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Showing posts with the label Mike's tallit

Truly Complete

  Mike came by today to tie his tzitzit and pick up his tallit.  I had set up the tallit on my dressmaking form so Mike could see it as soon as he came into my apartment. It’s always good to see a client completely happy. When I first started making tallitot I used to tie the tzitzit myself.Over the years I have gone from tying the tzitzit myself, to offering to tie tzitzit with my clients to just insisting that my clients tie the tzitzit.   Having my clients tie the tzitzit accomplishes several things. It’s useful from a purely educational perspective. How often can one do the mitzvah of tying tzitzit?  It’s a nice opportunity to learn a new skill. I have also found that when clients have time to interact with the tallit and spend not just their money, but also their time, and their efforts they  really fall in love with their tallit as they tie the tzitzit on each corner. I find that the process of tying the tallit also ends up transferring ownersh...

Quiet and Done

  It’s done. Like Mike, the tallit is quiet but the longer you look at it the more you realize is going on.   The pinot , corner pieces are large and fairly bold. Although it might have been slightly nuts to hand embroider the letters on the atara , I’m really glad that I did.   I love the texture. My son, who was kind enough to be my model in these photos, thought that the stitched looked like grains of wheat. I bought tzizit dyed t’chelet , the murex blue, yesterday. I had a serious case of sticker shock.  The tzitzit cost more than my winter coat and less than the tuxedos I bought for my boys. The tzitzit are beautiful though. They will get more use than the tuxes.   Tomorrow, Mike comes by to tie the tzitzit . And to help you get ready for the Holiday season אוחילה לא-ל אודהליה ברלין

Moving right along

  When I last talked about Mike’s tallit I had just painted the letters.  Wool, unlike sort of swallows up dye. As a couple of days passed, the lettering  instead of looking shimmery and glowing looked a little sad.   If Mike were not such a good friend I might have just etts be or I might have thought of a simple solution.  But Mike is in that category of dear male friends that I think of as being my brothers-in-law.  They are a bit close than just being friends and get included in all family events. So I needed a better solution. I decided to chain stitch all of the letters. Yes, it’s time consuming. Embroidering half a verse’s worth of lettering is boring. I decided to deal with that boredom by doing only parts of letters at a time. Chain stitch is fairly forgiving if you work it that way.   One of my older sisters used to do lots of embroidery . She is an extremely methodical person. I think if she had seen how I approached ...

A Tallit for Mike

If there were some sort of a world wide competition for the nicest person our friend Mike would certainly be one of the finalists. My husband first met Mike when they were in Hebrew High School together back in the 1960’s. Our son’s ( who share the same first name) became at kid’s services when they were maybe three. Since then, we have been fortunate to have Mike in our lives.   Mike broke his foot a few months ago in a pretty spectacular way. He has just become mobile  a couple of weeks ago.   This past Shabbat, Mike told me that he wanted me to make him a white wool tallit for the high holidays. In my experience beautiful thin white wool is what my Southern friends call spendy.      Yesterday I went to the garment district with an out of town sewing friend.  I found several wools that might work for a tallit. They were all beautiful. They did have a really wide price range, I could have spent anywhere from $180 down to $18 per yard...