sarah in nyc

  Often, the hard part of doing a project isn't the work itself but the hard work of staying at the work even though it might be tedious.  Embroidering a biblical verse is my case in point. My usual trick to keeping at the task is to embroider the letters in a random order. I had hopes to have the colors used in the embroidery to shift across the verse so that trick to keep my nose to the grindstone wouldn't work. I had to come up with another trick to keep myself focused and not do dumb stuff to avoid the task at hand. Instead I pulled away the threads of the batiste as I finished each word. It is actually easier to work on small segments than big ones. This tallit is due soon so I really needed to just keep working away. מוֹנֶ֣ה מִ֭סְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִ֑ים לְ֝כֻלָּ֗ם שֵׁמ֥וֹת יִקְרָֽא׃ He reckoned the number of the stars; to each He gave its name. Psalm 147:4   Given that this is the text on the atara/neckband I wanted to keep the sense of endless stars going throughout the...

 Normally I will post about a piece as I am working away on it.  as many of you are learning Covid is a real energy suck. I could have either worked on Liat's tallit or I could have blogged about it. I was unable to do both. I could delay writing a blog post but the bat-mitzvah wasn't going to wait for me to get better. So I chose to work even in my diminished state. Covid did make lots of the tasks involved in making this tallit take much longer than normal. Case in point, the pinot or corner pieces. Under normal circumstances, they would have been completed in a day.  With Covid, the task took five days.  As of this minute, the tallit itself is completed. Some of my sewing buddies detest sewing for others and never do it. Some of them find working with a client to be an entirely unpleasant experience. As I look at this tallit I love it because I never in a million years would have envisioned the sight of the sounds at Mount Sinai to be the color spectrum. How freak...

 Tonight we have in-person guests, an old friend of my husband's and his family. We will be eating-- Chicken with za'atar and lots of lemon and lime, and potatoes cooked with red peppers and paprika. Not pictured is the cooked eggplant and zucchini. My husband will be making a green salad. More work is being done on tallitot and atarot. Ribbon is being embroidered to edge the atarot. This one needs another layer of embroidery. I think this one is complete but will be stitched down with bronze thread to add an extra bit of wonderful. This where it goes-- The combination makes my eyes happy. And we are eating cake for dessert. A faked blueberry citrus cake--meaning made without a recipe. Aside from the blueberries, the cake is flavored with lots of lemon and lime peel, ginger, some fresh lemon juice, limoncello, and orange juice. I prepared the bunt pan with coconut oil and sugar so it has a crunchy crust. And now I go take a pre-dinner nap. Shabbat Shalom!

One of the things that experience has taught me is that the best order for doing work is not always  the instinctive one. I am working on an atara that includes the following text אִלּוּ פִינוּ מָלֵא שִׁירָה כַּיָּם, וּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ רִנָּה כֲּהַמוֹן גַּלָּיו, וְשִׂפְתוֹתֵינוּ שֶׁבַח כְּמֶרְחֲבֵי רָקִיעַ, Even if our mouths could fill with song as water fills the sea, You can listen to a musical setting of the text while you read the rest of this post I had already dyed the strips of silk that would be layered to become the sea. Here you see them both separately  and layered.  I dyed the velvet that would become the sky. You see it both wet, and dry Years ago with less experience doing these things, I would have built the sea and then added the lettering. I want the letters to sit inside the sea, partially submerged and partially above the water the way a body is in and above the water when swimming.  That...

 Over the past several days I finished dyeing the cotton for the brit milah pillow. I had wanted the text to be in the cosmos and the cosmos populated with a few heavenly bodies. This is my sketch for the project ( in case you don't commit every word I type to your long term memory).  One of the things I have learned with years of experience doing this sort of work is how to plan how to attack the various tasks needed to complete the job and in what order. I cut the fabric to pillowcase  size and pressed it to be sure that it is colorfast. I then sketched out a moon, a couple of stars and a something that is either a planet or the sun onto a white linen men's handkerchief. I have a bag full of beautiful ones in my stash and I thought that the finely woven white linen would be perfect for the job. After I sketched out the shapes and the text to go inside I went over my pencil line in gold paint and then floated color inside of the gold lines. Then I t...