sarah in nyc

The Passover dishes are all put away with a great deal of help from my husband and kids and my son's friend. Shir haShirim, the Songs of Songs is  usually read on Passover and one of the famous lines there is "for lo the winter is past.." I grew up in New England where a snowstorm in April is not unheard of. Usually, I think that my New York neighbors are weenies when they complain about the cold in April. But this year, despite the Song of Songs and despite the calendar day after day feels like late November. The calendar does read April though so my next tallit is due fairly soon. This tallit is being made for a young man who was born in Ethiopia. I am using parts of an Ethiopian hand woven scarf in the tallit. The text that is tying the tallit together comes from the teachings of Nachman of Bratslav. The melody was written by Baruch Chait who was a member of the band The Rabbi's Sons which was the Orthodox version of The Beatles. Their music was even more ...

This is a post that will have appeal to the sewing geeks among you. If you don't care about garment construction, don't bother reading the rest of this post.   Yesterday one of my sewing buddies wanted to know how I figured out where to place the darts in  my daughter's birthday dress. I had learned  a cool method from  this book Amazon.com Widgets Which you can download from Amazon for not very much money, or buy on Google play for even less money. I am using paper for this tutorial because I am not making a dress today. This is your basic A line dress shape. It already has a crease down the center because you have probably cut your dress out on a fold. You will need that crease later. Fold the dress where you want the starting point of your waist dart. Press that fold well.  Do the same for the ending point of that dart. Then fold the dress on that center line. Waist darts are often put in line with the top shoulde...