More family pics from Yishai's inaugural laying of tefillin

Notice Yehuda (in the back and on the right)
Yes, he is actually taller than Dave (6'2") by a couple of inches.

Kenny and Grandpa came

Grandpa 

and here's Yehuda, again, this time paying attention to the service

Yishai put on his tefillin for the first time today

A very emotionally laden day - as my "baby" takes on an adult responsibility. Yishai was very excited about it. Kenny made him a needlepoint tefillin bag, but it's not ready for use yet.




Yishai and his friends

Family news

December 31 was my parents' 55th anniversary. It was bittersweet - my father is in good health, thank God, but my mother is in her 13th year of dementia. She is basically confined to bed now, but we got her up for our little party, and she perked up after awhile and was aware of what was going on and communicated with us nicely.

My father's good heart shines brighter and brighter as this progresses, and my sister, Karen, who lives down the street devotes a tremendous amount of time, care, and love to my parents.

My brother, Lennie, who lives in Israel, and I, who live about an hour away, do what we can, but we are tremendously grateful to Karen and her family. Somehow, the bulk of the caretaking usually seems to fall primarily on one child, and Karen is the one.

As for our sons, Yaakov graduated from high school last June, and is currently studying in a yeshiva in Israel. He seems to be having a great time, and is spending a lot of his free time with his sisters and their families and with Lennie and Helene and family.

Yehuda is in 11th grade at SAR HS, and his favorite subject is driving. He actually drove to Florida for vacation with a friend and his (the friend's) grandmother.

Yishai is in 7th great in our local day school and his Bar Mitzva is coming up at the end of February. He loves baseball and basketball and is on a team in each of those sports.

That should be our last big celebration for awhile - it's the last bar/t mitzva and we're not expecting any weddings in the near future. Of course, there's my 50th bd coming up, but if you know me, you know that I'm not crazy about big parties. Maybe the family will go out to dinner.

Dave is teaching at the day school that Yishai attends, and giving adult education classes at our local shul. As always, he loves what he does and puts a lot of energy into it.

Note

I still can't figure out how to get my captions in the right place.

Quilts,again

Quilt tops - More color play, in my own , square, way.(see OC comments, below).
The one with the triangles (looks to me like a flower) is one of my favorites - this is my version of letting go.


The next one is supersqare, but I love the fabrics and colors.













From a "Reversible Quilt" class with Claire Oehler at Country Quilter, Somers, NY










Absolut Talia T-Shirt Quilt, Just finished this one. It has shocking pink fleece on the back. Very cuddly - for my niece's dorm room.
It originally said "Absolut Adam" ) (from a Bar Mitzva souvenir), which I changed to Talia.

Hmm

The previews of my blogs that have photos are never arranged the way they are when they are actually published. that "I", the first word in the last post, is right next to the rest of the sentence in the preview. I won't try changing it because I'll probably only mess it up more.

Playing Grandma

I haven't managed to put a picture of myself in the profile section of the blog, but here I am with my grandson Yehuda last summer. Do I look happy?

It's hard to live on the other side of the world (all the married kids and grandchildren live in Israel), but I really enjoy it when I get to spend time with them.

My youngest son, Yishai, loves to play uncle. He misses them terribly. I guess we all do, but he shows it the most.

How OC am I?

Anyone who sees this blog (so far no one has but me) may notice that my artwork tends to be very rigid/controlled. I have definite obsessive/compulsive tendencies which run on both sides of my family (although my father grew up in Germany where it is considered normal). I have a lot of trouble loosening up. I'm not sure if this is something I should just accept or whether I should try to change it.


I just fused a dozen fat quarters of hand-dyed fabric to Wonder Under so that I can try the "Chicago School of Fusing" techniques that I found on a blog by Melody Johnson (Fibermania). I'm not sure what I'll be doing with it, but I'll try to be as loose as I can. Maybe a design for a new chupah (wedding canopy).

Shabbat

This is the first time that I really felt that I understood the meaning of "hirhurim mutarim" - that it's permissible to think about things that we aren't allowed to do on Shabbat (creative acts). I'm just so full of design ideas that I can't stop thinking about them.
I also spent most of Shabbat alone (everybody else had activities to go to away from home), and I realized how much I enjoy my time alone. Sometimes it leads me to wonder how I survived the "mother of small children" era of my life.

One of my favorite quotes :

Living with small children is like having a bowling alley set up in your brain.

Martin Mull

Our newliest weds

Shani and Elan, Thanksgiving Day, 2004

I made the Chupah, which is now a quilt for their home.

This was about 4 months into my quilting adventure and it took much longer than I thought it would, so I brought it on the plane to Israel, where they got married, with the binding half-done and finished it there.

I hadn't had time to quilt it, so I tied it and after the wedding I offered to take it back and quilt it, but my daughter, knowing very well my tendency to procrastinate, decided to keep it as is.

The colors of the triangles represent the bride and groom. Shani means red in Hebrew and Elan means tree, hence the burgundy color and leafy prints in beige, forest green, navy and browns. I thought the colors had a regal look to them, in keeping with the tradition of treating the bride and groom like royalty on their wedding day.

kids, cont. - the Shakis

David, Tamar, and baby Yehuda Avner (I don't know how to turn this around. I did it in Picasa, but it got undone.)

Our kids - The Weinsteins

Rachel, Micha-el (the parents), Hallel,and Kaveh (the kids)

Family Pics

Our nuclear family (1998), before all the weddings

some more stuff

Traditional Wedding Ring Design with quote from blessings recited at Jewish weddings, "Rejoice o beloved sweethearts/companions/friends" - in progress.

The ring and calligraphy are photocopied onto fabric from my artwork on paper.

It was a tradition in some Jewish communities for the bride to wear such a ring with a house design at the wedding. Some communities had one communally owned ring that was lent to brides for the ceremony.


Jerusalem Skyline - composed entirely of one piece of a Sherrill Kahn fabric, cut up and to be appliqued, possibly to a different background - in progress.

some other work

Omer Counter (2002)- used to count the days between Passover and Shavuot. That's a magnet in the middle, which is used to mark the current day (We keep the magnet in gthe middle the rest of the year because it hangs best that way). The rest is paper. It's tied to a twig with raffia.

Maybe someday I'll do a fabric version.

Ivdu (1975-84)- "Serve the Lord with gladness, come before him with joy." To me, joy=color, color=joy, especially using all of the colors of the rainbow
Needlework - maybe crewel. Done over many years in the course of many pregnancies when I couldn't sleep and didn't want to wake anyone up by doing noisy work.

Three quilts

Crib quilt top - doing what I love most - playing with color.

Ashira - quilt top - quote from Psalms in Hebrew (I still love letters) - "I will sing to God with my life, I will serenade him with all my being." I think that using the colors that God created to make beautiful things is a way of serving Him.

Autumn Sky - one of my first attempts at quilting - the one I kept for myself.

What's New

My main reason for opening this blog is to tell far-flung family and friends what's new with the Walks and share my adventures in fabricland.

Those who know me well know that I've always been interested in arts and crafts and also in biology and medicine (my Bachelor's Degree, circa 1976, was in Biology and Art).

I was mainly at home with kids for many years, dabbling in a&c, writing ketubot and invitations, quotations from mostly Jewish sources, giving afterschool lessons in calligraphy, papercutting, and making and printing with rubber stamps. I had always felt, though, that my profession would be related to medicine, and that a&c would be a hobby.

So, a couple of years ago, once the kids were getting older, I decided to go to nursing school. I loved the academics, loved spending time with the patients, and didn't mind the gory stuff. However, certain character traits of mine that I had always managed to work around, more or less, got in the way of accomplishing what I needed to do in the hospital. I guess over the years at home, I've gotten used to doing things my own way, at my own speed, and my tendency to not always assert myself has gotten stronger. Not that I can't be assertive at all, but I need time to "psych my self into it" which I didn't have on the hospital floor.

I think that if I'd been able to get through nursing school, I'd probably have been able to find a job that suited me more than the med-surg floor did, such as long-term care or home health care. But my instructors were not pleased with my performance, and in the beginning of November, after 2 years and 3 months of studies, I dropped out of the program with an option to return next year.

After a month of feeling sort of lost, I decided to return to quilting, which, I neglected to mention, I had picked up in the summer of 2004. I had felt a desire to try a new medium for a while, and after a friend, to whom I am forever indebted (thanks, Sara), gave me a pile of old magazines into which a Hancock's of Paducah Catalogue had been inadvertently (Sara?) inserted, I knew that I had fallen in love.

Since then, I've had a ball, first making quilts for kids and grandkids including a Chupah for Shani and Elan, using verrrrry large fabric pieces, taking a few classes at Country Quilter and reading lotttttts of quilting books. Of course, it would be nice to have an income, but I'm hoping to develop some marketable Judaica fabric pieces.

Best wishes to all,

Debbie

Next, my plan is to upload some pictures of my work.