sarah in nyc

 I haven't been posting because I have been sick.   Here I am staying warm. I am still not sure if this is food poisoning or some sort of s stomach bug. The only remotely good thing about this is that I have lost some weight. It would have been nicer to achieve the same result by going to a luxurious spa. Last night I stupidly chose to eat an exciting supper---some chicken soup with big chunks of vegetables. It's back to plain rice and white potatoes for me...what could I have been thinking? Anyway, I couldn't have Miles and his family come by on Sunday as planned to tie the tzitzit so i tied them on my own. I also made Miles a tallit bag.  I used this heavy upholstery weight striped denim in my stash. It wears like iron. I had made myself a skirt out of some of it a few years ago and know that this will wear like iron. Ihe decorative panel is made out more the woven ribbon panel that I had made for the pinot/ corner pieces. I edged it in more of the gold and blue st...

 My husband and I are currently waiting for our flight to California to leave. We will be visiting lots of family, but while I am waiting to board I figured that I could update you on Miles' tallit.  The stripes are all in place, most of the stray threads have been trimmed and I pressed the tallit.  It will look good when it is worn. Then, I sewed on the atara. These days I have been using giant safety pins to hold the atara in place so it doesn't slip out of place as I sew  Then it was time to attach the Pinot, the corner pieces. When I return home I will stitch and cut the eyelets. I have loved working on this tallit. I hope that Miles enjoys wearing it as much as I have enjoyed the.process of making this tallit.

 This will be a post with a few different topics. Just preparing those who don't live inside my brain and might find it disturbing. Topic 1 A few photos that may be categorized under nature, or what passes for nature in Manhattan. It snowed a couple of times this week. This week is also the 47th anniversary of the Great Blizzard of '78.  This, my friends is barely a snow. Actually this is two different not quite snowfalls. Not enough for sledding or snow forts and even putting together a snowball is a whole lot of effort. Nevertheless a snow, even a piddly one gives me joy. We have had some bone chilling days and some lovely days this week. It took me until recently to understand that you can see the buds, or what will be buds once the weather warms up, starting to appear even during the darkest days of winter. Nice to have that teeny bit of hope midwinter. I loved this bit of moody twilight from my window This could be a book jacket on a  book of sad poetry. I loved the ...

 This has been a week of celebrating. My husband had a birthday.  My wise son-in-law has named his birthday celebrations so they are now a festival. My daughter has done the same so inspired by them, we have been celebrating Pop-fest. There was the family trek to Boro Park for lots of skewered meat. Last night we celebrated with old friends of my husband's who very nearly share birthdays with him. I baked a small heart shaped chocolate cake from the Settlement Cookbook. I made half of the recipe and added a whole lot more flavor in terms of spices (cinnamon, allspice and black pepper) . I topped the bake cake with some Israeli instant vanilla pudding made with much less liquid than asked for on the directions and rum and orange flower water for additional flavor. I shaved chocolate over the vanilla pudding and then edged the top of the cake with a cut up Kit Kat bar. Sorry, no photos and it was as my late friend Shawna used to say, "Not,bad ". Especially since the cake ca...

 One day, when  was walking my daughter the mile  home from preschool she turned to me and asked me, "Mama, what does, 'ishbyish robyro' mean?" I was confused. I had never heard of the word robyro. I asked her to use it in a sentence  and she began to sing... Like many parents who children mispronounce things as little ones there are some favorites of those childhood malaprops. And some of them just become the right way to express something.  Each stripes in Miles' tallit is built up ish by ish, robyro. These three ribbons a wide and a narrow in two shades of blue and the blue and gold military braidgot stacked and stitched, row by row . Below you see a wedgewood blue diamond embroidered over the navy blue center bit of the military braid and two navy blue sets of scallops on either side. I then added a stitch in a bronze metallic super fine thread to stitch down the darker and narrower ribbon. The stark lines of the military braid gets broken up by the machine ...