sarah in nyc

Usually when I finish a piece, all I can focus on is all of the little ways it is imperfect. Eventually, with a enough time and distance, I can re focus on what makes the piece good. Elan's atara seems to be an exception to that quirk of mine. I love this atara. I love how it works with this particular tallit. I chose the blue and white checked ribbon because it echos the weave of the tallit. The colors are a bit too strong so I toned the strong blue down with the silver scallop stitch and i went a bit further by using a silvery grey embroidery thread to stitch the atara to the tallit. I LOVE how the silver scallop stitch over the checkerboard feels like sun glinting off of water when the sun is a bit low on the horizon. A Jewish ritual object unlike a painting on the wall, has to work  both close up as well as from a distance. This atara will be experienced by Elan when he holds the tallit close up to his face before donning it. It will be also experie...

I'm really proud of this piece. So you get to see lots of pictures of it. Amazon.com Widgets I love how the gold silk sets off the lace. Because I added stripes to the under side of the tallit, when the tallit is flipped over the shoulders it still reads as a striped tallit. I used the scalloped borders at the outer edges of the tallit. and scalloped the backing. When the tallit is worn with the sides down this is what the stripe pattern looks like, a mix of vintage gold ribbon, machine embroidery and hand couched gold ribbon.  These are the back corner pieces, constructed out of the lace, the monogram and a bit of hand cording. Thread marking the eyelet. Jane comes on Monday to tie the tzitzit. I had an extra gallon of milk in the fridge. So I turned it into a soft cheese. The end result was very much like that fancy cloudlike ricotta cheese you buy in fancy grocery stores. I decided to turn it into lasagna f...

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 ...

I cheated a bit yesterday. The Challa cover with the appliqued leaves was not quite completed. It was still not backed and was missing it's border. As I looked at it during the evening, I realized that it needed some floral matter in addition to the appliqued foliage. Sometimes I purchase fabric because I have a specific project in mind for it. Sometimes I purchase fabric because it simply appeals to me. The crinkle purple iridescent poly I used for the flowers appealed to me on a purely irrational basis. I found it in a curtain store on 37th street. it was a magpie purchase. "Shiny! Crinkled! Iridescent! Must own!" At $5/yard two yards was not a bad deal. I tore off a three inch strip and serged the long ends together. Then I snipped off 3-5 inch lengths of the strip , sewed them into bagels and then gathered the serged edge.. Then I gathered the open end and sewed the flower like purple lumps onto the challa cover. Several of these flowers have a bead sewn into the ...