sarah in nyc

 Our older son is currently living in Amarillo, Texas. Amarillo has weather of extremes. While we were visiting, one morning it was below freezing in the morning when my son and I walked to his building's gym and later that day the thermometer topped 80.  These days I will often check the weather in Amarillo. Earlier this week both the temperature and the wind chill in New York and in Amarillo were exactly the same. You don't have to be amused by that fact, but I am. Right now the big concept in the universe of sewing is repurposing. Every day there are videos that cross my feed of people who make dresses out of 1970s sheets, or turn blankets into streetwear or vintage embroidered tablecloths into blouses. Years ago I purchased a length of Ikea fabric that has been a work horse table cloth. You probably have seen this cloth dozens of times as the background for a food post or behind a sewing project. The cloth has been washed and ironed countless times and had gotten both thin...

 Anyone who knows me knows that I am a  material girl. No, not like Madonna, but I am a girl of material culture. The other day I used this napkin at breakfast. This napkin was sewn by my friend Esther. using this napkin isn't quite as much fun as spending an afternoon with Esther but using this napkin reminds me of many meals eaten together, long conversations and rummaging through thrift stores together. This object holds decades of memories for me. This cracked teapot  matches my parents' dairy set from my childhood. I loved that set of dishes which is no more. I had found this particular teapot at my local thrift and used it until it was too cracked to use. My husband purchased a replacement and I have used it for several years. Last week my bottle of rosewater jumped from the pantry shelf and murdered the teapot. I was pretty sad. eBay found the answer to my despair. Not it isn't another of the teapot pictured above. I went back to another childhood memory. This is a...

 The other day I made a dinner that ended up being all orange. It was an accident. But it is better than the times I have made dinners where everything is white.  I was rearranging some of the vintage linens in my stash and I noticed that a centerpiece wasn't just ecru/brownish but had yellow stripes. I soaked it for a day in Oxy-clean and now it looks the way it was meant to. This piece will probably be in the center of our Shabbat table this week. ( Oh, and the color goes with our orange dinner) My friend Nini came to town and we spent the day together. We went to the exhibit at the NYPL celebrating a century of the New Yorker. You  can visit the exhibit virtually.  It's a delight to go to an exhibit that was clearly so much fun to put together.  I just loved this photo of James Baldwin. Below are Harold and Lillian Ross's typewriters. And here is the besotted couple. The curators created a frieze of New Yorker covers.  I loved seeing the originals of the...