מתחיל בגנות ומסיים בשבח

 

We are told that we should retell the Passover story beginning with the terrible stuff and ending with the glory. I am following the same precept here in this post.

Earlier this week I was recovering an armchair and needed to get my staple gun from the little closet in our maid's room. Before you think that I am a fancy lady with a live in maid, you should know that nearly every Manhattan apartment built for middle class folks in the pre WW1 era was constructed with a little room off the kitchen for the maid. In the days before most people owned electric appliances like washing machines and vacuum cleaners one needed a maid to keep your head above water. 

Some people use the maid's room as a home office or as a room for a child. Ours functions as a basement. The plastic bins that hold Costco dry goods are there, some of our Passover pots live there, our kids college textbooks, the washer and dryer and a closet filled with hardware supplies and tools.

As I reached for the staple gun  in the closet in the maid's room I accidently knocked over a can of red enamel paint. The paint spilled all over the floor in the maid's room. I tracked some into our kitchen. It was a giant mess. Forty five minutes later I had cleaned it all up.

So, now onto better things, in no particular order.

My youngest had purchased a rayon Hawaiian shirt at a thrift. the print was great.

However the pocket had torn away from the body of the shirt and the shirt itself had holes where it had been joined to the pocket. By now, I have done enough mending that I know that if you patch with a fabric that is too strong the weakened fibers are MORE likely to tear again. I needed to find fabric that was the same weight as the rayon Hawaiian shirt.

I found a scrap of  rayon that was exactly the right weight.

Unfortunately, the colors didn't really go.

I cut bias strips of the rayon bandana print and covered the damaged bits of shirt.

I was pleased that by cherry picking the bits of the print that I used the mend didn't actually look too terrible. My son asked me to cover the bottom seam of the pocket as well.

It isn't terrible. My son can wear his new from the thrift shirt without the pocket flapping and without causing any more damage to the shirt. I did some invisible mending on the reverse of the shirt---and you can't see it because it actually is invisible from the right side.

I made more trees for the Nova Scotia tallit for Nini.

I am just over half way done with this stip of trees.

Every time I walk past the trees I tell my husband how much I love them. I really do think that they are terrific.

When we were in Santa Barbara I made a thrift shop score.

I bought a bag of these beautiful hand-dyed silk embroidery threads for $5. Normally, each little hank retails for $7.  There were three or four bags of silk thread but I chose the one with the colors that would work best for Nini's tallit.

I have been embroidering more fog

 with the variegated blue silk threads from my new stash of silk threads..

Tonight is a birthday dinner for someone that I have been friends with since seventh grade. I made fig ice cream for the celebration.

I know that it looks ugly but the flavor is rich and deep.

Yesterday in the thrift store I saw an old friend. Actually more correctly, the cousin or sibling of an old friend.

Mt parents owned these lovely Spode dishes in a rich cobalt blue rather than  the grey shown here.

They used their lovely Spode dishes for elegant dairy meals. My older sister now serves her guests on my parents' dishes. it made me happy to see these in the thrift. No, I didn't need to purchase the dishes. seeing them and sharing them with you is enough.

There are a couple of excellent shadows

 Shabbat Shalom!

Two secular Israeli songs about Shabbat that describe what one does on Friday night  for your listening pleasure.