sarah in nyc

Last night, Zoe came by with her father to pick up her tallit. before my client shows up, I always worry about the finished piece.  I know that I like it, but will my client? did I do a good job understanding what they really wanted? Zoe walked in and began saying “Oh my God!” over and over again.  It was clear. she was really , really pleased as was her father. we tied the tzitzit/ritual fringes using the more lovely half hitch knot rather than the more ordinary simple wrap. I prefer the half hitch method because when you wear the tallit, that spiral of knots adds another dimension to your experience of tzitzit. After we tied the tzitzit, Zoe them put on her tallit with the blessings and of course, sh’hechiyanu. I had gone to Costco earlier in the week. My daughter was going to Israel and the one thing my son wanted was a bag of dried blueberries.  Tonight’s dinner is entirely Costo made. The chicken is stuffed with chestnuts ( a bag of shelled with an Israeli label bu...

I had thought that I was finished with the parochet/ark curtain. But when i put it on a rod the whole thing flopped in a really horrible way. I removed the hanging sleeve and then stitched the front to the back along the top third of the piece. I used silver metallic thread in the sky and quilted the two layers together. The back is no longer pristine, but that is better than having the parochet droop like dirty laundry. I resewed on the hanging sleeve  by hand and also took some teeny stitched into the face of the piece, i hope not very obtrusively to further keep the top from flopping. I'm also in the home stretch for Zoe's tallit. The atara/neckband looks wonderful. I am going to have to re-do the corners for the third time. I am not happy. But I do think that I figured out a solution for the corners.

Zoe is the younger sister of one of my daughter's friends. The girls met in baby group and became friendly again while they were in high school. I mostly remember Zoe as a teeny little girl in a stroller. Working with Zoe was a blast. Zoe's Torah reading tells of the Exodus from Egypt. One of the verses says " ( and the Exodus) was in the middle of the night". Zoe loved that line. I do too. there is a table song that is sung , by not all that many people, towards the end of Seder, and that line is the chorus. Like many liturgical poems, it is a run though of Jewish history. In this case the poem refers to all of the many miracles that happened to the Jewish people in the middle of the night . I have a particular fondness for that poem/song, not because we sang it to such a lovely melody, but because my father used to howl it in the very same way that his grandfather did. My father would chant/howl it using the very same Polish accent his grandfather used....