Nine lives and three lives

At some point when my older son was in middle school, he is thirty two now, you do the math, I bought him some Arizona jeans. I no longer remember the price. He wore them until he outgrew them. My younger son then inherited them.

My younger son has been wearing those jeans for at least fifteen years. Every once in a while my son brings me those jeans to mend. I can't count how many times I have mended them. A few weeks back my son brought them to be mended again. The thighs were so worn out they resembled gauze.

I reinforced the thighs from the wrong side. I added a piece of linen to the inside of each pant leg and then stitched the new fabric to the fragile denim. That ought to buy another year or so of wear.

I used yarn to graft the linen inside of the pant leg to the denim.

I used machine stitching on the other leg to do the same task. The knee blow outs took place in the past

I have reinforced the top of the waistband with various bits of fabric over the years. I did a few rows of blanket stitching in red cotton near the fly button yesterday.

The seat of the jeans has been reinforced with stitching and internal patches over the years.

The rips near the hem were reinforced with several layers of cotton shirting that had started life as a duvet cover. The duvet cover wore out and I used the good bits to make a set of napkins. The bits that I used to mend the pants are off-cuts from the napkins. It's just a Sundae of reduce reuse and recycle.

My son loves how soft his older brother's pants are. I suppose that i will keep mending them until he no longer wants me to.

When my husband saw the completed jeans last night he joked that they had nine lives.

And now onto an object with three lives.

Several years ago ( I think that my oldest was still in high school) I bought an elastic belt with a really cool closure and really ugly patent leather side panels. I bought the belt assuming that one day I would replace the ugly patent leather with something more attractive.

A bunch of years later I did.

I replaced the patent leather with suede cut from a skirt that I had purchased at a thrift store to cut up. Several months ago my husband commented that the belt looked tired. He wasn't wrong.

I have a metallic leather skin that has been marinating in my fabric closet for at least a decade. One of my sewing friends jokes about her Tuit list. The stuff that eventually she will get to it. This belt was definitely on that list. After a bit of cutting and slightly fiddly sewing, I now have a revived belt.

I took the photos of me wearing the belt in a mirror so please excuse the haze.

I assume that I will wear this version of the belt until the metallic leather looks yukky and then figure out life four of this belt.

We have reached the dreary part of winter. The autumn leaves are gone. We still haven't had the joy of a good snowfall.

It has been unseasonably warm.

I am hankering for the magic of a snowy day.

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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