sarah in nyc

I wanted to keep my hands busy on the 4 hour drive to Rafi's funeral. I was so sad. Keeping my hands busy is a good way to deal with grief. My sister's mother in law had given me a load of vintage cashmere sweaters. She loved the work I had done refashioning sweaters. So, she gave me a batch of sweaters to play with. One of the treasures that I hadn't gotten to, was a Pringle grey cashmere turtleneck. It's too hot in New York apartments to wear a turtleneck. I also hate having things tight around my neck. I was planning to transform the turtleneck into a cardigan but hadn't quite gotten to it. Before I got into the car, I cut open the front and then packed along a black eyelash yarn and a lovely hand dyed blue ribbon yarn and a crochet hook. My sister's mother in law died this summer. So it seemed like a nice way to focues on her, and on her not quite in the fullness of her years death as we went to attend Rafi's funeral. After a little over an hour I was do...

During my daughter's winter break from college, I dragged her to the Museum of the City of New York to see an exhibit on Art Deco in New York. It was a sweet little exhibit. But inexplicably, in the middle of the exhibit was a selection of 1940's and '50's dresses. They were beautiful, but not Art Deco. One of the dresses in the exhibit was by the designer Valentina, a girlfriend of Greta Garbo . The dress was a mind blowingly simple white dirndl dress made out of wool gauze. I especially loved the deep ( maybe 18 inch) doubled hem. I l oved how pared down the dress was. I also loved how it looked entirely contemporary, even though it was about 60 years old. A few days later I found some wool gauze in black at Paron . I thought that it would be wonderful to make myself a wool gauze over dress to wear over a full slip. I thought that it would be a nice thing to wear at my son's Bar Mitzvah. My friend Jackie had gone to Vietnam over the summer and I asked he...