sarah in nyc

  The eyelets are still left to be done and I haven't caught every thread that needs to be snipped but this is what I can show all of you. Max is Tanta Marcia and Fetter Fred's great-nephew. Most of the bar-mitzvah kids I work with come from really nice families. Families where people are kind to one another. Max's family has a whole other level of niceness going on.  Max was very clear that he wanted his tallit to be visually fairly quiet. At first glance, this looks not all that different than a standard tallit. As you look more closely, the details begin to emerge. (Actually, not all that different than a conversation with Max himself, where at first he seems like a regular twelve-year-old and then after a bit of conversation you realize that he is a really special human being ). I have discovered over the years that if you layer ornament, as I do with the decorative stitching here, it actually reads as quieter than having just one layer of decoration. All of the layers ...

 I had made these mushroom and tomato focaccias yesterday. Two of us had eaten half of one of them for lunch. The big one was intact. Our older son called and said that he was in the neighborhood. My husband suggested a socially distant supper in Riverside Park. I packed up the rest of the focaccia, cut up a watermelon, and packed up dishes and silverware to take with us. Our younger son would join us when he was done with work. We started out supper in the playground where my kids and I had spent a huge amount of time when they were little. As the day turned to dusk, we were asked to leave and the gate to the playground was locked.We walked up to Riverside Drive and saw our youngest ready to join us. We continued our dinner by a bench on Riverside Drive. you can see that our older son who no longer lives with us is more than six feet away. The bugs had come out, and as usual, found my husband delicious. If you look just past the street lamp you will see a large branch downed by la...

 I have been working away on Max's tallit. Yesterday I had reached the point where all of the little pieces of work I have been doing are starting to come together. I am recreating the look of a woven tallit by piecing fabric and embellishing with machine stitching. As I was adding row after row of stitching I kept thinking about my friend Sally who is a really accomplished weaver. When she makes a piece she needs to make a plan and stick to it the whole way through. It takes a particular sort of brain to work like that. I admire people who can do that. I work in an entirely different way. I have a general idea of where I want to go. I don't have every stitch of the piece figured out before I start. I leave myself open to improvising.  Even though I work entirely differently than Sally, I kept thinking about her as I worked. I also thought about how Max's tallit imitates the look of woven pattern ut using a sewing machine to essentially draw the patterns one usually makes w...

Between Passover and managing to get through Covid-19 I haven't focused my writing in this blog on sewing, either for work, or for pleasure, in a really long time. That doesn't mean that work hasn't been going on, although to be honest,  I have been less productive lately. Nevertheless, despite working with three other adults in the house three of whom like to work in the same space (my usual work space) it hasn't been all that easy. Max's bar-mitzvah had been rescheduled from May to November. It was time to pull out his tallit and see what still needed to be done. I wasn't thrilled with the letters I had embroidered for his pino t/corner pieces.   They are a bit chunky and clunky looking.They really do need a border to help clean them up.  The line of gold stitching helps. Unfortunately, I was having trouble focusing on the job. I was as distracted and fidgety doing the line of gold embroidery as an ants-in-the pants elementary school kid. When I am working tha...