sarah in nyc

The only connection between the items mentioned in this post is that they were all made by me in the last couple of days.   These cherry pillowcases were made in a day of domestic goddess-hood. I’m posting the photo because these pillowcases look so great with my red flannel sheets. Feel free to admire.   Maya came by with her mother to tie the tzitzit. Maya was really happy with the tallit (as was her mom). I love this close-up shot of the atara/neckband.   I’m not sure why, but my photos of Maya in her tallit were less than stellar. Maya’s tallit is smaller than  the usual tallit.   Maya, being a veteran of may nears of camp was able to tie her tzitzit with ease after I said the words “ Chinese staircase”.  It is a knot well known to girls making friendship bracelets. Maya’s mom, having gone to camp in an earlier era and havign spent her arts and crafts time in camp was set on the right knot tying path with the words “ half h...

After yesterday’s near disaster of making the pinot/corner pieces too big, I went back to the drawing board. I recut  smaller pieces and then did the calligraphy yet again. I needed to figure out how to edge the pinot. I noticed a ball of gold Lurex yarn in with my threads. The yarn had been given to me by my friend Yoki. It’s really flashy and glittery. It’s perfect used in small doses.     Yes, the tallit needs a good pressing. But here it is more or less complete . The eyelets still need to be done. The mis-sized pinah. I also cooked dinner for tonight. Broccoli roasted with sesame oil and rice vinegar. Vegetables roasted  until they are nearly charred are just so good. Broccoli on it’s own is not so delicious. Roasted it’s just amazing. Fingerling potatoes roasted with olive oil lemon juice and I forget which spices- I’m guessing that it's vaguely European in flavor.   Chicken roasted with an Israeli schwarma spice mix wit...

I wanted to iron interfacing to the back of the pinot/corner pieces for Maya's tallit. This would add a bit of stability to the corners which need a bit more support. I was thinking about how to iron on the interfacing and avoid the inevitable sticky goop from the interfacing ending up on the sole plate of my iron. It just isn’t fun to clean that gunk off.  Since I do my ironing in my kitchen, I thought of laying parchment paper between the interfacing and the iron.   My solution worked brilliantly. It was easy to cut away the extra interfacing from beyond the borders of the pinot. I was feeling awfully clever. I stitched on the border, and put the pinah on the tallit. FAIL!!!! The pinah while beautiful is just entirely too big  in scale for the tallit. I had to start the pinot over at 1/4 the size.   I couldn’t use a square tipped brush for the lettering because I was working on such a small scale. Grrr! My husband suggested that I save the pinot f...

  I often use the four verbs associated with Tzitzit/ritual fringes, on the pinot/corner pieces of a tallit ( have, see, remember and fulfill). I can usually make the letters  interlock in a really pretty way . It usually comes so easily that it almost feels like a parlor trick when I make the pinot. Well, not this time. It took several tries, and many failures on Friday. Today I sat down to do the pinot first thing in the morning when I was fresh , not tires and hopefully wouldn’t mess up.  Today I got the lettering on the pinot right. Whew! My next task was to begin embroidering the ribbon that will border the pinot and the atara/neckband. I have two nice but boring ribbons.   I layered the two ribbons and embroidered a diamond stitch in gold. it’s already better. I will add another layer of stitching  to the diamond.  Embroidering the ribbon is both really boring and vary satisfying. Don’t worry, pressing will remove the ripple from the rib...

  Maya’s tallit is now turned right side out. I had purchase the blue satin ribbon thinking I would use it in a previous tallit.  I love the gold diamonds  embroidered on the ribbon. They do double duty, they are both decorative and also attach the ribbon to the tallit. I keep thinking about what Maya would like best. If I were making this tallit for me might have chosen a more complicated look. But Maya likes a cleaner more simple look. She goes to an Orthodox school and goes to a Conservative synagogue. Most of Maya's classmates are not used to the idea of a woman in a tallit. Maya wants it to read as a tallit with nothing too wild  going on. I totally get where she is coming from. I wore a tallit at my Orthodox day school back in the 1970’s.  It will be enough for Maya's classmates to wrap their heads around the fact that she is wearing a tallit and reading Torah.  Asking them to take in something too visually alien as a tallit will make it harder f...

Today I stopped by Paron . They are moving one block south and are making everything down  so they don’t have to pack up quite as many bolts of fabric.  I wanted to see if they to see if moved anything neat into their $3/yard bins. They had one barrel filled with slinky printed with patterns in silver. So not my thing. Sometimes though, a fabric looks cool for the moment. I gave a bit of thought to purchasing a stretch with a snakeskin print and a sequin overlay. But I came to my senses and left it in the barrel.   I also left the lining fabrics. But for the past few years I have seen a bolt of this fabric, a puckery white knit.   I’m not exactly sure why it appealed to me so much. I can’t tell you how often I have pulled out the bolt and nearly bought some. Finally, at $3 for a yard, I bought the four yards left on the bolt. I’m not quite sure what I will make out of it. It’s slightly sheer and has a beautiful drape. Any ideas?   The other white t...

The bat-mitzvah was lovely. Hanging out with the various generations of cousins, is  a pleasure. My cousin ET surprised me with this. Another addition to our Royal drek collection I may have to rearrange my collection of Royal drek. My daughter pointed out that both William and Catherine look terrible in the photos. I think that adds to the charm of the plate The dress? It was fine. I did notice a fair number of sequins on the dance floor. I don’t know if they were from my dress or from  a dress worn by someone else. It was comfortable to wear. I think I will even wear it again. But all play-time must come to an end. I’m getting back to work on Maya’s tallit. Here is the lettering, raw, without the refinements that come with adding a border. "I will increase your offspring..." A detail shot "...like the stars of the sky." both sides of the tallit     Yesterday, I had a cool experience while meeting with a client.  i'm se...

Lots of wonderful European hand work was embroidered by cloistered nuns. Probably , most of those women lost their vision doing  that beautiful work. I’m working away on Maya’s tallit.The beading needle has a really teeny eye. The gold beads are miniscule. Aside from giving me an opportunity to worry about the state of my eyesight, I love how layering the stars, with the paint, the stitching and the beads and sequins creates a layered look to the cosmos that I’m trying to depict on Maya’s tallit.   The twinkly sequins will catch the eyes of people even in the back of Maya’s synagogue. The fact that the high octane sparkle is sprinkled , rather than paved over the entire surface actually increases  their impact. I have lots more to do.   I did manage to slice my finger on yet another X-acto knife.   I did  not bleed on Maya’s tallit. Yesterday, I heard about the death of our friend Peter, a wonderful man who didn’t quite believe i...

In our family we often joke that we speak our own dialect of English. our speech is loaded with Spoonerisms, punch lines of ancient jokes, remainders of  mispronunciations by our kids and kids I had worked with back in the day when I taught day care. Added to this are bits of Pee Wee’s Playhouse and odd phrases that came out of our childhoods. One cooking term we use often is cooking food “Until Dead”.  In normative English, I would say that the food is cooked until crusty and caramelized on the outside.   Because I can’t add large amounts of salt to my food, my husband abhors garlic and we both want to avoid excess fat, the question is how with those restrictions does one add deep flavor to food. One way to do that is to cook the food with dry heat. If you cook food for a long time, uncovered in an oven much of the moisture evaporates and the flavors intensify.   Tonight’s meatballs are more than half vegetable matter by volume.  My non vegetable eat...