sarah in nyc

The wedding gift for the bride and groom is now complete with a sleeve for hanging. Feel free to admire. I ship it off tomorrow. I love the green glen plaid suiting used as binding. I’m pleased beyond words that I can now miter corners.  Mitering was one of those  sewing tasks that took me forever  ( 15 years of bad attempts) to master. Sometimes it takes me a really, really long time to learn things. Also sewn by me today were these two pairs of boxers for my older son. I had made boxers for my older son for years. Then  for the past few years he wanted store bought ones.  yesterday he mentioned that he needed two more pairs and was willing for me to make them.  I realized that  since my yonger son’s boxers are nearly all orange, I can’t make my older son orange boxers  or laundry will be be a problem.   The yellow pair is made out of some of the mystery delivery of fabric  that arrived in my lobby for me a few wee...

Back when I was a kid,  there were certain questions that adults would always ask kids to make conversation. After a while you knew that you just had to have an answer prepared for the inevitable.   You had an answer for the favorite topic in school question.  The what do you want to be when you grow up question had fairly limited responses if you were of the gender that did not have a penis.   The color question, as in, “What is your favorite color?” Seemed always to be particularly fraught. Each of my older sisters had claimed one of the better primary colors as their favorites. One chose red, the other, blue. That meant that I had to choose from among the second tier colors. I claimed green as my favorite. That also meant that I got green in lollypop and M&M distributions. My father used to claim that black was his favorite color. As a small child I was horrified by that choice.  At that point in my life, I thought that black was the color of ...

Jews are usually described as “ The People of the Book”.  Words, and lots of them, are central to Jewish worship.  Some of my fondest memories  growing up was doing the call and response of High Holiday piyutim / liturgical poems. My father in his role as rabbi would call out those tooth breaking lines, and we, my mother and sisters and I, would lob those verses right back at him from the front row. Yes, there were another 300 people in the room but reciting piyutim always felt as intimate as a father playing catch in the back yard with a child. My parents also believed strongly in the value of having a nice handwriting.  One of my mother’s teachers was either Sol or Tzvi Sharfstein, who standardized Hebrew cursive writing in America. So when I learned how to read Hebrew, my mother also sat and taught me how to write Hebrew, folding each machberet / notebook page into four columns and having me practice writing each letter ( from the top down, so they would be...

I was invited to exhibit my work at this conference What to Wear- Women, Clothing, Religion .  I’m really excited. It’s a good fit for me. Much of my work is made for women. When I was asked to exhibit  at the conference, I came up with this piece, a head covering to wear while lighting Shabbat candles that is covered with  the prayer recited by women with special requests from the divine. Several years ago I came up with this. Arba kanfot, Tzitzit for women. Yes, it is a very limited market, but it’s my market. Anyway, I needed to make some more sets  of Arba kanfot.  I decided to use a silk camisole that was a hand me down from a neighbor.  I liked  the camisole because the construction was so cool. It was cut in two sections, but not as one might expect with a front and a back, but rather two entirely differently shaped  wedges that fit together to make the garment. I cut apart the camisole, copied the pattern pieces onto newspa...

Candle lighting is a foundational mitzvah for women. In traditional Judaism women are exempted from nearly all time- bound mitzvot/commadments.  Candle lighting is an exception to that rule. Usually, women cover their heads when they say the blessing over the candles. When my sisters and I got married my mother went to a fancy lace store in the garment district, bought a beautiful length of lace and finished the edges. We each received it as a pre wedding gift. Mine was beautiful re-embroidered lace. I put it on the first Shabbat of my married life. I felt that while I was old enough to get married, I wasn’t old enough to wear that beautiful piece of lace. So I put it away and began the custom of lighting candles with my head uncovered. The first Shabbat after my daughter was born, I tried that lace head covering again. I still wasn’t old enough to wear it. That beautiful length of lace remains put away. My mother used to light candles quickly. She said the blessing an...