sarah in nyc

All of our Passover stuff got put away. All of our during the year stuff is back more or less in its place. This could not have been done without the gracious good spirited help of my kids. We had a slight blip when none of us could remember where we had put our dairy silverware. I was at that point so tired that I couldn't even remember what the silverware looked like. My husband found the giant tote bag. And if you were wondering what our dairy silverware looks like it is a mix of silverplate from as early as the 1920s and as recent as the 1950s. Yesterday our older son baked our first loaf of bread. While I really hadn't missed bread during Passover,  eating my first slice of home-baked bread in a few weeks, I was reminded about what a truly wonderful thing bread is. With the holiday over, it was time to get back to work. I spent a long time yesterday typesetting text for an atara.  My client wants a selection of prayers that are meaningful for him on the atar...

Last night was the last night of Chanukah. Just three of us were home last night. One of the things that is wonderful about city life is the fact that you can fulfill the public display aspect of the mitzvah of lighting Chanukah candles in a really good way.  Our kitchen is across a courtyard from another apartment building. Several floors worth of our building can see our lit Chanukiyot.I would guess that more people see our candles across the courtyard on one Chanukah night, than the total number of people who saw our candles on Presidents Lane during all of our years of lighting candles there. It has been unseasonably warm for the past few days. This morning I walked to services in deep fog. I managed to clean the wax off of our chanukiyot. Lots of boiling water did the trick.  I also have to make a new batch of havdalah bags. I needed to create fabric for the borders. There was some black satin in my stash that was perfect for the job. My goal...

the last time I posted about Charlie’s tallit my big decision was which fabric to use for the atara. I ended up choosing the wool broadcloth. My next step was painting the letters onto the wool. I began with by painting the lettering with a flat tipped brush with black and then I outlined the letters with gold paint. I was planning to embroider around the letters. I wasn’t sure if I would machine embroider or work by hand.  Each have certain advantages. Machine embroidery is faster, but fiddlier. What I end up doing is essentially using the sewing machine as a paint brush.  While it is doable with a whole verse full of lettering one needs to be in the right mood to approach the task.   I was going through a mild case of food poisoning from a restaurant meal and frankly my ability to focus was not at it’s best. I decided to hand embroider around the letters. It would take longer but worked with how my brain was working.   Before I could start though, I ...

I had printed up silk to use as borders on the Royal Feast challah covers. But, I had a last moment change of heart. Looking at the challah covers, I thought they needed a healthy dose of red. So I did this instead. The one with a diamonds needs a bit more oomph. So I’m doing a bit of this.

One of the many wonderful things about having my older son living home is that he likes to cook. This week he offered to make part of the meal. He claimed, or as those of us who grew up in Boston say, hosied the Challah.  The roasted broccoli was a joint effort. The chicken was made with flavor consultation with said son. There are the chicken and the challah passing one another on the stove top. The challah is egged up and is waiting for the oven to hit 425.  Once the challah is in the oven I lower the temperature to 385. This is one of my father’s rules for excellent bread baking.  I take this teaching on faith. Actually, you end up with a really nice crust if you start the bread off with a high heat. The chicken is made with Herbes de Provence   and some hefty squeezes of fresh lime. I had a tomato in the fridge so I chopped it up into the bottom of the chicken pan. I guess I could have done something fussier, but you don’t get much yummier than this. ...

One of the nice thing about being married ( and there are many) is that my husband will often offer his two cents on a piece that I’m working on .   I was ready to simply edge the pages on the Shabbat table book and sew them together. But my husband kept asking me, “ What! No cover????”   So, I spent a chunk of today obsessively painting on velvet.   I think that the cover will look pretty with the interior This also lets you know that my husband and I have a vastly different marriage than his parents did.  If my father in law would suggest something to my mother in law her usual response would be that he didn’t know anything.   I think my husband may have been right. Tomorrow I will finish the construction. The photos I posted of my kids got me in a sentimental mood and here is a photo taken of me with my two older sisters in a horse drawn carriage in Montreal. I was ten or eleven in this photo. Let me know if you remember me ( o...

After a few false starts…. Photocopier toner and printer toner has changed formulation over the past few years making doing photo transfers an entirely new adventure. Luckily the photocopy place around the corner has a machine with toner  that works for my specifications.   I’m pretty pleased with the results. There are many more texts to go, but it’s nice to no longer feel completely frustrated. I’m choosing old fashioned clunky types on purpose.  Most of the prayer books that I’m selecting from were set in type in the 1920’s or earlier.

Here it is. The very first snow of the season. If you look closely you can see whitish flecks.  You had to look closely. It lasted less than an hour. The ground is too warm for the snow to stick. Today felt like a dress rehearsal for winter. It was really cold out.  But I know that if it were as cold in January, ( in the high 30’s) we would think that we were having a warm spell. I also worked on some odds and ends of work. The quilt square is in progress Two Challah covers are in the hopper as well. I went to the dentist and my teeth are clean. So all in all, a productive day.

And DONE!!!!