Madeline's tallit with decent photos!! and some odds and ends

As I type this post Madeline's tallit should be in her hands. Before I shipped it off i took better photos of the tallit so you have a better sense of what I have done to compliment the beautiful work of the weaver who created the base tallit.

I finished off the extra bits of the Atara wit couched lunettes. I like how the scalloped embroidery on the ribbon echoes that shape.

Madeline's mother told me that her daughter's friend was able to identify all of the animal footprints on the Pinot. I am grateful to Google Images that allows me to find exactly what I need.

In a couple of days I will be tying the tzitzit with Madeline.

I have loved my conversations with Madeline and I have also loved my conversation in textiles with Susan the weaver of the tallit itself. Susan and I have exchanged a couple of texts but working so closely with her beautiful weaving I feel like we have had several long and meaningful conversations.

As for Shabbat dinner. I could have sworn that I only made eight chickens for Pesach. But each time I think that THIS is the last chicken from that batch I find yet another. I can't promise that there aren't more chickens hiding in my freezer.

Two of our three kids are joining us tonight.

The cauliflower and tomatoes are about half way through cooking. I added amba powder and turmericbto the vegetables along with olive oil. The Amba powder is so pungent there is no need for the sour of citrus or vinegar.

I still need to make taboule and roast some ears of corn.

The berries at the pushcart were beautiful so it's raspberries and blueberries for dessert.

I did a tiny bit of sewing and made a tablecloth to replace our declining cloths made of IKEA fabrics.

My replacement cloth is made out of something much more elegant than IKEA fabric, Marimekko from the stash given to me by my friend Alix from her elegant mother's stash.The black and grey with a wavy stripe was too small for a tablecloth so I added strips from another print to the ends and feather stitched over the seam.

I had spent many too many hours over the past several week arguing with my insurance company to pay for something that I need to function. I finally got them to agree to something that they ought to have agreed to a month ago.

Shabbat Shalom!

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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!!!

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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