sarah in nyc

Food Friday- cranky edition VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL      For dinner this week we are eating a beef soup and meat balls made with a vegetable slurry. My youngest will eat nearly anything if it is served slathered with barbecue sauce. I pureed an onion, a monster sized carrot, a giant parsnip and a potato and cooked them in the microwave. Then I mixed the vegetables with two pounds of meat, a ton ...

Rachel's waves I’m now working on the ocean portion of Rachel’s tallit. I layers three colors of Shantung, a turquoise a blue/grey and a dark green.T stitched waves and then began cutting away layers of the silk. while I was working, I found a length of silk charmeuse that I had dyed in blue/greens. I’m adding some waves in the charmeuse. Once the piece looks oceany enough, I will then satin stitch and cover all of the raw edges. I suppose that there other other ways to build an ocean out of fabric, but this is my favorite method. crossing Broadway Walking on the south bound lane of Broadway after the storm And now for the continuing weather report.  You can see that at 9:00 this morning, that Broadway was still unpopulated by cars, you can see the lone walker walking south.  The cross streets were still unplowed. A little later on in the day I saw parents pulling their little one on a sled, going west. During the night I saw the Chinese restaurant delivery men weav...

Although I haven't written about it in a while, I have been working away on Noah's invitation, refining the design, based mostly on input from Noah's parents. These conversations have been lovely, far ranging in scope, all of these versions of the invitation with small variations are sharpening the final design in a really good way. It's taking Noah's mom a little while to realize that I actually like the input and don't feel at all criticised by it. Our discussion this morning, made me realize that I need a smaller square tipped nib. I do most of my calligraphy on fabric and not paper, so my supplies for doing calligraphy on paper are on thin side.I have a really large selection of paint brushes and only a small selection of nibs. Today, was one of those perfect New York fall days. it seemed like the perfect day to bring my husband to the High Line. I had been a few months ago with my sister. It was an atrociously hot and muggy day when we had gone but it...

Some days, it feels like have gotten nothing done. This is when having this blog comes in handy. As I think about what to post, it forces me to look back at my day and account for my day. Today I woke up before 5:30 because my youngest had to be awakened to be at school early for a class over night trip. I made him breakfast, ( with hot chocolate made with grated Callebaut chocolate and lots of vanilla) got him out the door for his trip to the country in the driving rain. I made a flyer for a building light bulb recycling project and tended to other building board work. I did a silly Bollywood dance workout video. I also made the first of five Cholesteral Death Kugel's that I'm making to serve this Shabbat after services as part of our goodbye for our oldest son. At this point, it was 9:30 am. I went to a rainy grave-side funeral in New Jersey. I also found a printer to do the print work on the invitation that I'm designing. Then I got to work on a second draft of t...

This is the street level view of Broadway across the street from my apartment. The photo comes by way of http://www.biking-in-manhattan.com/ . Broadway was designed by the planners of the city to be the West Side corollary of Park Avenue, a tree line avenue with a green way in the center. Clearly, things didn't work out according to plan. Broadway is the commercial spine of the West Side, but we do have a tree lined avenue with a strip of greenery in the median strip. For those of you who live in more bucolic settings, this might seems hugely urban to you. But when my youngest and I were once walking at this very spot on his way home from day care, he commented that we lived in the jungle. At first I thought that he might be referring to the Urban jungle--but no he pointed out that there were trees, so surely we must be in the jungle. This morning the birds were singing in full voice as I was walking to services. It was a wonderful harbinger of spring on this cold and damp day....

This is what I see when I look out of the windows of our apartment. One of my friends from the Creative Machine list wrote to me about how she likes to hear about my life here in New York. Part of our apartment faces Broadway. This is what you see when you look out of those windows. Most of our apartment though, faces the back wall of the building next door. The building next door was built several years before ours, and used to be a classy place. For the past at least 30 years it has been an SRO, a single room occupancy hotel. Most of the residents were recently released from mental hospitals or jails. Needless to say, our windows that face out neighbors are all curtained--all of the time. I never wash those windows. Recently, though, the SRO has been renovated for formerly homeless families. I hope that our new neighbors are quieter than the former tenants of the SRO. Our former neighbors were very much a part of our lives. We heard their music, their fights and what they watc...