I actually followed the directions for making the Amba. The result was far wetter than any Amba I have eaten. I spooned the very liquidy Amba over two whole chickens and set the chicken t...