sarah in nyc

A visit to a great exhibit and work of various kinds

2026-10-19T22:17:48.099-04:00

We actually went someplace yesterday! We went to the Bard Graduate Center to see the exhibit Goddesses in the Machine, an exhibit about fashion in the silent movies. I am happy that I created the link to the exhibit because the virtual exhibit is almost as good as going in person.

The exhibit is wonderfully curated. The seated figure in a vitrine shares her bench with visitors watching clips of silent movies including some about how to properly wear a hat when attending a movie, (You put your hat on your lap during the movie.).

I am going to assume that all of you are going to click on the link and virtually attend the exhibit. So I don't have to be comprehensive here and have the luxury of just pointing out some things that particularly appealed to me.

SHOES!!!

I just loved the shoes.

Below are ,"Spans", a brilliant invention . Spans are clip on show straps, in this case bejeweled that allow you to turn any pair of pumps into a pair of dancing shoes. The straps hold the shoes securely onto the wearer's foot.

You could add decorative shoe clips to change up your shoes. For a brief moment in the 1980s I owned a couple of pairs of shoe clips that I wore on my pumps to spiff them up for dressier occasions. They weren't nearly as lovely as the ones in the exhibit.

Or you could invest in several pairs of Spans to spiff up your shoes.

Party shoes in gold kid! Could anything be more elegant?

These pilgrim shoes were worn by Mary Pickford.

I even saw footwear that I would wear in my actual life and not just in my fantasy life.

I was completely smitten by this dress. The base of it is a simple bias cut silk dress--almost a nightgown that is covered by gathered tulle "shingles" that range from ivory at the top to black at the hem.

This dress must have looked beautiful filmed in black and white. The shading of the tulle is also practical, the hem of one's dress is bound to get soiled when dancing and the soil will just show less on black than on white.

An added surprise was the name of the designer, Frances Spingold. I attended Brandeis University. The theater, Spingold Theater, designed to supposedly look like a top hat was donated by Frances and her husband.

I had no idea, until I saw the exhibit, that the donor was a noted theatre and movie designer.

My husband, was of course charmed by Theda Bara's costume.

Just a bonus look at the beautiful staircase at the Bard Graduate Center.

Going to a museum is always a burst of energy for my work. Right now I am working away on restoring Jerry's atara.

The appliqued hand dyed silk had broken in some of the letters.

It seemed that the easiest solution was to embroider over the broken silk. I am chain stitching using a mix of different colored rayon embroidery threads .I love how the mix of colors in the needle give a slight iridescence.

The original silk was hand painted and each letter had a range of colors in it.

The letters on this side of the atara were appliqued with metallic/silk organza in a shimmery teal green.

I am surprised at how much I am enjoying the process of restoring this piece. One thing that makes it easier, is that I know the original intent of each detail. So substituting something that may look different but does the same thing has been a pleasant puzzle to solve.

My goal is to make this atara last until Jerry's 120th birthday.

And on a completely unrelated note, this is today's bread.

It's a pumpernickel raisin loaf made with rye flour, unsweetened cocoa, and carraway seeds. I dusted white flour over the loaf before scoring the crust.

really and truly done

2026-10-16T16:26:04.890-04:00

I had promised Jess that her tallit would be wearable by Rosh Hashanah. It was. The atara though, was not yet completed.

I worked on hand embroidering the letters through a nasty head cold.

I used hand dyed silk embroidery threads. I used them because they evoked the colors in the watercolors that Jess's late mother had used in her beautiful sketch books filled with little watercolor landscapes, color studies, poetry, and reflections on what she was seeing and thinking. This seemed like a lovely way to include Jess's mother who had died completely unexpectedly not long ago.

Once I was done with the embroidery I backed the atara with two pieces of crisp drapery fabric to give it just the right amount of body. I cut the atara to size and rough edged the three layers with my serger.

Then it was time to create a binding.

I embroidered one edge of this beautiful blue and white striped satin ribbon with a teal scallop stitch. I planned to fold the ribbon along the dark blue center stripe the scallop would shop on the front of the atara and the unstitched side would be unseen, behind the atara.

I pinned the embroidered ribbon in place with one of my new favorite tools, these plastic mini-clips.

Most old sewing books tell you to pin things in place for sewing using straight pins. I detest using straight pins. No matter how careful i am I get stabbed when using them. AND I always loose one or two that will always end up in the bottom of one of my feet. using the clips helps keep my sewing tidier. For a while such clips were insanely expensive and now they are not.

And of course I used decorative stiches to sew the binding to the atara.

Yup, you will have to wade through many photos of the tallit with the atara.

I am just so please with this tallit.

More importantly, so was Jess. I with that I could bottle the expression on her face as she tried her tallit on this morning so I could take it out any time I had any self doubt about my work.

In addition to finishing off this tallit, I also made Shabbat dinner. Well at this writing, most of it is done. The chicken soup is simmering away in the slow cooker. The chicken (roasted with ras-al-hanout)

will be put into a warm oven just before I light candles and the cauliflower that will be turned into a puree, known in these parts as "blobbo-taters" is awaiting flavoring and pureeing. dessert is just blackberries.

I leave you with this incredibly silly parodic song 'A Romance to a Cow". Sorry, this is a bonus bit of joy for those of you with good Hebrew. If you don't know Hebrew it is a charming melody performed well.

And the next song always makes me a little weepy.

Shabbat Shalom.

What my brain is good for

2026-10-12T21:28:19.012-04:00

The other day, I had a lovely initial conversation with a potential client about the possibility of my making her a tallit. She wanted to know if weaving a tallit was something that I would ever do.

The truth is, that in my youth I had fantasies about weaving and becoming a weaver. A friend even gave me a loom to play with. And as I typed this I remembered using a simple back strap loom in high school. The reality is that I have entirely the wrong brain and personality for large scale weaving.

Well, I had done some of that wild wooly and hairy weaving that was so big in the 1960s and 70's. But the sort of weaving that one does for a tallit where you meticulously plan every bit of the piece before you begin to work and there is no room to improvise once you have begun just doesn't work for me at all. So often, while I have a plan for my work I will often have to improvise in a way that don't work with classical weaving.

Jerry's atara is a case in point.

It's pretty clear that the hand embroidery had kept the fabric intact so I planned to just top the falling apart bits with hand embroidery. it seems like a simple solution that would work well. Well, that was the plan.

I dug through my stash and found a bit of the copper and metal fabric but not in a bright gold but in a more subdued dark bronze. It was pretty but to me, didn't convey Divine light.

So, I had to pivot. I found this piece of orange silk organza. It isn't metallic silk organza but it is exactly the right color and weight.

I realized that I could add gold embroidery both under and over the silk to give exactly the same feeling as the bright metallic and silk organza.

I am couching gold cord to what will be the edge of the orange organza. There may or may not be some machine stitching as well to keep the edges from fraying.

I know that most sewing book don't recommend using safety pins for basting, but they work well for me when working on a flat object.

And in a slightly unrelated topic... I backed and rough edged the atara for Jess's tallit with a serger. I still have to embroider the ribbon for it and use the embroidered ribbon to bind the serged edge.

And two more unrelated things.

1. I admired and didn't purchase this excellent vintage radio at the thrift store.

2. I have been enjoying watching the facade repair work taking place on the building across Broadway from me.

During COVID my building was undergoing similar repairs and I was the building representative working with the contractors. So, I can tell you that what the to masons in the photo above are doing is removing damaged mortar and bricks. It is painstaking work.

There will be more progress on the atarot in the next couple of days.

Revisiting a beloved piece

2026-10-09T17:13:58.185-04:00

About thirty years ago I was asked to make an atara to be a gift for Jerry. Jerry was one of the founders of an alternative Hebrew school in our neighborhood. Jerry was also one of the people who forged an alliance between the older mostly German members of our synagogue and the young counter culture former ( and still hippies) that were the new lifeblood of our congregation nearly fifty years ago. At that point, it wasn't the easiest marriage between the old guard and the new guard but Jerry helped to break down the barriers between the suit wearing older folks and the ripped up jeans wearing younger folks.

Jerry has prepared thousands of kids for their B'nai Mitzvah. He is a frequent and excellent Torah reader and for many years he organized Morning Minyan.

Jerry had often said that his favorite biblical text is the following:

(יא) כִּ֚י הַמִּצְוָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּ֑וֹם לֹֽא־נִפְלֵ֥את הִוא֙ מִמְּךָ֔ וְלֹ֥א רְחֹקָ֖ה הִֽוא׃ (יב) לֹ֥א בַשָּׁמַ֖יִם הִ֑וא לֵאמֹ֗ר מִ֣י יַעֲלֶה־לָּ֤נוּ הַשָּׁמַ֙יְמָה֙ וְיִקָּחֶ֣הָ לָּ֔נוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵ֥נוּ אֹתָ֖הּ וְנַעֲשֶֽׂנָּה׃ (יג) וְלֹֽא־מֵעֵ֥בֶר לַיָּ֖ם הִ֑וא לֵאמֹ֗ר מִ֣י יַעֲבָר־לָ֜נוּ אֶל־עֵ֤בֶר הַיָּם֙ וְיִקָּחֶ֣הָ לָּ֔נוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵ֥נוּ אֹתָ֖הּ וְנַעֲשֶֽׂנָּה׃ (יד) כִּֽי־קָר֥וֹב אֵלֶ֛יךָ הַדָּבָ֖ר מְאֹ֑ד בְּפִ֥יךָ וּבִֽלְבָבְךָ֖ לַעֲשֹׂתֽוֹ׃ (ס)

Deuteronomy 30:11-14

(11) Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. (12) It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” (13) Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” (14) No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

The text on the atara I made for Jerry has the first two words from verse 12, "It is not in the heavens" and the first two words from the beginning of the next verse, "Neither is it beyond the sea". Jerry loved the atara. I apologize but I can't seem to locate a photo of the atara when it was new.

During the summer I noticed that Jerry's atara was looking worn. I suggested that I mend it.

This is what arrived at my house. You can click on the image to enlarge it.

I designed the atara so the words under the words for sky look like sky and the words under "neither is it beyond the sea", look like sea. In the center is a flowing down of divine light. Both the sea and the sky are made out of a mix of fabrics that I dyed. The Divine light is made out of copper and silk organza. Unfortunately the copper fibers in that gorgeous fabric break.

Below you can see some of the damage close up.

Some of the sea fabrics have just worn away.

Some of the silk inside of these letters needs to be mended

The metallic fabric isn't in great shape.

I decided to tackle this job with the easiest bits first. It seemed to me, that the easiest way to fill in the missing ocean bits was to hand embroider rather than to applique in the missing bits. Luckily I have a stash of hand dyed embroidery threads in exactly the right colors.

The work has gone fairly quickly.

The hand embroidery gives me time to figure out how I will tackle the next bits of the task.

It's pleasant work.

And now, a new topic. I am grateful that i cooked such an insane amount of work for the holidays because I have been sick with a nasty cold for the past several days. I am so grateful to be able to pull out a bag of tzimmes from the freezer and not have to put together an entire meal today.

I did have enough energy to make a beef soup for tonight.

Shabbat Shalom!

This is now the season of the year when we pray for rain in Israel

October 7

2026-10-07T16:49:03.271-04:00

Just a couple of weeks ago t was the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Sunday was Simchat Torah the day in the Jewish calendar when October 7, took place. Monday, our dear cousin who was visiting from Houston really wanted to go to the 9/11 memorial and the 9/11 museum. I had never been to either the memorial or the museum before. It just felt too raw to me given that we lived through the experience and breathed in that smoke for weeks and weeks. The museum brought up too many really difficult emotions and memories of that time.

In thinking about this October 7, I had begun rereading the texts I had written to friends and family while we were in our son Aam's saferoom in Ashkelon where we spent the first two and a half days of the war. Ashkelon is about seven miles from Gaza. We could just see Gaza from our son's balcony.

These photos of the sky taken in the days before October 7.

Below is what I posted on Facebook on the 7th and 8th.

In Sam's safe room in Ashkelon. We were awakened by the sound of rocketfire at 6:30. We went to the safe room but had to leave when the smoke from the fire in a first floor apartment made things really smoky. The family was in their safe room and is fine. Oddly their sukkah was unhit. We hunkered down in the basement of the building across the way for a couple of hours when the bombing was pretty bad. We saw a fire door bow out from the force of a blast. Yes we were scared and moved to a more secure area in a hallway. We are now back in Sam's safe room. Early in the excitement Sam was in the bathroom and the window shutters imploded into into the bathroom from the shockwaves from a blast. So, in short, we are safe.

You know normally the fact that the glass panels on the balcony are all cracked and some from floors above us landed on our balcony... one of the bedroom windows is broken.. and the shutters in the laundry room all exploded into the bathroom... would seem like a disaster... but today those are tiny little worries.

Sam was in the bathroom when the shutters exploded into the bathroom early on October 7.

This was the window next to our bed. It was blown out while we were in the safe room

The balcony of Sam's apartment.

When Sam was little and things got stressful he went to sleep. He suggested that we do that tonight. He assumed that there would be many barrages tonight.. He was right. I took a break from dozing to go to the bathroom... (it's really smoky out there)and catch up with friends and relatives. we will reevaluate our situation in the morning... it's just before midnight now

We haven't heard sirens since last night. This morning David swept up the glass on the apartment floor. We learned that our Israeli friends and relatives stay in the safe room only when the sirens go off. We are so unused to the sounds of war that we tend to hover in the safe room. We were unable to run the fan or the lights in the safe room so it was hot and dark We rigged up a light with a plastic water bottle and a cellphone flash light.

Later reports said that there were 6,000 rockets sent from Gaza into Israel on the first day of the war. Given the number of warning sirens we heard that day and the number of explosions that we heard and felt that day, I am not surprized.

From the morning of October 8

We were able to shower today. The safe room is now pleasant and lit. It's gorgeous out. we venture out into the living room until various sound of war send us scurrying back.

We see some of our neighbors on their balconies.. I am not that brave.

More sirens. back in the safe room.

I also wrote a blog post once we had reached Dubai.further adventures.

We were following the news in both Hebrew and English as it was happening around us. I remember early on the 7th hearing reports of terrorists that were IN Ashkelon and hearing in real time as they were captured one by one. We sat in the safe room and heard about the atrocities at the Nova festival and in the kibbutzim hear Gaza. We were terrified and also felt relatively fortunate.

There were three separate moments during those two and a half days when I thought that we might die. And still I knew that we were fortunate.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my dear ones in Israel.

Old fashioned household chores

2026-09-29T19:19:37.326-04:00

Nothing makes me feel more like an old fashioned Domestic Goddess than the post holiday ironing of tablecloths and napkins. I have lost track of the number of tablecloths and napkins that were washed and ironed since yesterday. There have been many dinners in the past few weeks that have required a step up in the napery department.

Actually the thing that makes me feel the MOST like a Domestic Goddess is noting holes in said napery as I was ironing and then deciding to mend the holes--today. This is exactly the sort of advice that one finds in the introductory chapters to sewing books from the early part of the 20th Century. Mend those holes and rips as soon as you find them.

These charming napkins came into my life, perhaps from the large linen stash given to me from my friend Vivian from her mother's and grandmother's collection.

I noticed that one of the napkins was full of holes. The photo below is of the half dozen or so holes in the napkin.

Just as there are many ways to skin a cat, there are also many ways to mend a hole. My old sewing books are filled with advice about how best to mend such holes either my hand or by machine. I have learned over the years that machine mending is often quicker. I decided to go that route.

Below you can see some of my machine mends.

The final step is starching and ironing the napkin.

The mends are pretty much invisible and these 100 year old napkins can keep being used until the next batch of holes crop up.

I used to not mend these sorts of linens. But after I had gotten the giant stash of really old linens from Vivian I soon realized that so many of them have been mended over the years. It made me feel braver about attempting to keep these old textiles going.

I figure that if the choice is between having these lovely old things moldering away in a drawer or being used and appreciated, I would much rather have these old treasures used and part of our memories of the holidays .

A dresser scarf was also saved from oblivion today.

Below you see an old hand mend and a machine mend below it.

Another day, another Yom Tov

2026-09-25T16:57:35.431-04:00

As always, this time in the Jewish calendar, we are either celebrating a holiday, getting ready to celebrate a holiday or recovering from a holiday. Sukkot begins tonight.

But in between being in synagogue and recovering from all of the prep I have gotten a little bit of work done.

I have made progress since I took these photos. I am now in the process of embroidering the very last letter. You can see our new honey pot in the photo below. The fabulous tablecloth is a Vivian treasure a great piece of Central European hand weaving.

Sukkot begins tonight. We only have one challah left from the batch I made before Rosh HaShanah. We will have that very last challah and since we are obligated to have two loaves on the Shabbat table I made a batch of rye rolls for the second loaf.

We love bread however, we don't live on bread alone.

We are having some London broil as well as a

spinach kugel.

I can't swear exactly what spices I put in it but there were four eggs and some grated up challah, (in place of the more usual matza meal).

The image showed up on my Facebook feed this morning. I wish I could credit the brilliant creator. it just made me laugh so hard.

Forgive me, it is so inside baseball that it is difficult to translate and explain . Or more honestly it would require pages and pages of explanations that would wear you out by the time you got to the end. Trust me...it's funny.

Shabbat Shalom!

Chag Sameach!

Honey for the New Year

2026-09-18T17:56:26.872-04:00

I am someone with a strong nostalgic streak. There are objects from my childhood that I have a strong connection to. Along the way, and through the years since my childhood, some of those object got broken some got given away and others just disappeared. Clearly you can't own EVERYTHING that you were fond of in childhood all at the same time, because if you did you would have no room in your home to actually live.

Some things have a pull.

My parents were collectors of lovely things. They owned lots of Judaica. they also had lots of lovely china and silver. Among the objects in their collection was a Belleek honey pot.

Belleek china as you might have guessed from the photo is made in Ireland. If you went into a home of someone with Irish roots there was likely a Belleek vase or teapot somewhere in the family collection of lovely things. (Just as if you went into a Jewish home in the 1960s you were likely to see a reproduction of the Chagall windows at the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem somewhere in the home.) Perhaps it was living in Irish-rich Quincy, my parents owned a several pieces of luminous Belleek.

I loved the honey-pot which spent most of the year living in the china closet. During the High Holiday season the honey pot was brought out filled with honey and set out on the dining room table and used during all of the High Holiday meals.

I have strong memories of being able to just look over the top of the dining room table and admiring the honey pot from every side and loving the bees attempting to enter the china honey pot.

The lid of the pot is fragile. It broke a few times and my mother would bring out the Duco-cement and fix it. Eventually, the little pot was broken beyond repair. Was I in high school? in college when it had broken for the final time? I don't remember.

The Belleek honey pot was replaced by a cut glass apple. It was pretty, but not the same thing.

Last year when we visited our son during his time in Amarillo we visited the many antique shops along Route 66. Most of the shops are curated towards a particular customer, people who love mid century goods, or people who are into Goth or Western wear. One shop was all white wicker and cotton eyelet. That shop had a collection of Belleek including honey pots of various vintages.

Seeing those objects from my childhood sparked a need. A couple of weeks ago I bought the honey-pot of my childhood in an eBay auction. It arrived two days ago.

And now it is filled with honey and will be used for the rest of the holiday season.

I am always surprised at how an object can take me back to being just tall enough to look over the top of the dining room table and just look at an object so hard that I could almost become one with it.

I am not sure if I will be able to post again before Yom Kippur. Here is a bit of music to prepare.

Shabbat Shalom! and I hope that you have a meaningful Yom Kippur.

Reminders of harder times

2026-09-17T11:06:16.022-04:00

Yesterday I looked out of my window and

Brian Stokes Mitchell sang "The Impossible Dream" from the Juliette balcony on the right most nights during the 7:00pm cheer

saw this scaffolding going up. All of you who live in New York know exactly what this is. In 1979 a Columbia student was killed by a piece of loose masonry hat fell from a building in the neighborhood. Since then, every five years every residential building in the city is inspected and every bit of masonry that might be a danger in the future is repaired.

This law has had a couple of consequences. The first is that it has kept all of us safer. Another is that the law has been a boondoggle for scaffolding companies, construction engineers and contractors.

The scaffolding keeps the workers safe

and also keeps pedestrians safe from falling rubble.

As an additional safety measure

after the scaffolding goes up a layer of screening covers the outside of the scaffolding. Being inside the the scaffolding and screening

is somewhat depressing.

Our building was covered in scaffolding during COVID. We were, all of us indoors and isolated.

Seeing the scaffolding going up across the street brings up so many memories of the terrifying time of COVID. And it is the 25th anniversary of 9/11. And it is nearly October 7. So all of those memories of hard times are very much on my mind. One can't help but revisit those difficult times.

And now a completely different topic.

Tuesday we closed up the little cabin we rented by a lake this summer. Please read that as: completely packing up the cabin, scrubbing every surface so we could return it sparkling to our lovely landlord. Packing up a car with all of the food and STUFF from the cabin. Unpacking all of it in our apartment. Washing everything that we brought home because lake living is a little bit dank and musty. Packing all of the food from the country into our still packed from Rosh Hashanah fridge and freezer and pantry. It has been a whole lot of stuff. We are slowly Un-Collyer Brothers our apartment.

However a lovely moment from the lake when I took a little break from cleaning.

This is just two of a flock of turkeys that was strolling near the lake.

And a household hint:

Musty pillows can be refreshed (destinkified and fluffed) by putting them in a dryer with a damp towel while on a low setting. This also works for down quilts.

The laundry pile is smaller. The fridge is no longer looking like Fibber McGee's closet and we get ready for Yom Kippur.

And just a reminder to people or bots wanting to post comments. I am delighted to post comments from actual human readers. I will not post comments that are actually random advertisements. I am talking to you nursing schools in Pakistan, and exterminators from Dubai and digital embroidery companies. Even if you post comments on dozens of posts in a day, if your comment is an ad or a link to your business I am not posting it.

Preparing for Rosh HaShanah

2026-09-08T22:34:38.453-04:00

I have a completely irrational belief that if my kids taste the flavors of the holiday foods from my childhood

then they will, by eating those foods

inherit my memories. Like I said, it is irrational. And yet, I do it every year.

My parents made these foods not to evoke their own families but to evoke the people that they loved in Halifax and that particular moment in their lives, the first years of their marriage. That Halifax evocation was so strong that my dear Halifax born friend, Shawna was able to identify whose cabbage and whose Tzimmes I serve.

I didn't grow up with the tradition of serving a plum tart made with Italian prune plums on Rosh Ha Shanah. But my dear German and Austrian born friends who are no longer living did. Herta, and Fanni and Ida are no longer living but I bring them to our Rosh HaShanah table every year.

This tart feels like we are inviting those three women to join our table for the New Year. My daughter has taken up the mantle of making the deep flavored honey cake made with coffee that my mother ALWAYS had in her freezer. There were always a few things that my mother always had in her freezer in case of an unexpected guest for tea. You could usually count on some of her chocolate cake topped with walnuts with the recipe from the can of Hershey's syrup, ruggelach from The Kosher Gourmet and Jen Margolis's honey cake from the K.I. cookbook. I actually don't make any of those standards of my mother's freezer but my daughter's honey cake evokes all of them.

Jess's tallit is done except for the atara.

Today, I stitched the eyelets.

I am working away on the atara.

First I painted the letters on paper.

Then I traced the letters onto tracing paper

I flipped the tracing paper over and traced the backward lettering onto white linen.

I stitched the outline of the lettering using silk thread.

Then I fill in the letters with chain stitching using the beautiful hand dyed silk embroidery threads that I found in a Santa Barbara thrift store.

During our conversations designing this tallit Jess brought along sketchbooks that her late mother had kept filled with lovely water colors and poems and essays.

The color in these letters has the feel of Jess's mother's watercolors. The base, since you asked, is a midnight blue four ply silk left over from a blouse I had made for a dear friend.

The atara will take me a little while to complete. I am happy with the progress that I am making. Jess will be picking up her tallit soon and the atara will be added to the tallit when it is completed.

It's only Tuesday. The tasks left to do before the holiday are feeling more manageable.

Just a taste of the liturgy.

Hoping that your preparation for the holiday is meaningful.

Some shofar thoughts

2026-09-04T17:27:03.659-04:00

I have had the honor of blowing shofar at my synagogue since the year my father died. I practice during the entire moth of Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah.

When I practice, I do a run through with each of the shofarot you see here. One was a bar mitzvah gift given to my nephew, the other was a bar mitzvah gift given to my son. The black one is easy to blow. the paler one is difficult to blow.

Each time I practice I do a run though first with the difficult shofar and then with the easy one.

We Jews like rules. There are lots of rules about shofar blowing.

I try to blow with the same power that my father did.

As a small child I was told that the three different sounds of the shofar correspond to a wail, and then sobs and finally completely broken up sobbing.

This year I learned something new. I learned that the long blast represents God's mercy and the shorter blasts represent God's judgement.

I can produce a long shofar blast. A previous year I read that one needs to make all of the blasts exactly the same length. For a while I worked on perfecting that skill.

This year, I believe that we all need a greater degree of mercy than we do of judgement. So when you hear me blow the shofar this year, it will be with a long, long blast for mercy.

My role as a shofar blower is a complicated one. It isn't a performance. I want the sound to be felt inside the bodies of the people in my congregation. When you hear a good shofar blower, at first you hear the sound but when the sound is sustained you begin to feel the sound reverberating in your chest.

My task is also to somehow send the hopes and prayers of my community up to the great Divine. It's a powerful honor

Shabbat Shalom!

Busy, busy, busy

2026-09-03T20:31:32.625-04:00

Jess's tallit

Is heading towards the finish line.

The pinot/corner pieces will be made out of woven strips of the ribbon that I embroidered both for Jess's tallit as well as for other recent tallitot.

I wove the strips together last night over a bit of fusible interfacing.

Eventually, it looked like this.

You are getting some additional photos just because I am feeling really pleased with myself.

All of this sewing is being interspersed with holiday cooking. The tzimmes tat was cooked in this graniteware roasting pan is now in the freezer. not visible is the 7.5 lbs. of flanken meat that are under the vegetables.

I am feeling especially fond of this pan because it has been working hard all week. Not pictured is the brisket that I cooked in there yesterday. Both the tzimmes and the beef are now frozen.

Today I used the same roasting pan to sweat the leaves off of two heads of cabbage.

Yes, there is stuffed cabbage making in my future. And of course the cabbage will be cooked in that same roasting pan.

For the last few days I have been going back and forth from sewing to cooking. I serged the woven ribbons into the basic rectangles for the pinot and there is some hand embroidery that I am finishing up on the tallit.

And now, a slight change of topic.

I had purchased the lavender floral fabric pictured above because it was on sale at Fabric Mart. For reasons I no longer remember I had only purchased a yard. I hadn't read the fabric description quite well enough and instead of being a smooth lightweight knit it was a heavy double knit. If you are keeping track, we are now up to two errors.

I cut out the dress and sewed it up and it was too short even using up every inch of length. OK that's three errors. I pulled the dress out of my fabric stash a little while ago and reevaluated how much of a disaster I was facing in the dress. I didn't have any lavender fabric to use as a ruffle to add a bit of length to the dress. I did have a bit of a purplish brown thin knit that I had used in a garment that was a complete and unsalvageable failure. I added circular ruffles to the hem cut from the completely failed garment. My older sewing books recommend that if you add a new print or color to a garment in one place you need to add it elsewhere so it doesn't look like a big fat mistake. So, a bit of that brownish knit binds the neckline. It isn't a great match, but as they say, "good enough for government work".

So there it is, a dress that was born out of a series of errors.

It's time to get back to Jess's tallit.

Some useful (and unexpected) sewing tools

2026-09-02T19:48:26.874-04:00

Because people know I sew I often am given random collections of sewing things.

The tool below, came into my life last summer.

I had no idea what it might be useful for until this summer. This tool has two excellent uses. First of all it is quite as a good sewing machine screw driver. One needs a really stumpy, short handled screwdriver to open up the cover to the bobbin case. This does the job well and is just stumpy enough to get into tight spaces.

The looped handle also gives this tool a second excellent use. This little tool is also an excellent bodkin. A bodkin is a tool that allows you to thread elastic or ribbon through a narrow casing. I sewed elastic to the top of the loop and easily threaded the elastic through a casing. Normally, I use safety pins as bodkins but sometimes a safety pin can decide to open mid task which can result in lots of cursing. I don't know if it is possible to buy a similar combination mini screwdriver/bodkin but if you find one, get it.

Below is a rolling ruler. It was first invented in the 1710s and was used in mapmaking and in technical drafting.

Apparently the metal rolling ruler of yore was reinvented in plastic in 1991. I first saw one in a quilt show in the early 1990s and it was an expensive tool that I lusted over. A few years later I started finding cheap knock offs for a couple of bucks. The knock offs work well but the rulers have an unpleasant tendency to break off just past the roller. They are still useful, although less so.

I found the rolling ruler above in a thrift store and it seems to be of better quality than the ones destined for a short life. I just used my rolling ruler this afternoon to mark the placement of this line of ribbon painted with text.

It makes a tricky job much less tricky.

The text painted ribbon is going on Jess's tallit.

It's in progress but nearing the finish line.

My secret weapon for painting lettering on fabric is

sand paper. It holds the fabric steady as you work. The standard painting on fabric method is to stitch the fabric taut into a frame. The sand paper is way easier and less time consuming.

My least favorite sewing activity is unsewing. Mistakes, large and small are inevitable. Unfortunately stitching has to sometimes get unsewn. It is a disheartening job. Inevitably, I will mess up when using the densest embroidery stitches.

I have been using disposable scalpels for years to undo stitching.

Every few years I will buy a dozen of these disposable scalpels. They are worth every penny.

I have recently started using disposable shavers to do the same task. You can pick one up in your local dollar store.

I now have to go back to some hand sewing on Jess's tallit .A pesky job, but I am the only one around to do it.

How Long?

2026-08-28T17:31:28.959-04:00

How long does it take to sew a seam??

Well, that depends.

I have been trying to sew two strips of ribbon onto Jess’s tallit for the past two days.

I have been plagued by the dreaded terry cloth or rats nest of thread on the underside of the fabric.

Not only is the loopy knotted mess of fabric ugly, it's also weak and does a bad job of holding two pieces of fabric together.

So, how do you fix this sewing machine malady? Sometimes all you need to do is insert a new needle.

That didn't work.

The next thing to try is to open up and clean up the bobbin case. Often the trouble is a teeny bit of errant thread.

The process of opening up and cleaning out the bobbin case is time consuming. Sometimes you can find that little crumb of thread easily. Yesterday and today it took close to a dozen frustrating tries, unscrewing the needle plate. disassembling all of the bobbin parts and then putting everything back in place to test out the machine,see if EVERYTHING was cleaned out and then have to go through the whole process again because some tiny bit of thread was hiding.

I finally, finally got the job done.It wasn't a fun process.

Wishing all of you a Shabbat Shalom.

Nearly Shabbat

2026-08-21T18:43:15.994-04:00

It has been a busy week.

Hanoch came up from Philadelphia to tie his titzit.

Yes, he was really happy with the tallit.

He had purchased really beautiful tzitzit in Jerusalem.

He was really happy with the result.

I am still working on the atara and will ship the tallit as soon as it is completed and stitched in place and I have trimmed all of the loose threads from the tallit.

We celebrated my sister's birthday.

And tonight I made Shabbat dinner.

I soaked dried limes in boiling water

and then broke the hard shells

before stuffing them into whole chickens. The dried limes pack a flavor punch.

I know this doesn't look terribly pretty but it should taste wonderful.

I didn't take a photo of the roasted vegetables or the semolina that I made. But I did make two pies.

I made a blackberry pie that is topped with an almond milk custard that has been flavored with rum. There is a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses to cover the less than beautiful color of the custard.

I also made a blueberry pie.

Tomorrow I am joining Shawna's husband and his family to make Shawna's Yahrzeit. I am leaving out the drama that went into the making of both of these pies. Let's just pretend that the disasters didn't take place and i will smile broadly when I serve them.

When I opened the freezer to take out two challot for Shabbat I discovered that a dinner guest from a couple of weeks ago had brought us a container of blueberry lemon sorbet! I wish I had served it when our guest was here but it just might be the perfect thing to serve with the pie.

There is still a giant stack of dishes to wash before dinner.

I know that this isn't the most beautiful melody, but this is how we sang this text. I could listen to this family all day long.

Below is a more melodic setting for this same liturgical poem.

And something to help you get ready for the high Holidays.

An Unexpected Shabbat at home

2026-08-14T16:45:02.430-04:00

We had plans, and they got cancelled.

That means that I had to bake challah.

I was thinking as I began putting together the challah dough how so much of the early stages of baking challah looks less than appealing.

It's pretty similar to my sewing while it is in progress. At some stages, it is just an ugly mess. as my British pals would say, "It looks a dogs dinner".

But with enough time and labor,

it takes shape and eventually

you end up with something beautiful.

Our boys are joining us tonight. We will be eating chicken wings made with

Pomegranate molasses, mustard and liquid smoke.

It's the perfect mix of tart, sweet acidic and smoky.

Yesterday I purchased three bottles of the pomegranate molasses at Barzini's a local packed to the gills gourmet grocery store. The store carried food and condiments from all over the world. Of course I loved it.

And sadly, unlike the news in the local news blog that I liked to, that said that the store wasn't closing--it is closing.

Everything was 40% off.

This is most of what I brought home.

When I went to check out, the owners kept asking me if I was Persian. They thought that I looked Persian, but once they saw that I bought three bottles of pomegranate molasses and three big bags of Iranian herb mix and a package of barberries they were convinced that I MUST be Persian. Finally, they were convinced that my family came from eastern Europe but they liked that I liked Persian ingredients.

I am roasting some potato wedges in the oven as I type. They are coated with....

let me see if I remember, smoked paprika, black pepper, cayenne and dill. Olive oil and lemon juice finish the potatoes off.

I still have to figure out the vegetable portion of our meal and a small dessert.

I hope that all of you have

a Shabbat Shalom.

Moving right along

2026-08-13T09:58:56.205-04:00

Hanoch, the man for whom I am making this tallit, is an army chaplain. He really wanted the pinot to echo the Jewish army chaplain stole (pictured below).

The stole isn't a tallit, but it is often worn on official chaplain business. The Christian stoles are similar but with Christian iconography. (I am not going to explain how the Christian liturgical stole is actually derived from Jewish religious dress, so the Army stole is a weird back borrowing. But that is a different topic.)

I suppose that I could have put in a million hours to replicate the embroidered insignia. I know that what I would have ended up with would have been an artistic take on the military insignia rather than the real thing. For some clients that would have been the perfect approach, but not for Hanoch.

So, uncharacteristically for me, I commissioned Jan Gorelick to use her computerized embroidery machine to create the pinot for me. The machine that Jan owns is the equivalent of a scanner and printer but instead of printing ink on paper, the output is embroidered on fabric. I am simplifying the work involved by a whole lot but, you get the idea.

I really loved working with Jan. This is what she sent me.

I wanted to integrate the Jan's pinot into the design of the rest of the tallit. I stacked a black Petersham ribbon over a turquoise satin ribbon and embroidered it into place with a gold metallic diamond stitch. Then I added the turquoise saw-tooth stitches on either side of the Petersham ribbon.

My goal was for the Jewish and the army elements in this tallit to have a conversation with one another and not sulk at opposite corners of the room.

Below you can see the ribbon applied on the pinot. I cut down the emblems that Jan had made. so the proportions would fit the tallit better.

Yes, I am aware that I haven't finished trimming all of the loose threads.

Jan had added a simple blue eyelet.

I sewed the pinot onto the tallit with a bright green scallop stitch. I expanded and embellished the eyelet using a turquoise silk thread a slate blue rayon embroidery thread and a gold metallic thread.

And here are the pinot in place on the tallit. Your brain doesn't actually notice the bright green stitches but it just works better than using the expected blue.

I really think that this works.

The atara still needs to be completed...but with tzitzit, this is a useable tallit. A friend saw the tallit the other day. She commented that she imagined a child snuggled close to Hanoch and just taking in all of the small details during services. My friend is right. I often design for the person looking closely at every detail of a tallit and not just the viewer from across the room.

And now a follow-up form Friday's post.

The custard did not set. It was delicious, but a sauce rather than a custard. After Shabbat, I added more tapioca starch to the mixture and cooked it for another minute or two in the microwave.

Food Friday and odds and ends

2026-08-07T17:26:34.490-04:00

Our table is set for Shabbat. People we love will be joining us.

What are we eating?

Chicken stuffed with dried Iranian limes. I softened the dried limes in hot water for a few minutes before stuffing them into the chicken cavities. The dried limes or limoo punch above their weight flavor wise.

We are also eating, what has become for us, the side dish of the season,

It's potatoes and carrot sticks roasted with olive oil, black pepper and lots of lemon juice. There is some sort of an alchemy that makes this simple combination taste much more complex and delicious than it ought to. You can certainly fancy this up with with some fresh herbs but there is no need to.

Salad will be made after I am done writing.

Below is either a lovely set custard or a wet mess. I made an almond milk based custard that I had planned to be vanilla flavored but I made some left turns along the way. I steeped cinnamon and mace in the almond milk and then added some bourbon and rose water and orange flower water along with the vanilla.

Either set or wet, this custardy thing will be served alongside some beautiful cherries.

In addition to being the season of potatoes and carrots roasted with lots of lemon juice, this has been a season of small appliance failure. One of the clear signs of small appliance failure is that pre-electrical fire aroma. The blow drier my husband gave me as a birthday gift in 1982 gave up the ghost at the beginning of the summer. The Vornado fan that I bought about thirty five years ago began emitting that electrical failure smell a few weeks ago. We bought a new one.

One of my irons sprung a leak. The electrical wiring in our bedroom has been finicky and we hadn't been able to use our air conditioner. Luckily my husband as able to get our unit to run last night.

I thought that the air conditioner unit in our dining room had died but it just needed a bit of crude DIY to get it working again.

As always, our lives are imperfect but pretty good.

Shabbat Shalom. Stay cool,

Things I didn't buy at Netcost- the Russian food market

2026-08-04T16:15:45.392-04:00

OK the following are items that amused me.

They sell lots of shot glasses with terrific Russian graphics. I am enough of a grownup to be satisfied with a photo.

I find the idea of Uncle Vanya canned foods to be really amusing.

We call this brand of chocolate, "ugly baby chocolate". On further thought the baby isn't that ugly but does look terrified.

The chocolate is actually not very good but my kids are always happy to get some because the packaging is so great.

Cookies with a different child on the package.

Russian sodas with excellent labels.

This cow graphic is even better than Elsie the Cow.

I purchased none of the above. they just gave me joy and I hope that they give you some joy as well.

Red shirts and a red dress

2026-08-03T23:18:24.040-04:00

The other day my husband and I saw something beautiful.

We were waiting for a bus in Washington Heights near the George Washington Bridge. On the corner of 181st Street and Broadway there was a man who had built a castle for himself out of garbage next to an overflowing garbage can.

Then I noticed two men wearing red George Washington Bridge Business Improvement District (BID) shirts interacting with the man in the garbage encampment.

They spoke to him gently and one of the men shoveled the garbage mountain into a large trash bin on wheels. They bantered with him and checked to see which part of the garbage mountain could be bagged up and taken away.

At one point one of the workers handed the man a folded bill. A few minutes later, the man selected two small bags from the mountain of garbage and walked away.

I was struck at how the BID workers exactly struck the balance between respecting the humanity of the garbage-castle-man and the right of the people in the neighborhood to NOT live with a garbage castle on their corner. I loved how their gentle and persuasive manner allowed the man to walk away without an angry confrontation.

While the last of the cleanup went on I thanked one of the red shirted BID workers for the gentle yet persuasive way they had worked with the man. He gave me a fist bump.

And now, a new topic.

I needed a new summer dress. I wanted something that was cool enough to wear on a swelteringly hot day and also didn't need to be ironed. Fabric Mart supplied me with the perfect solution. They were selling tubular cotton knits for two or three bucks a yard. For those of you who are not sewing geeks like me...

Commercial knitting machines are essentially big versions of the toy below. I grew up calling them knitting knobbies.

Here is a slightly more complex version of the same thing.

Most knit fabric is made on a larger, more mechanized version of these simple knitting machine.

So I had a couple of yards of 50 inch wide red cotton knit. (No, the color makes no difference at all.)

The fabric is 50 inches wide. My shoulders are not 50 inches wide. I will show you what I did with paper diagrams because I didn't take photos of the process. Forgive me.

I folded the tube of red cotton into quarters. I took a dress that fits and folded it in half and lay it on top of the fold. The cotton knit had very little stretch. The dress I was using as my pattern is pretty stretchy.

There are people who can figure out a mathematical formula to determine how much larger my red cotton dress needed to be. I am not one of those people. What I can do is guesstimate. So I shifted the stretchy dress that I was using as my pattern away from the fold and cut out the bodice.

I was feeling very lazy so I just cut the bodice out until the hipline.

I decided to have the width of the dress below the high hip just be the full width of the fabric.

I cut out the dress and sewed up the seams. It needed darts because it was too baggy and looked really unflattering. This is what the dress looks like inside out. I think that the actual dress is easier to understand than the paper dress cutouts.

This is what the dress looks like on my body.

The belt is one I have owned since the 1980s.

I liked the challenge of making the dress in the simplest way possible with as little sewing and cutting as possible. It works. I don't have to iron it and it will keep me cool on the hottest and muggiest of days.

This isn't a fancy dress. It just a utilitarian one that will be useful for a couple of summers. Not bad for the price of a subway ride.

Hanoch's tallit---still unfinished but on my dress form.

2026-07-30T21:31:43.781-04:00

And now---some images of Hanoch's tallit which will give you a sense of what it will look like when it is done.

It is wrinkled and thready and the edges are not yet finished.

But at least you don't have to use too much of your imaginations to get a sense of where I am going.

There is still one painted stripe left to add and probably a few more rows of ribbon.

There are still miles of silk to cut onto bias strips and stitch together to cover the raw edges. I still have to make the atara and edge that and the pinot. It's closer to done than it is to not done.

Progress on Hanoch's tallit and the end of a very long era

2026-07-29T23:31:45.038-04:00

As of Sunday evening, the calligraphed and painted stripes

all were properly edged.

I am loving the mix of colors. I hope that Hanoch does as well.

One of the painted stripes will not have text.

I started adding the stitched and ribbon stripes to the tallit.

I am really pleased with the ribbons that I embroidered.

And now...the end of than era.

My former across the hall neighbors and our family were pretty close during the years they lived across the hall. Our collective children wandered back and forth across the hall between the two apartments. We all had many adventures and meals together.

Michael and Andrea (our dear neighbors) had a car and shopped at Costco years before Costco opened a store across town. At one point Andrea bought a whole lot of boxes of Crystal Light in lemonade flavor. Andrea became allergic to Crystal Light.

So, twenty three years ago Andrea gave us more than 25 boxes of Crystal Light. We stashed those boxes all over the apartment. There were boxes on high shelves and hidden on cabinets all over the apartment.

For some reason we all became fond of drinking Crystal light when we were sick.

For reasons lost in the mists of time, we all called it Melonade. Boxes went with our kids when they went to camp and when they moved into their own apartments.

The other day

My husband opened up the very last little packet of Crystal Light from the very last box. The Melonade era of our lives has come to an end. It was a good twenty three years.

Some Random Thoughts

2026-07-24T13:02:24.397-04:00

Wednesday night was the beginning of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish national/religious day of mourning. We chant Eicha/ The book of Lamentations. As various members of my community led the reading, many of us softly chanted along

The text particularly spoke to me this year. We are living through difficult times. I was struck this year by how deeply familiar the text is. Verses and verse fragments are part of our liturgy. So many of the verses expressing loss and grief are inscribed on gravestones. Snippets of the text are incorporated into Hebrew poetry both hundreds of years ago as well as in contemporary Hebrew/Israeli poetry and song.

And of course the longing for the return to Zion that is encoded into our religious DNA.

It was a moving evening.

And on a completely different topic...

I am writing this post on a bus that left from the Port Authority Bus station. Hold on to your seats. The bathroom was spotless and smells clean. The Port Authority bathroom is no longer a terrifying place. Totally shocking .

And one last topic.

Everyone who reaches adulthood eventually has to deal with some sort of a chronic health condition. Mine is Lymphedema. If you want you can look it up. Anyway, I have had it since I am 14. Several years ago I discovered the wonders of plugging myself into pneumatic boots that pump the lymphatic fluid out of my legs

Last week the compressor for the boots died.I am awaiting the paperwork for my new pump and boots to go through. I had forgotten how achey my legs were before I began using the pneumatic boots.

I am counting the days until I pick up my new set.

Shabbat Shalom to all of you.

Pocket book repair and progress on two tallitot

2026-07-21T17:14:20.915-04:00

My mother never took a pocketbook to synagogue on Shabbat or holidays. To her, a pocketbook meant that you were taking money or your car keys to synagogue. Both would have earned a sniff from my mother. My mother always took along tissues in her pocket or in the cuff of her sweater because she had terrible allergies and a tissue was always needed.

Decades ago my late friend Fred told me that he grew up in a family that was irreligious. Fred, as an adult felt drawn to greater observance. He once told me that he married his ex wife because he was so impressed she knew that that it wasn't proper to take a pocketbook to services. He laughed ruefully because he discovered that this was ALL that she knew about Jewish observance. ( And no, the marriage didn't last).

All of this is a long introduction to the fact that now I carry a pocketbook to services every week. I have a pretty severe sesame allergy. I have to take along my Epi-pen because after services every week there is a kiddush-- a light, or not so light meal. I usually am pretty good at figuring out which foods can kill me...but not all of the time.

I have been buying vintage evening bags and pocketbooks to hold my Epi-pen, housekeys and tissues, because like my mother I need tissues.

Last summer I had a hankering for a pocketbook similar to the one I had at some point in junior high school or high school. It may have been a hand me down from one of my older sister. It was a straw hard sided bag with leather findings. Don't forget I grew up outside of Boston, it was what ladies used during the summers.

Anyway, I found what I wanted on eBay. I was delighted with it.

Clearly the sort of bag one might wear with Pappagallo shoes or a pair of espadrilles.

Unfortunately, the last time I used the bag, one of the rivets that anchors the leather strap on the back of the bag broke. I looked on Amazon for replacements. I could have either purchased three rivets for ten bucks or fifty for the same ten bucks. Yes, I purchased the fifty, because perhaps I might need big brass rivets.

I had to unstitch the lining from the straw.

and then replace the rivets.

I was unable to remove the rivet on the lower left, so the slightly smaller rivet will remail until it breaks.

Re stitching the lining to the straw was quick and easy.

As you can see the bag was made in Hong Kong. I am guessing that it is from the 60s, but it could be from the 50s or as late as the 70s.

I am glad that the fix was relatively easy.

I have not just been doing pocketbook repair.

I painted text on Hanoch's tallit

I also have been working on Jess's tallit.

That's Psalm 29. I will probably go back and outline all of the letters.

I am very pleased with how I constructed the ribbons.

Bit by bit both Hanoch's tallit and Jess's tallit are heading towards the finish line.

Yellow skies and a bit more work

2026-07-15T20:58:25.132-04:00

Normally I associate the smell of a wood fire with delightful things. I have fond memories of walking home from the Quincy Center Station on cold wintery evenings when I was in High School and smelling the lovely homey smell of fireplaces warming homes along my cold walk home.

I also associate that wonderful scent of woodfires from the special bonfires at camp. Today though, we woke up to the scent of wood smoke but it wasn't something homey or celebratory but it was the sickly smoke that has been blanketing us from the forest fires in Ontario.

The air feels heavy and sickly. The light is a heavy ochre color.

It isn't quite as bad as the it was a few years ago when the sky was orange from the smoke and it felt like the end of days. I hope that these fires are soon quenched.

I have managed to get a few more miles of ribbon embroidered.

I leave you with a shot of shadow from a friend's house.