sarah in nyc

 it sort of snuck up on me this week. Dinner tonight is just the two of us at the table. This is what is on our chicken. I was planning to make my take on the take out rotisserie chicken that my late mother in law used to buy all the time at  Mauzone in Queens ( smoked, sweet and hot paprika) but as I was putting the spice mix together I sort of took a left turn and added allspice and cayenne pepper and a bit of Ethiopian Berbere seasoning to my little lavender bowl. My husband kept mentioning how great the chicken smelled the entire time it was cooking so I have high hopes for this experiment. This particular batch of chicken bottoms from Costco must have been the football players  or the body builders in the chicken yard.  They are HUGE. I cooked tonight's vegetables in the air fryer. Last night we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Tanta Marcia and her husband Fred at Taam Tov in the Diamond District. The meal was wonderful. There is something so glorious about th...

    This book just arrived at my house yesterday. It’s from 1987 and the clothing has the look of the mid 1980’s. Actually, this isn’t the neon leggings and splatter print sweatshirts that teens may have worn but the sort of easy classics that  a grown up woman would wear. much of that look can still be worn today. Clearly we tend to like a more fitted look in 2011. But it’s easy enough to take in the side seams a bit or to add a couple of darts to a garment.   The patterns are well drafted and the directions look  pretty good. I love her directions for a swing back coat. I may end up making one  this winter. I saw one sweeping down Broadway on a blustery day last winter and I got a serious case of coat-lust. The question of if I actually need another winter coat is not on the table. I don’t. For some reason, wonderful winter coats keep appearing at my house.  I guess I’m just willing to wear folk’s dead relatives coats.  I may have to...

I collect old sewing books. I particularly love old sewing books that show how to draft patterns. I bought this book online last week. It’s a winner. it was published in 1930 and was written by Evalyn Shackelford. It’s published by the White Sewing Machine Company. Lots of sewing books from the era show various methods of making pockets  or using specialized sewing machine feet. For me the value of a sewing book , like a cook book comes from the number of keeper ideas in the book.  this book has several. This method of creating a strip of button holes is brilliant. I guess it made a whole lot of sense in the pre button holes made on the sewing machine era. I think that button hole strips like this, made with contrasting binding would look really terrific on a garment. This book also shows a particularly clever way to create bias yardage that does not require a whole lot of cleverness on the part of the user. The book has a curious feature, which is drafts for garment...

 Apron illistrations from Smart Sewing- 1949  My own take on the domestic goddess uniform-My apron is knee length on me. Sometimes it seems as if you can’t have a sewing blog without featuring aprons.  My mother never, ever wore an apron. My father though, used to wear a big denim, butcher’s apron when he baked bread. For lots of the women about half a generation younger than I am who are sewing and blogging about it, aprons seem to evoke a sort of “days of yore domesticity”. lots of these blogging young women have taken on apron wearing in a tongue in cheek sort of a way. A few years back I had made myself a butcher’s apron that didn’t quite work. but I wore it when I baked bread. One of my sisters had given me the 1949 edition of “Smart Sewing” an annual magazine with nifty sewing projects. I fell in love with the darted aprons made out of a bias square of fabric and finished off with a big ruffle. I wanted an apron that would provide more coverage for bread ...

  Many years ago, my niece referred to the sorts of clothing that vegans might wear as "vegetarian clothing". Normally I don't wear vegetarian duds. However, it's really hot and sticky out. It's too hot to wear the knit dresses that I usually wear. I purchased the fabric for this dress at the African market on 116 Th Street several weeks back. The women I bought the fabric from, seemed shocked that I would be making the dress myself. Many of the printed African fabrics come with a really heavy dose of sizing. I think the fabrics work better for head wraps in their stiff unwashed state. Although I find the shiny sizing glaze on the fabric to be attractive, I really did want the dress I was planning to make to actually have a bit more drape. I washed the fabric and it has the weight and hand of a coarse quilting cotton. That's still just fine for a summer dress. Next, I had to decide what the dress would look like. Last seek I purchased "Design ...

a new widget on this blog. Different people learn in different ways. Lots of people I know learn new techniques by taking classes. I learn new techniques by reading.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a town with a wonderful public library system. The Thomas Crane Public library  has a large collection of hand craft books. My family's usual Friday afternoon routine was to come home from school and then to load up on books for the weekend.  This image of the Thomas Crane library comes from Quincy Daily Photo, http://www.quincydailyphoto.blogspot.com/ a blog that I visit daily for glimpses of my home town. Architecture geeks may recognize this as being a H.H. Richardson building. The building is a gem, beautiful even when unrenovated. It has recently undergone a spectacular renovation. My usual load of books would contain a mix of trashy novels, a couple of collections of classic plays, a book or two of etiquette from the 1920's , maybe a book on the fight for women's ...