thrifting and sewing

There's a little second hand shop/cafe where I sometimes pick up a coffee and take a look.

Last time they had a big box full of those dolls people used to bring back from a trip abroad in the seventies and eighties - at least that's my memory. They were mostly horrible plastic ones, but I found these three:

The swiss boy lost his arm thanks to my curious boy, I wonder how that can be fixed - the elastic that attached both arms came out of one of them and left a hole half blocked with dry glue.

I'm not sure where the middle doll comes from, some Balkan country I suspect. Her face is painted fabric and her clothes and shoes have lovely little handmade details.

A sweet white glass plate and a little vase:

and some sewing:

with trembling hands I bought some Nani Iro on sale from reprodepot - it was still so expensive and then the shipment and then customs to top it all, it really makes no sense shopping for fabric online when you happen to live in Israel. On the other hand if you don't you're in the hands of the very few reasonable fabric shops that can actually tell what the fabric content is, and then if you buy prints you're likely to meet the rest of the roll on someone on the street, not necessarily a nice surprise.

However, I bought 3 pieces of double gauze and when they arrived I fell in love and treasured them in the fabric stash, took them out once in a while to caress them with dreamy eyes, and couldn't really bring myself to cut them. But finally I gathered the courage and decided to make a skirt for myself.

The problem I have with how I sew is that I tend not to trust the material and a little bit of chance. I try to control everything. Felting has taught me to let go a bit, but still this is my automatic mode, in any kind of creative work. With this on my mind, I wanted to make an everyday summer's skirt, I wanted to make something simple that will just look nice (and wouldn't it with this fabric?). I love clothes that are very simple but a little twist makes them unique, and with all this controlling I rarely manage to make something like that.

At the same time I couldn't get out of my head a skirt that My mother once had, it was a very full pleated skirt with a ribbon that covers the seam that gathers the pleats and ties at the back. So I made almost that, and in doing so I repeated all my patterns - making a controlled, not so casual, not that simple skirt. still, the fabric is so lovely and summery, and I'll probably wear it a lot in the coming months.

Now I'm using the leftovers for a skirt for Amalia.

(and there are two other pieces left to drool on!)

(My mother saw it and said it reminded her of an old skirt of hers... she asked me to make one for her. What I would make differently is sew the ribbon a bit lower on the pleats, so that there's a bit more of them showing on top.)

cheesyness

Last week we celebrated Shavuot, my favorite Holiday that is all about the first harvest of the spring and, for some reason, about cheese eating. It seems that in all the kindergartens the kids did the same thing this year: making Labane balls. My son brought them back from his kindergarten along with some bread they baked, and we ate it together and it was so nice that I asked his teacher for the recipe and we did it again today with our good friends from the north that were visiting. Labane is made by placing yoghurt in a sieve that's covered in thin cloth and letting it drain most of its liquid overnight. in this recipe I added about 1 teaspoon salt and the juice of half a lemon to each liter of yoghurt. after the Labane was ready, I gave the kids plates with Zaatar, flax seeds and turmeric (didn't have sweet paprika powder for the red color ones, sadly), jars, olive oil and some rosemary and zaatar branches from the garden. They rolled little balls of labane in the different spices and drowned them in olive oil and herbs. in 2 days they'll be ready.

working hard:

labane and turmeric mixed together into a funny colored paste:

slowly it became less and less appealing...

that's what the table looked like when they were done:

but all for a good cause:

let's hope it tastes nice.