sarah in nyc

 It has been a busy week. Hanoch came up from Philadelphia to tie his titzit. Yes, he was really happy with the tallit. He had purchased really beautiful tzitzit in Jerusalem. He was really happy with the result. I am still working on the atara and will ship the tallit as soon as it is completed and stitched in place and I have trimmed all of the loose threads from the tallit. We celebrated my sister's birthday. And tonight I made Shabbat dinner. I soaked dried limes in boiling water and then broke the hard shells before stuffing them into whole chickens. The dried limes pack a flavor punch. I know this doesn't look terribly pretty but it should taste wonderful. I didn't take a photo of the roasted vegetables or the semolina that I made.  But I did make two pies. I made a blackberry pie that is topped with an almond milk custard that has been flavored with rum. There is a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses to cover the less than beautiful color of the custard. I also ma...

 Hanoch, the man for whom I am making this tallit, is an army chaplain.  He really wanted the pinot to  echo the Jewish army chaplain stole (pictured below). The stole isn't a tallit, but it is often worn on official chaplain business. The Christian stoles are similar but with Christian iconography. (I am not going to explain how the Christian liturgical stole is actually derived from Jewish religious dress, so the Army stole is a weird back borrowing. But that is a different topic.) I suppose that I could have put in a million hours to replicate the embroidered insignia. I know that what I would have ended up with would have been an artistic take on the military insignia rather than the real thing. For some clients that would have been the perfect approach, but not for Hanoch. So, uncharacteristically for me,  I commissioned   Jan Gorelick   to use her computerized embroidery machine to create the pinot for me.  The machine that Jan owns is the e...

 And now---some images of Hanoch's tallit  which will give you a sense of what it will look like when it is done. It is wrinkled and thready and the edges are not yet finished. But at least you don't have to use too much of your imaginations to get a sense of where I am going. There is still one painted stripe left to add and probably a few more rows of ribbon. There are still miles of silk to cut onto bias strips and stitch together to cover the raw edges. I still have to make the atara and edge that and the pinot. It's closer to done than it is to not done.

  As of Sunday evening, the calligraphed and painted stripes all were properly edged. I am loving the mix of colors. I hope that Hanoch does as well. One of the painted stripes will not have text. I started adding the stitched and ribbon stripes to the tallit.  I am really pleased with the ribbons that I embroidered. And now...the end of than era. My former across the hall neighbors and our family were pretty close during the years they lived across the hall. Our collective children wandered back and forth across the hall between the two apartments. We all had many adventures and meals together. Michael and Andrea (our dear neighbors) had a car and shopped at Costco years before Costco opened a store across town. At one point Andrea bought a whole lot of boxes of Crystal Light in lemonade flavor.  Andrea became allergic to Crystal Light. So, twenty three years ago Andrea gave us more than 25 boxes of Crystal Light. We stashed those boxes all over the apartment. There were...

 My mother never took a pocketbook to synagogue on Shabbat or holidays. To her, a pocketbook meant that you were taking money or your car keys to synagogue. Both would have earned a sniff from my mother.  My mother always took along tissues in her pocket or in the cuff of her sweater because she had terrible allergies and a tissue was always needed. Decades ago my late friend Fred told me that he grew up in a family that was irreligious. Fred, as an adult felt drawn to greater observance. He once told me that he married his ex wife because he was so impressed  she knew that that it wasn't proper to take a pocketbook to services. He laughed ruefully because he discovered that this was ALL that she knew about Jewish observance. ( And no, the marriage didn't last). All of this is a long introduction to the fact that now I carry a pocketbook to services every week. I have a pretty severe sesame allergy. I have to take along my Epi-pen because after services every week there i...