sarah in nyc

 In  a recent post I had posted one small photo of Nini's atara. I need to correct that. There was so much work that went into this atara.  First, let's start with the text which is two verse fragments from Chapter 16 of the Book of Chronicles. יִרְעַ֤ם הַיָּם֙ וּמְלוֹא֔וֹ יַעֲלֹ֥ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה וְכׇל־אֲשֶׁר־בּֽוֹ׃         Let the sea and all within it thunder, the fields and everything in them exult; We are using the first half of verse 32 and the first half of the next verse. אָ֥ז יְרַנְּנ֖וּ עֲצֵ֣י הַיָּ֑עַר מִלִּפְנֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה כִּי־בָ֖א לִשְׁפּ֥וֹט אֶת־הָאָֽרֶץ׃         then shall all the trees of the forest shout for joy at the presence of the L ORD , for He is coming to rule the earth  I hand couched the ocean text onto appliqued ocean that I made out of silk that I had dyed. The sky above the ocean was a little excercise in obsession.  I hand couched hand dyed silk embroidery th...

 Our son, pictured below during our rescue to Dubai  after living through the first couple of days of the war in Ashkelon. (Both of us were moderately shell-shocked when the photo was taken). Anyway, this past Thursday, son's company asked him if he would be willing to take another out of New York posting. This time the posting was to Amarillo, Texas. Before my son agreed, he wanted to be sure that there was a community there in Amarillo for him. By community, he meant Jewish community. because when one goes far from home to an entirely different landscape having a bit of the familiar can help one tackle the unfamiliar. Of course we Googled "Jewish Amarillo", and "Synagogue Amarillo". The synagogue website didn't give us a whole lot of information. It was time to network. My husband and  I both have relatives in Texas, not close to Amarillo but at least in the state.  I have two dear friends who grew up in Houston. Those friends encouraged me to work at the ...

 I have been lax about posting because we have been out in the country away from my computer and I don't do so well creating posts on my phone. Let's see if I can manage this.  I finally  finished the atara for Nini's tallit. I need to take better photos to share with you but until then, this will have to do.  Nini's tallit has been designed over the course of many conversations that have taken place over a long period of time. During one of these conversations Nini wondered if I could include wild blueberries and beach roses in the tallit. I thought that both the blueberries and the roses could be included in the Pinot/ corner pieces. I  knew that making the blueberries was fairly easy . I began by cutting a small circle out of silk that I had dyed for a previous project. I liked that the depth of the blue varied, just like it does in actual blueberries.  I then began hand stitching around the perimeter of the fabric circle. After you are done stitching yo...

 There are times when I write these Food Friday cooking and baking posts that I feel like it is just a higher tech version of the phone calls my mother had with Marilyn, or Temmi, or Mildred or Rissy. Some of those phone calls were made with the purpose of getting a  particular recipe, but more often than not the recipe would emerge during a call that was about life. It was an era when people spent lots of time on the phone while they were ironing or cooking or cleaning.  I thought about my mother's friends as I put together today's challah dough. There are lots of ways to form challah. Today I decided to roll each loaf out  into a large rectangle   roll the flattened dough into a tight roll  Cut the rolls in two and then pull each strand until it was long. Then I began to braid each strand. There are lots of perfectly lovely ways to form a challah. Rolling the dough out with a rolling pin and then tightly rolling the flattened dough up into a jelly roll ju...

  A while back I had repaired two pairs of boots using a bit of leather that I had on hand and some barge glue that I had purchased for the task. The dark pair at the bottom of the photo also had some rips in the heel area. The boots are so incredibly comfortable but the rip at the heel made the boots look really shabby. My fabric stash is sort of like the state of my brain, meaning awfully messy. But the other day a leather skirt that I had purchased at a thrift for the sole purpose of mending, emerged form the chaos that is my fabric stash.I traced the back heel piece onto newsnapaer and cut it out to be a pattern for this mending adventure. I plunked my newspaper pattern onto the suede side of the leather and traced around the newspaper with a pencil.I then cut out the piece using a pair of scissors and then repeated the process so my two boots would match. I spread the barge glue (it's rubber cement but stronger) onto the back of the leather piece using a very specialized tool,...