sarah in nyc

I think my challot were as sick of all of the past few weeks of holiday and staged a protest by not rising. Amazon.com Widgets Each challah is a brick. They will probably taste good but they sure are dense. All of my kids and my daughter's intended will be joining us tonight so I made meringues, or as they are known around these parts,  whities. Tonight's whities have been enhanced with bittersweet chocolate, raisins and rice crispies. I scratched a dress making itch yesterday by turning a funky panel of black and white striped double knit into a dress. It took a little while to figure out the stripe placement so the dress was flattering. four long darts provided shaping. I am especially pleased that the stripes match and at every seam too. This is probably a first for me. I wore the dress to a meeting last night. I love the early 1970's vibe the dress gives off. I felt very efficient and smart at the meeting. it must have been the dress. ...

If you were here sitting next to me as I was getting ready to write this post I would ask you if you wanted to to read about the dress first or Shabbat  dinner first. Since you aren't here by my elbow, I will just begin. Amazon.com Widgets A few weeks ago I came home and our doorman handed me a package with two beautiful lengths of fabric inside. One was a beautiful rusty red brocade, the other was a length of blue and turquoise ikat-dyed and woven Guatemalan cotton. The package had no indication who gave me this wonderful gift. I was both delighted and puzzled. I asked our doorman a few questions about who might have left the package. I thank my older sisters for their many hours of playing 20 questions with me. I was able after a few questions (fewer than 20) to figure out that these fabrics were a gift from my friend Arleen who is downsizing her apartment. I thanked her in synagogue. She told me that the red fabric was left over from upholstering her dining room ...

My parents had many prized possessions, but among the objects they loved was a set of pewter plates they found in a local antique store. Amazon.com Widgets They are most probably 19th century copies of 18th century plates. The top one reads Shabbes Fish  the lower plate reads  Shabbes Kugel. Those plates hung in our kitchen in Quincy from the time my parents acquired them in the 1970's until after my mother died. Now they hang in our dining room. During Passover we ate one big meat meal after another. I wanted to have a lighter meal this Shabbat. I suggested to my husband that we eat fish tonight. He quipped that we should eat both S habbes Fish and Shabbes Kugel,   just like our plates. I rarely make kugel  but to match the plates, I did. It's a spinach and cheese kugel. It isn't cooked in a round pot like the one on the pewter plate. I know that those round kugel pots were how kugels were made in Eastern Europe but I think that both of my paren...

Our washing machine has developed a drip. The repairman was scheduled to come today--any time from noon until 5. It's Friday, of course I have nothing else to do!...I agreed to the timing.  Yesterday I got a call from the repairman saying he planned to show up at 1:00. I can do that but I had plans to meet a friend for lunch, Shabbat dinner needed to get cooked . My son is usually a good sport about working around my schedule but he had a commitment.  Amazon.com Widgets My friend was willing to have lunch at home with me but aside from the food I was cooking for Shabbat, the larders were pretty bare. I got up early, got the chicken going, Cleared out all the stuff around the washing machine and got a workout in. I showered and got a load of laundry in the washing machine before the repairman came.  I then got a call from the repairman. He was coming an hour early. Great! but there was a load of wash going in the machine he was supposed to fix. I had adjusted ...

I am an avid collector and reader of vintage sewing books.  One of the reasons for my minor obsession  is that some of these older sewing books also contain the great secrets of garment drafting without a pattern. Amazon.com Widgets The other day I found  this blog , The Midvale Cottage post which focuses on vintage clothing.  I was delighted to find a large collection of posts focusing on the work of Ruth Wyeth Spears. It's easy enough to find copies of her 1943 book on Ebay and on  Amazon . I was not aware of her brilliant work from the 1920's. Ruth Wyeth Spears breaks down what looks at first glance to be a complicated dress into dead simple steps. With a little thought you can use these methods in a dress that works for today's silhouettes. I just love this dress. Ruth Wyeth Spears seems to have been brilliant at breaking down visual problems to their simplest components. She had a Home Dec column that appeared in newsp...

Navah is one of the few people here in New York who knows me from childhood. She and her husband were several years younger than my parents. They were the cool grownups in my childhood memories.  I am wearing the blindingly white tights, Navah is wearing a cool peasant inspired maxi dress  Amazon.com Widgets Navah has been needle pointing tallit bags for her husband, her son and her grandchildren. I would guess that the first of the bags was in the planning stages when the above photo was taken.( This was the great hey-day of needlepoint. My own adventures in needlepoint began right around this time.  For the last several years I have been providing the lettering for Navah's tallit bags. This time after completing her bag Navah asked me to also construct the bag. While I had done lots of needlepoint from the ages of 11 to 18 or so, finishing off needlepoint was not something I had done before. I found several sites that explained how to finish the pi...