typing amid old snow

For the first time in many years we had a big snow followed by now just over two weeks of below freezing weather. This means that the snow hasn't melted and the department of sanitation has created occasional snow mountains like this one.

In fact, it has been so cold that weather that hovers right around freezing feels almost balmy.

This photo is here for no narrative reason but I did love the dramatic light.

In the department of sad news....

One of my local thrift stores is closing. When my kids were at the age when every new raincoat got lost on the first day it was worn to school this store provided new ones . This store was the source of Charvet dress shirts for men, and a hand knit pringle short sleeved cashmere sweater for me and just countless articles of clothing over the years.

We have been invited to a friend's for Shabbat dinner. I baked our challot yesterday, six regular sized challot and four small ones.

I spent a good deal of this week finishing of the pinot that Darone had needlepointed. They all got backed and turned.

I then stitched them onto the tallit.

I was a little nervous that the space that Darone had left for me to make an eyelet was too small. I had told him to make it the side of a pencil eraser. I was worried that with all of the stitching to make the eyelet it would be difficult to get the Tzitzit through the hole.

I came up with a method to expand the hole. You can think of it as a tutorial, but it is a tutorial of very limited usage. Anyway, here goes.

Push a pair of nail scissors through the needlepoint canvas, stretching the strands of the canvas out of the way.

Turn those nail scissors as you push them through the gap that you have made.

Now repeat the same action with a fat knitting needle. I think I used a 10.5 knitting needle

Now that the eyelet hole was expanded, it was time to stitch around the eyelet.

Darone and his family will come by on Sunday to tie the tzitzit together.

The tallit needs a good pressing.

I had removed the tzitzit from the tallit and they strands looked like this.

I ironed the wool strings and now they look like this.

They are ready to be tied.

Shabbat Shalom to all of you. Stay warm.

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מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

וְנֶאֱמָן אַתָּה לְהַחֲיוֹת מֵתִים: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים You are faithful to restore the dead to life. Blessed are You, Adonoy, Resurrector of the dead. That particular line is recited at every single prayer service every day three times a day, unless you use a Reform or Reconstructionist prayer book . In those liturgies instead of praising God for resurrecting the dead God is praised for giving life to all. I am enough of a modern woman, a modern thinker, to not actually believe in the actual resurrection of the dead. I don't actually expect all of the residents of the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Hebron cemetery in Queens to get up and get back to work at their sewing machines. I don't expect the young children buried here or the babies buried here to one day get up and frolic. Yet, every single time I get up to lead services I say those words about the reanimating of the dead with every fiber of my being. Yesterday, I e...

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