Wedding tallit and a visit to the Brooklyn Museum

 A big job is terrifying, so terrifying that it can make it impossible to move forward. The big job can be less intimidating is you nibble away at the tasks  one at a time.

I cut, then pieced and backed strips of the Hanae Mori dress for Ezra and Shay's wedding tallit. The center stripe above is lined in white silk.  The other two are lined in blue. These strips are edged in serged stitching that will soon be covered with embroidered ribbon.

To the right you see the atara, painted, backed and edged. Atop the atara are the pinot cut backed and serged.

Below are the (unpressed and complete with loose threads) pinot with one pass of machine stitching.

Now with two passes of machine embroidery. There will be a third row --to attach the corner pieces to the tallit.

And now, the stripes...

Here, the narrower stripe is edged with ribbon and the wider stripe is awaiting ribbon.

Below, ribbon stacked and stitched and soon be to sewn to the stripe.

Yet another ribbon and embroidery ensemble ready for stitching.

The bride came by yesterday and is really happy with my progress. 

Sunday, we went with our youngest to the Brooklyn Museum. My husband is a dilligent museum visitor reading each wall label. My son and I wander as our eyes pull us. We split apart and rejoin one another sharing things that catch our fancy.

Usually, I have no patience for the Assyrian carvings.

This time, I was was struck by the texts that cross over the images.

The grandmother of a client of mine was an expert in Assyrian cylinder seals. She mentioned that ancient Assyrians used to tie the fringes of their garments in individual knotting patterns and use those to sign clay documents..

I checked out these bas-reliefs to see if i could find those specially tied fringes and I did!

This is the cultural source for our touching our tzitzit to the torah scroll when we get called up for an aliya.We are pledging our agreement to the text.

( I assume --this is an educated guess on my part and not backed up by scholarship-- that at one point the knot patterns on the tzitzit was individual and got standardized over the mists of history as signing documents with your fringe became obsolete.)

Anyway, back to the very suybjective list of things that caught my eye at the Brooklyn Museum on Sunday.

Decorative Art

I would be delighted to own this bracelet

or these cocktail glasses

I love both curvy furniture

 and the more geometric

Brooklyn themed wallpaper!

These are ancient Egyptian clappers, in the shape of hands.

I also loved these bits of ancient Egyptian tile.

I hadn't known that hieroglyphic script exossted.

It looks awfully similar to Hebrew and Arabic script.

This set of little Egyptian pierced brass cymbols recalled Psalm 150

הַלְל֥וּהוּ בְצִלְצְלֵי־שָׁ֑מַע

Praise Him with resounding cymbals

As I look at this small instrument I wonder why the top bar was notched like a comb. Perhaps there was also a series of strings incorporated for even more soun

I liked this sculpture mostly for the great shadows that it cast.

My son loved the tidy construction-solder marks were invisible.

There is no visit to the Brooklyn Musem without lots of images of the Brooklyn Bridge (although in the current political climate I am tempted to refer to it as "The Bridge of America).

As always seeing  beautiful things always puts a spring in my creativre step. I am now ready to tackle my work witha new burst of energy.