sarah in nyc

 Law & Order often films in our neighborhood. Many episodes of the original Law & Order and even more episodes of Law & Order SVU were filmed in our building. More than 20 years ago I picked up my youngest at day care. While walking home we stopped at the coffee shop and bakery a block a way and picked up a baguette to munch on during the walk home. When one is three or four and has short legs the three block walk home sometimes needs a break for a little pick-me-up. When we got to our building filming was taking place for one of the Law & Orders. We walked over the lighting cables in our front courtyard, passed the director's chairs and went upstairs. After we got home I suggested to my son that he might want to go back downstairs to see if we could watch the filming or at least some of the action around the filming. My son agreed and we returned downstairs with my son continuing to break off pieces of the baguette and eating them. When we returned to the courtyard...

 We are home! and between doing laundry and readjusting our internal clocks  to EST I have also started a project that is due in the middle of March. I have been asked to transform this beautiful embroidered shawl into a tallit. The base fabric is fine midnight blue cashmere and the design is embroidered in rayon  chainstitches. The verse for the atara is מוֹנֶ֣ה מִ֭סְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִ֑ים לְ֝כֻלָּ֗ם שֵׁמ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽא׃ He reckoned the number of the stars; to each He gave its name. Psalm 147:4 I had thought when meeting with my client that I would dye a flat woven silk to look like the sky. But poking around my stash I found a bit of rayon jacquard woven tablecloth. I realized that if I dyed it it would look similar to the embroidered pattern on the shawl. Three layers of dye later, setting the color, rinsing out the excess dye and then pressing the fabric you get this. I calligraphed the text onto paper and then traced the lettering onto cotton batiste.  I could have ba...

I had hoped to post more while I was away but  time just got away from me.  Santa Barbara is really beautiful but we had kind of run out of things to do---or at least it felt that way at the moment. Like many other folks who live in the area with the need to experience something different, we took the relatively  short drive to Solvang. Solvang had started out as a Danish settlement but is today a touristy Danish themed town.  On the road to Solvang you  drive on the Chumash Highway which is also known as the San Marcos Pass. As I type this it is now snowing on the Chumash Highway, but when we went it was not. We did pass the Chumash Museum and the Chumash Casino. While along the Chumash Highway, Chumash refers to a tribe on native Americans. Those of us who listen to the world with Jewish ears, Chumash is what the first five books of the bible are called.  The ride to Solvang offers up spectacular mountain views. We stopped at the overlook for several minu...

 Some vacations are about adventure. Some vacations are about experiencing new things. This vacation has an entirely different agenda. It is about the familiar-- in both senses of the word. We are hanging out with family and revisiting things we have done during other trips to Santa Barbara. The other day we went on the walk that began on the suburban street where we are staying and then takes a right turn down a steep hill.  We walked past the side yards and driveways of a couple of houses until we were someplace quite wonderful.  On one side of us there were meadows and on the other a hillside and views of the mountains.  Horses!  The landscape was so picturesque that it looked almost fake. We walked back up the hill to suburbia.