Hamantaschen

I made wonderful hamantaschen (oznei haman in Hebrew) from Orna and Ella cooking book. You can find the recipe in Hebrew here. I don't eat nuts, I substituted the 1/2 cup almonds with flour. I also didn't have dried blueberries, I used raisins instead. The dough didn't work for me at all, probably because I didn't use almonds. I had to warm it up after taking it out of the refrigerator and add liquids to make it manageable. The amount of the feeling was way too much, I also had to drain it. I added some of the feeling liquid to the dough and baked the hamantaschens at 350 F for 13-14 minutes. • I have to say that the flavor is pretty amazing, I had three of them before they cooled down. Enjoy!

Kate Banazi

Amazing work by Kate Banazi.

Testing

Tie-dye testing from my last class with fiber procion dyes and cotton, better results than last week. I think I know what I like and how to make it happen. It will take a few more steps before I make up my mind completely, but I'm getting there.

Fish soup

Papa's fish soup by Claudia Roden. • I omitted the potatoes and added carrots, broccolini and garbanzo beans (I added those at the end, they were cooked already). The soup came out great and perfect for dinner on a chilly night. You can find the recipe here. Enjoy.

Damask

My modern damask • Hand drawn, manipulated in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop with the help of my new Wacom tablet.

I LOVE shibori

I love the way you dye it, the unpredictable shapes, it's always a surprise when you unravel it, and the colors. I love everything about it. • These beautiful pillows are from Pfeifer Studio.

Sneak peek

A sneak peek on my damask (new project for my textile design class) and testing shibori. • Damask (Arabic: دمسق‎) is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibres, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave. Twill damasks include a twill-woven ground or pattern. • The production of damask used one of the five basic weaving techniques of the Byzantine and Islamic weaving centers of the early Middle Ages. Damasks derive their name from the city of Damascus - in that period a large city active both in trading (as part of the silk road) and in manufacture. Damasks became scarce after the ninth century outside of Islamic Spain, but were revived in some places in the thirteenth century. The word "damask" first appeared in records in a Western European language in the mid-14th century in French. By the fourteenth century damasks were being woven on draw looms in Italy. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, most damasks were woven in a single colour, with a glossy warp-faced satin pattern against a duller ground. Two-colour damasks had contrasting colour warps and wefts, and polychrome damasks added gold and other metallic threads or additional colours as supplemental brocading wefts. Medieval damasks were usually woven in silk, but weavers also produced wool and linen damasks. • Modern damasks are woven on computerized Jacquard looms. Damask weaves are commonly produced in monochromatic (single-colour) weaves in silk, linen or synthetic fibres such as rayon and feature patterns of flowers, fruit, and other designs. The long floats of satin-woven warp and weft threads cause soft highlights on the fabric which reflect light differently according to the position of the observer. Damask weaves appear most commonly in table linens and furnishing fabrics, but also in clothing. • I'm not very happy with the shibori yet, the colors came out very pale, I need to continue testing.