sarah in nyc

 When Bonnie met with me several weeks ago about making her tallit she spoke about wanting the stripes to resemble the ocean from her childhood on the Massachusetts coast. The beach we visited most often in my childhood was just a few miles away in Westport, Massachusetts, the spectacular Horseneck Beach. I haven't been there in more than thirty five years but the colors of that water are deeply imprinted in my brain. I know that water not from looking at photos but from being inside of that water with long strands of seaweed wrapping themselves around my legs. I know that water from being tumbled by the waves, from floating on top of that water from having my mouth filled with that water. I had dyed the grosgrain ribbon that borders the ocean dyed silk to look like sky---to tie in with the atara. I used the scallop stitch on my machine to look like ripples of water. I used more of the silk that I had dyed to look like the water off the south coast of Massachusetts   for ...

 I have taken a bit of a break from posting. Some of it was to acclimate myself to being back home and safe. For several nights when I would wake up in the middle of the night I would think that I was still in Dubai. Those of you with a more psychological bent will figure out that Dubai was a less terrifying choice than being in the safe rooms in Ashkelon. This morning I didn't wake up worried about getting plane tickets to safety. We are both still jetlagged. Both of us are deeply grateful for all of the good wishes and prayers for our safety and hopefully we can all redirect those wishes and hopes to those who live in Israel. I also wanted to create something of a space between our experiences in Israel and re-entering life back home. Bonnie's tallit is due soon so I knew I had to get back to work on it. It has been a while so  I will remind you about this particular tallit. Bonnie grew up in southern Massachusetts and she wanted the stripes to look like the water off that c...

 The meals were eaten. The shofar was blown and now it is time to squeeze in as much work as I can before we leave for Israel to visit our son--right after Yom Kippur. A few weeks ago I met with a new client. Bonnie grew up on the coast of southern Massachusetts and now lives just north of Boston on the sea. Bonnie is the daughter of someone who ran a textile mill so fabric is in her bones.  When we met she realized that she wanted the stripes on the tallit to look like the ocean of her childhood home. While the body of Bonnie's tallit would be made out of a lovely raw silk, the stripes would be painted on a smooth faced silk. I felt fortunate when I found a length of super heavyweight silk charmeuse that was left over from a tallit I had made a while back. Before I began painting, I spent a long, long time looking at images of the ocean off the coast of southern Massachusetts, actually the beach I went to most often as a child. When the colors were set in my head I got to wor...