sarah in nyc

This seems to have turned into the summer of hand work. Because the ends of an atara  frame the face they often have a bit of extra embellishment going on. My client mentioned that he wanted silvery blue. Like me, my client grew up surrounded by Jewish ritual art. Couched metallic cord was a big part of how Jewish ritual objects were decorated.  I chose to go for a free-form sort of a look. I wanted an old technique to look contemporary. There is something oddly soothing about doing this work. What you see here isn't quite finished but it is well on its way. The materials used to create this work are pretty simple, metallic cord, sewing thread, and a needle.  I have also been working away on a sweater for one of my great nieces. So far I have made a front and a back and have done a bit of one sleeve. It's a pretty acrylic yarn because babies get messy, it's their job. Wool is nicer but it isn't fair to expect parents of a baby to ...

My youngest went shopping with me at Costco. We discovered a package, about the right size to be an overnight bag for a toddler of pizzelle, Italian waffle cookies. They were both kosher and parev and cost less than two subway rides. As we looked at the pizzelle we both had the same thought, ice-cream sandwiches. Perhaps we have both had our brains addled by watching too many of those food videos that show up on our Facebook feeds. We knew that this would be a time-consuming operation, so I decided to make the main part of our meal simple to prepare. Our chicken was well rubbed with this mix of spices. It's a mix of dry mustard, turmeric, cinnamon, hot paprika, regular paprika and black pepper. My son-in-law is allergic to potatoes. He and my daughter won't be joining us this Shabbat. I cooked the chicken over a bed of tiny potatoes. After everything was cooked I pulled out the potatoes and added a couple of diced tomatoes and some cider vinegar to the po...

The time has come to create a binding for the  atara begun here.   My client said he wanted a silvery blue to contrast with the white on white. I suppose that I could go scour the fabric district for exactly the right shade of silvery blue. Given that this is for the binding on a not very large piece it means that I would need to purchase a full yard and I only need a small fraction of a yard to nicely bind the atara  it makes a whole lot more sense to take a piece of fabric that is sort of close in color and then make it read like it is the right color. I had some lovely silk shantung in a silvery blue adjacent color. I then mixed up a little pot of paint in a silvery blue and block printed the silk using a large rubber stamp. I had a strip of block printed silk but what I needed was a bias strip of silk to bind the atara.  For those of you who are not sewing geeks, a bias strip is one cut on the diagonal.  It is great to ...

When I was young, just out of college, I assumed that one day I would have a job where you essentially did one thing all day long, or at least there would be a way to describe my day under one general employment umbrella. But even in the days when I had full-time jobs, it was more like I had three or six part-time jobs all stapled together. My life continues in that vein. I guess the previous paragraph is an answer to a question that you may not be asking. It is a question that I need to answer when I describe this blog. This blog is about the process of making Jewish ritual objects. But that process takes place within the context of my life which includes being part of a community and a family and living in a city and all of that other STUFF is also part of my process of making Jewish ritual objects in fabric. The mending I did of my son's pants a few weeks ago informs how I restore this old tallit.  The netting supports the old s...

For the past few days, I have been designing an atara with a client by email. This isn't the ideal way to go about designing a piece. I prefer the instantaneous feedback you get with a face to face meeting. I am a brainstorming kind of a girl and  my favorite client meetings have me and my client tossing and rejecting ideas until we together hit on the right idea to pursue. My client and I had decided on the text last year but I was just given the go-ahead to begin this assignment. This is the text: ח   בְּהִתְעַטֵּף עָלַי נַפְשִׁי, אֶת-יְהוָה   It is a verse fragment of verse 8 Chapter 2 of the book of Jonah. Here a the translation of the complete verse: When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came in unto Thee, into Thy holy temple. The word that is translated as 'fainted' has an additional meaning in Hebrew it also means wrapped up and is the verb used to describe donning a tallit. This is a text I love...