Category Archives: Israel

It’s Been Awhile

I have been busy:

Not very professional!

When we managed to get it to this, mainly thanks to Joe

Good enough to dance in

I took him to Israel:

November 2010, Bat Yam, Israel

Sunny Israeli November

and treated him to all sorts of these:

Yummy Israeli Munchies and some beer

The purpose of the trip was visiting my mother:

Strolling in Mahne Yehuda Market with my mother

and meeting the new member of our family:

The latest addition to our family: Noam

Noam, December 3, 2010

In Mahne Yehuda – the famous market of Jerusalem, I even managed to find this:

Not really a great find!

Which is really nothing compared to other things this lovely place has to offer:

General view of one of the alleys of Mahne Yehuda, Jerusalem

Lovely huge Eggplants

Sweets - Halva and Baklawa

and then we came back to this:

The view that greeted me in the morning after we returned

which believe it or not, made me very happy.

Knitting for Babies

At long last I can share with you the knitting I have done in Israel.  While I was there I knitted some presents for a baby that was not born yet which is something I thought I will never do. You see, I am a worrier and thus I usually follow the Jewish tradition of not preparing anything for a baby until after he/she is born and we know the little one is doing well and is healthy!

I still remember my shock when during my first visit to London, UK, after I finished my army service (yes, I was once a soldier but this is a story for another post I think), I saw in a very fancy department store, a very pregnant and very elegant young lady with her similarly elegant mother (I assumed), shopping for her baby with the assistance of a few of the store workers. My first thought was: what will she do with all these things if god forbid something will go wrong with the baby,,,

Since then I witnessed this kind of preparations and heard about baby showers but my reaction remained the same.

So imagine how much I shocked myself when before I went to Israel in March, I went and bought yarn to knit some presents for my sister’s first grandchild that was still a month or more away from being expected out here and even more, when I decided to follow my friend’s advice and knitted things for a baby just because I had an urge to suddenly knit for one.

Those knitted creations were officially designated to Noam, my new grandnephew (do you call them grandnephew or what?) only after he was born, a big healthy boy.

Baby's knits are so cute

You can see all the details of this set on my Ravelry Project page (did you notice you can now make your project pages accessible to the public?)

As it turned out, Noam was born quite big and the set is too small for him, I think it is a sign that I should have kept the tradition and waited patiently,,,

I also knitted a larger cardigan for him:

Will this one be too small too?

Will this one be too small too?

As this one is knitted in a merino yarn, I knitted it for a 6-9 months baby which will be Noam’s age when the winter is expected in Israel but I have my doubts about fit of this one too.

Oh well, Noam is going to have very elegant teddy bears I think.

Talking about knitting for babies, I knitted something for our “baby” too:

Look at her T-shirt

We celebrated her 22 birthday yesterday.

Did I do a good job?

I call this Pink Lemonade as the design is called Citron and I used some 70% Alpaca 40% Silk lace weight yarn I bought in some small place in one of our little day trips in Ontario, I am sorry I don’t have any other details about this yarn.

Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post, I will try doing better next time.

Far away wondering thoughts

Yesterday when I heard they again used measures against abortion coverage to get some of the “democrats” to vote for the health bill, a thought crossed my mind:  If all of us women unite and declare a sex strike, how long it will take them men chauvinists to stop meddling with OUR basic rights?!?

It may be the effect of the salty Mediterranean air on my head – yes I am in Israel again, dealing with real estate transactions, fighting with bankers to get the smallest fees I can and other such charming tasks,,, but the food is great and the scenery too – Tel Aviv is lovely in the spring! I am sorry I don’t have my camera here with me to share it with you in photos too.

It looks like every time I am here there are more food institutions like restaurants, bistros, bars, coffee shops and so on in this lovely, lively city and I am here every few months. All of them seem full and busy every time you pass them and it makes me wonder. I think Tel Aviv has the most restaurant seats per capita in the whole wide world! And without even counting the plethora of very original fast food places they have in this city.

I am knitting a baby surprise jacket in Rowan Purelife – Organic Cotton 4 ply natural dye. After I knitted almost a whole skein I took out the other 3 skeins I have to show my sister and in the Israeli light (much better and brighter than the Torontonian these days) we saw that the color is not uniform, there are patches of lighter color in weird places on the skeins…. I thought something happened to my yarn and emailed the shop where I bought it but the owner assured me it’s the result of using natural dyes and if I don’t like it I can get credit or exchange it,,, I decided to keep knitting and take a decision after I will see the effect of it on the knitted jacket, but I am not pleased at all! Without any doubt I liked the yarn in a solid color much better.

The first thing I saw when I got into my sister’s car upon arrival to Israel last week was the maplewing I knitted for her birthday last September, I took it in my hands and exclaimed: what did you do to it? you felted it!!! My sister got all pissed at me and replied: I did nothing to it, I hardly wore it and it never saw any water while with me, anything done to it was done by you! hmmmm,,,, I certainly sent her something quite different but how do I find out what she did to it, was my first thought, I tried exploring it some more but I noticed she is vehement in her denial so I left it at that until I will have internet access.

When I showed her the shawl on my Ravelry page and especially the photo of it drying on the wires she said: I never saw it like this it came out of the envelope as it is now but the envelope seemed dry and there were no stains on it…

The only explanation we came up with is that it stayed in some very hot place on its way from Toronto to Tel Aviv and somehow got felted – does this make sense to anyone, did you hear about dry or almost dry high heat felting?

In any case I am quite pissed. It is the last time I am sending any valuable knitted thingie by mail to Israel!

To end this in a positive note: it is good my sister didn’t see the shawl in its unfelted original state so she still think it is very beautiful, am I lucky or what? :)