Skip to main content

A small adventure and progress on Jess's tallit.

 

Yesterday we went on a little adventure---to Hoboken.





It's the birthplace of Frank Sinatra.  I don't know how many people would choose to make Hoboken a day trip destination but we are a sucker for old cities so off we went with our friends Alfie and Judy.

One of us was in need of a nap and stretched out on the grass in Frank Sinatra Park for a nap. The rest of us watched this photoshoot with a quinceañera and her parents.







The dress was impressive. The girl's parents wrangled the dress up and down the promenade. The girl wore crocks and ankle socks under the dress. Her parents acted as stylists arranging the skirt for every shot.










After naptime was done, we walked to the Hoboken Terminal. It is a pretty fabulous building








that was created when train travel wasn't just transportation but was an EVENT.
















































I am going to pause here to complain for a moment---no, not about our lovely day in Hoboken but about the fact that Blogger has decided to make inserting images into this blog much more difficult than normal. I am not including the cursing portion of composing this blog post.

The other day, I produced this embroidered ribbon to use as a border for one of the text panels on Jess's tallit.  What you see below is the finished product that is a last stage of a multi stepped event.





First, I stacked the light blue ribbon over the ivory ribbon. Then I embroidered the pale blue leaf motif. After that, I embroidered the dark blue scallop on the right side of the leaf motif and then did the same on the left.






I suppose that I could have stopped there. I wanted the ribbon to look a bit less flat and have just a tiny subtle bit of glimmer.




I used a very fine bronze colored Lurex thread in a three-step zig zag .It's barely noticeable, but when Jess moves it will glow.






I went back and did the same thing on the other side of the ribbon.



Then I sewed the embroidered ribbon onto the text stripe---of course with another embroidery stitch.




This is what it will look like on the tallit.












I went through a similar process with a different text stripe.


I am building this tallit bit by bit.




There is lots more work to be done. I love how each big task is made up of small doable smaller tasks.























Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Food friday - your grandmother's food processor

My grandmother bought my mother this wooden bowl and a chopping knife, known in Yiddish as a hock-messer, soon after my parents got married. Yes, she also got them a dairy set as well. these wooden bowls and chopping knives were a big part of food prep when I was growing up. meatloaf and meat balls were mixed in this bowl. Chopped liver was made in this bowl as well. Sundays we often made chicken salad for lunch made out of chicken left over from Shabbat chopped with vegetables and mayo. That too, was made in this bowl. When I was in college my parents got their first food processor and the chopping bowls were not used as much. Several years ago, my father asked if i would like the bowls and the hock-messers. I was happy to have them. I like the sheer physicality of chopping up a big bowl of stuff into teeny pieces. While the wooden bowls have stood up well to the years of use, the hock-messers had not. The bladed which were bolted into their handles, wobbled. The blades wouldn't ...