sarah in nyc

  Last night I had the pleasure of working with Ari and her family on tying the tzitzit  for her tallit. I had shipped her tallit out to Ari in Arizona.  I sent along one of the sets of tzitzit  that my father had left after he had died. We worked together via Skype.  It really is almost as good as being there. Ari’s father, a physician, wandered by as Ari tied her first square knot. She was having trouble understanding my explanation.   For Ari’s father, those knots were familiar to him as suture knots. He then left the room to take care of other matters as Ari, tied the tzitzit on the first corner and her mother watched. Thanks to Skype, I was able to show Ari in real time how to tie the tzitzit from my dining room table in Manhattan  and she learned the knot patterns in her home in Arizona. Some kids have trouble using their hands. Ari was a quick study.  After she finished the first corner I suggested that Ari’s parents tie the re...

  I had to make the physical reality of the materials I had at hand match the vision inside my head so I could complete Ari’s atara .  I stitched the chiffon down to the layers of fabrics.   I then stitched around the word  ohr/ light with silver metallic thread. The stitching would draw the eye to the word. I added lines of the silver stitching over the two other words in the verse, illustrating the verse “ in Your light, we see light “. But, then I had a second thought, beading the letters. I know, it’s a slightly deranged idea. But I had a beading needle and my eyeglass prescription is pretty good, and I have lots of teeny beads.  The process was obsessive but took less time than I had expected. I also couched four rows of the silver Lurex yarn to the atara to border the piece.  I added dark bugle beads  to the rays of light . You will be able to see those later in the post. Photographing this tallit has been surpris...

Hurray for crowd sourcing! The votes generally came in in favor of the midnight blue.  Actually, what I had thought was midnight blue is actually black. Never the less, it was the right choice. Usually, painting the letters is an easy and stress free part of the task of constructing a tallit. This time though there were several bad starts that all had to get tossed. I also had to think about the pinot/ corner pieces.  I ended up doing this.   The black silk chiffon is layered over the stitched sandwich of two layers of flannel, there just for invisible support, silver brocade and slate blue lace  left over from making this dress.   I then painted stars on the chiffon. I have been laying awake at night thinking about how to edge the pinot nicely. Ari had vetoed gold . I own LOTS of gold threads  and yarns in a variety of weights. I have silver, but less of it and in less variety.  I knew that I had a piece of a skein of silver Lurex...

Today I I had an idea about Ari’s atara/neckband. I thought that if I covered it with a chiffon and did the intended lettering on top of the chiffon , the end result might be terrific.I love the metallic threads shimmering through the sheer silks. If I had a purple chiffon, life would be easy.  I have maroon chiffon. Midnight blue chiffon.     I also have brown. I’m thinking that the brown might read as purple, but I also really like the midnight blue. I’m crowd sourcing this one. Any thoughts  from  internet land?

This morning, yesterday’s deep plums had dried to a lighter shades.  That meant that I had to get back to work spattering droplets of color on the tallit. When I work I keep thinking about my clients’ deep likes and dislikes.   Ari hates lavender. The tallit should not be blue. I keep hearing her voice in my head as I work. last Shabbat I attended a synagogue not my own. This weeks Torah reading talked about Bezalel, the architect/artist/ craftsman of the Sanctuary.The rabbi talked about the two types of architects/ artists mentioned in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead . Now that I’m not a starry eyed teenager reading the book, but a working artist, all I can tell you is that Howard Roark the architect who refuses to listen to his clients, and only listens to his muse is a major league jackass. If you do commission work, the piece needs to meet the needs of your client.  It isn’t just that your client is paying the bill .  If you accept a commission they you need to...

This morning, Ari’s tallit looked like this.  One of the problems with building up color in diluted layers is that along the way there are lots of less than beautiful stages. Yes, if I told you this was a drop cloth, you might agree. but if you build up the colors in thin thin layers you get a luminescent color shifting quality.   A little later on today, the tallit looked like this. I’m really pleased with my high tech upside down jar method of suspending the silk to dry.   Here is the silk as it is drying over a collection of glass jars. I have also salted the fabric to get more variation in color density. Ari want the silk to look like a galaxy. This silk is till damp so it is darker than it’s final color.   I’m trying to match the color on the stamp. I’m not far off. I had trouble getting the color in these photos to read as they actually are. The photo below is probably closest. The silk is laid out on an opened black garbage bag....

When our oldest spent a semester in China, we used to Skype with her weekly.  My husband quips that it was then that he realized that we had entered the 21st century.  There are moments when it feels like we are living in the times described in  science fiction of the 1950’s. My latest client found me by way of this blog.  She lives across the country. Yesterday, we had our initial meeting via Skype. After a bunch of discussion back and forth Ari, and I nailed down a design. The text is באורך נראה אור in Your light we see light We recite that  line from Psalms as we put on the tallit. Ari likes the look of the galaxy, a fitting choice for a tallit.  The deadline for completing this tallit is really soon, so we had to work with silks I have at hand. I will be making this tallit out of this crepe de chine . You can see how nice it is. I didn’t have the right dyes on hand last night, but I painted a swatch of the silk using acrylic paints. Tod...