sarah in nyc

Usually when I finish a piece, all I can focus on is all of the little ways it is imperfect. Eventually, with a enough time and distance, I can re focus on what makes the piece good. Elan's atara seems to be an exception to that quirk of mine. I love this atara. I love how it works with this particular tallit. I chose the blue and white checked ribbon because it echos the weave of the tallit. The colors are a bit too strong so I toned the strong blue down with the silver scallop stitch and i went a bit further by using a silvery grey embroidery thread to stitch the atara to the tallit. I LOVE how the silver scallop stitch over the checkerboard feels like sun glinting off of water when the sun is a bit low on the horizon. A Jewish ritual object unlike a painting on the wall, has to work  both close up as well as from a distance. This atara will be experienced by Elan when he holds the tallit close up to his face before donning it. It will be also experie...

Elan and I started talking about the design for his atara several weeks after his wedding this past June. Every once in a while, we would have a bit of an emailed conversation but life got in the way and it took a several months until we got a concept nailed down.  Elan knew the verse we would be working with, right away אִלּוּ פִינוּ מָלֵא שִׁירָה כַּיָּם Even if our mouths could fill with song as water fills the sea, I had dyed the velvet to look like sky. Over the past few weeks I have been slowly embroidering all of the letters. Yesterday morning I realized that I was nearly done with that task. It was time to start building the ocean. I had already dyed and set strips of  translucent silk gazar  that would become the ocean. I wanted the atara to recreate the experience of swimming in a body of water. I wanted the letters to sit slightly inside the water the way a body does when swimming. I had all of the elements I needed to create the wat...

One of the things that experience has taught me is that the best order for doing work is not always  the instinctive one. I am working on an atara that includes the following text אִלּוּ פִינוּ מָלֵא שִׁירָה כַּיָּם, וּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ רִנָּה כֲּהַמוֹן גַּלָּיו, וְשִׂפְתוֹתֵינוּ שֶׁבַח כְּמֶרְחֲבֵי רָקִיעַ, Even if our mouths could fill with song as water fills the sea, You can listen to a musical setting of the text while you read the rest of this post I had already dyed the strips of silk that would be layered to become the sea. Here you see them both separately  and layered.  I dyed the velvet that would become the sky. You see it both wet, and dry Years ago with less experience doing these things, I would have built the sea and then added the lettering. I want the letters to sit inside the sea, partially submerged and partially above the water the way a body is in and above the water when swimming.  That...

First of all, if you have been sent to this blog from a Ukrainian porn site, please go away. If you are the person or bot sending people here from a porn site, please find someone else to bother. My challah is in the oven  as I type this, and it will be baked just in time for candle lighting.  Because it's a bit chilly and Shabbat starts early, the loaves will have done their rising in a bit of a rush today. It will be a tighter loaf than usual. I am sure that our guests will understand. I have begun work on an atara that is the re creation of the ocean. I am building up the water in layers on silk gazar. The text will be bobbing just at the top of the water just as a body does when swimming. There are more layers of color to be added. The long and draggy sick  that has been part of my life since Rosh Ha Shahah  has made certain kinds of higher thinking a bit difficult.  ( I may actually have a diagnosis soon) But I have used the  very low ...

As I get ready to write this post, I look over the photos I have taken over the past few days. There are times when they seem to organize themselves into a tidy little story. There are other times when  they are the visual equivalents of the  school lunches my mother sometimes made when she was really short on sleep and grocery shopping still needed to get done. My sisters and I would compare the results with a befuddled shrug. I once got a cottage cheese and cranberry sauce sandwich. My mother when asked, said that she knew I liked them both. My sister got a cottage cheese and sauerkraut sandwich for the same reason. Both were  difficult to eat in sandwich form. I think I may have gotten the better of the two sandwiches. So bear with me as you read the rest of this post. I am a bit sleep deprived. We got up early yesterday to observe Aunt Yetta's Yahrzeit.  We both adored my mother-in-law's younger sister. My husband used to say that Yetta in her outlook was ...