Not Food Friday

 It is Friday but we have been invited to dear friends' for dinner. I am bringing the plum tart that I had made for Rosh HaShanah. That ends the food portion of this post.

This is my serger.

I use it often but not always. a piece of machinery that is used often but not always needs a cover to keep the dust off. My serger came with a clear vinyl cover that I melted when it was too close to my iron.

A while back my buddy Patti bought some cotton backed vinyl that she thought might work to add to her raincoat. It turns out that the fabric wasn't needed so she gave me the yard of vinyl. yesterday, I decided to make myself a serger cover rather than continuing to use the partially melted one.

It was quick to make and if you want me to give you directions I happily will.

But while I was making this serger cover I remembered  an incident from my childhood. My friend Paula and I had made plans to go downtown. In our local parlance we were planning to go "Down Square" or down to Quincy Square.  Our plans included visiting the Fanny Farmer candy store to pick up some almond bark and a visit to Woolworths. I don't remember exactly how old we were but we were both younger than ten.

My mother gave me some money and asked me to purchase a new cover for her Mixmaster. Our old cover had gotten worn. My mother asked me to make sure to buy a pretty cover.  Paula and I went to Woolworths and I set off to buy an cover for the Mixmaster. I wanted to get a cover that appealed to my mother's taste. But all Woolworth's had was one choice and it was spectacularly ugly. My assignment had two part---getting the cover and being sure that it wasn't ugly. I was in a quandary. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought the ugly cover. The entire walk home I worried that my mother would be angry at me for bringing home such an ugly cover for my mother's mixer.

I was so distressed that as soon as I took the Mixmaster cover out of the Woolworth's paper bag I burst into tears. My mother, surprisingly, wasn't angry at all and instead said something like,'"What can you do? All they had was ugly."

My mother used that ugly cover until she graduated to a KitchenAid mixer at some point in the 1980s or 90s. 

I think that my mother would have liked the cover that I made (the shape is nearly identical to that Mixmaster cover). If my mother sewed she could have made a cover that pleased her.

Yesterday was Halloween. Kids in the neighborhood will often go into stores and ask for candy. I was always uncomfortable with that New York custom. It has always felt too much like extortion.

But the kids on the street looked adorable and several let me take their picture.

I had trouble taking a photo of the group across Amsterdam Avenue. The helmeted biker looks just like my husband but is just a doppelganger.