Clothes Worn by Me, and Garments Made as Gifts

There are some blogs devoted to what the blog owner is wearing that day. If you have spent any time here on this blog you will know that this is something that I rarely do. However...

There has been a meme going around the internet which is basically "Tell me that you are from____ without saying that you are from _____". So, this leads me to the following.

It has gotten nippy out. I put on a wool knee length pencil skirt that I had made a few years ago because I had fallen deeply in love with the fabric. I had to go out so I put on my warmest sweater which is a Dale of Norway.

So now, this is the answer to, "Tell me you are from New England without telling me that you are from New England."

The great thing about the Dale of Norway sweater is because of the floats of yard on the underside of the knit you are essentially wearing two sweaters, I was fortunate to find the sweater in my local thrift.

A sewing friend once described my style of dressing myself as Anthropology Professor. I see this outfit as New England Arty Anthropology Professor.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been making clothing to give as Chanukah gifts to some of my young relatives. I am not quite done yet but I will show you what I have done so far.

I had purchased this wonderfully wild fabric thinking that my great niece would want me to make her a dress out of it.

The fabric was manufactured for making gymnastics uniforms. My great niece was smitten with the fabric as was her little brother. I had enough fabric to make two dresses for two little girl relatives and one pair of pants.

The three garments together

The littlest of the dresses

I also made dresses for another batch of young ones.

These three are made out of super comfortable, easy to launder scuba knit. Clearly I had enough of the black and orange floral stripe for two dresses. Someone gave me the bright orange ric rack years ago. The rick rack keeps the dresses fun for a little girl to wear.The black and white harlequin print had buttons that I covered with bits of the floral print so the three sisters can look like they belong together.

I shipped the black and orange dresses today at the post office. The sun sets so early these days. When I left the post office the most mundane buildings in the neighborhood were dressed in the glow of the soon to be setting sun and actually looked interesting in the golden light.

The building below has one of the best rooflines in the neighborhood but it looks extra wonderful in the late afternoon light.

The moon rises below the water towers.

I have some more gifts to make for more young relatives and I have my actual work to tackle.

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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