Gilad's Invitation

Several years ago I met a lovely lady when our sons went to the same English class. She is a talented crafter herself and, after regularly chatting whilst waiting for our boys, we soon connected over facebook. I know that she reads my blog regularly and so was delighted when she wrote to me to commission a design for a Bar Mitzvah invitation and an album for her son.

Her son, she told me, loves drawing, bike riding, origami and daydreaming! His favourite colour is green, like the green English countryside, and, what she thought I might not have noticed (I hadn't!) is that on the left side of his hair he has a small blond wisp... kind of like a feather!

My customer wanted the invitation design to have a Bar Mitzvah theme but, aside from that, was happy to leave me to come up with something suitable. My favourite kind of customer!

I decided to show the Bar Mitzvah boy, Gilad, wearing a kippa (skullcap) on his head and a tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) over his shoulders. He is holding a book and some pencils in one hand, and an origami swan in the other. The facebookers amongst you may well remember the teeny-weeny origami swan, above, which I posted on my page whilst working on the design. Gilad's black bike, with a yellow stripe on it, is also shown in the background and he is daydreaming about being 13!
Finally, this particular customer chose to keep all the wording in English which made for a good, clean design. She kept 'our project' a secret until I had finished the artwork but wrote to tell me that her son was thrilled when he saw it. "Amazing" she said "[I've] just showed Gilad and he loves it! Thanks so much!".
The invitations were beautifully printed on white cardstock, below, and their guests seemed to like them.
I made Gilad an album for the Bar Mitzvah party too but that is going to have to wait for another post. Look out for it!

Tantalizing Tuscany

We all fell in love with Tuscany in a big way. Mile after mile of olive trees and vineyards. Renaissance art in Florence. Beautiful squares in Siena and Pisa. A good glass of wine in the evening. I mean, what's not to like?

The kids adored the dogs at 'Il Sodo', the delightful farmhouse we stayed at. The property dated back to the 15th century and, located on a hill top in the heart of Chianti, was surrounded by the enchanting Tuscan countryside. None of us wanted to leave... 

We climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ate delicious Bruchetto drizzled with olive oil. The hubby and I tasted locally produced Chianti wine - I loved it, he didn't - whilst the kids stayed on the farm and swam in the pool.

Dinner was pizza almost every night and none of us bored of it. The absolute best was at the 'Palazzo Pretorio' in the Tuscan medieval village of San Donato in Poggio (below).

Florence was magnificent. We walked for miles. 'Il Palio' was soon to begin in Siena and the atmosphere was electric. We had been advised not to stay for the wild bareback horse race itself but very much enjoyed all the flag waving and pageantry building up to it.
But it was the splendid Tuscan landscape with its castles and country churches, olive groves and vineyards, that did it for me. Really, what's not to like?

A Photo Copy

At the beginning of the summer I received a photo in my inbox which a customer wanted me to recreate in paper!  She realised that there would be a lot of work involved but wanted a really special card for the wedding of a young man she is very close to.  "I'd love it to be as close a copy of the photo as it can be." she said. An unusual request but one I was happy to have a go at.

My customer was quite specific - she wanted the trees and leaves behind the bench, as well as the couple in the exact pose as in the photo. I dressed them in the very same clothes and had them sitting back-to-back on the bench as she requested. I hand cut each of those little leaves in different autumnal shades too.

On the front of the card she wanted the short and sweet greeting 'Danny ♥ Malki' and inside 'Wishing you a lifetime of happiness, laughter, joy and simcha.'

It took me quite some time to complete this card because I was working to such a specific brief but my lovely customer was encouraging. "I have absolutely no doubt that we will love what you create" she wrote.

I am happy to say that she did.

When in Rome

I've been away from this little space of mine for a short time. For those of you who read my blog regularly, you might well remember that I mentioned a planned holiday to Italy earlier in the year. Well, that holiday has now been and gone and we had an absolutely amazing time.

As immigrants to Israel we are somewhat obligated to visit England, where our families live, as often as we are able. Naturally, because we are not quite yet millionaires, that means that we don't really get to see other places. However, very occasionally we do travel elsewhere and this year was one of those years! Italy it was.

Now, I know that plenty of you do travel on a far more regular basis than I do. I am also aware that I am not the first person to travel to Italy. Therefore I am going to give you just a taste of our trip and not my usual background history to it all! And believe me, it was very hard to whittle down that 'taste' to a few photos that I feel sum up our first stop, Rome. Let's just say I was reaching the 1,000 photos mark by the end of our trip!

So, enjoy our visit to Rome and our day trip from Rome to Pompeii. From top to bottom: the Coliseum, some tasty gelati, Pompeii, the Vatican Museums, the Ponte Sant' Angelo, the Pantheon, watching street artists near the Trevi Fountain, and finally, the stalls at the Tiber River festival taken from the Ponte Sisto.

Adir's Album

Okay, this is the last of the 'First of July' albums to show you. This one was made for a young man whom I have known since he was a baby and so it was fun to work on something for a kid I know for once.  His Mum told me that his main priorities in life at the moment are his Acer tablet and facebook, listening to music whilst wearing his big old-fashioned looking earphones, tennis, cycling and, finally, science subjects at school. She said that he doesn't really have a favourite colour but that blue and green were probably safe bets.

I pretty much managed to get all that onto the cover. My design shows him holding his tennis racket in one hand, with his Acer tablet (with facebook open on the screen) under his arm. He has tefillin on, as well as the big headphones and a kippa. His bike is in the background.

My figures almost always have my trademark round heads with sticky out ears. However, this young man is pretty slim so his Mum and I agreed that we should make his face more slender and stay away from the round look. It definitely worked best on this occasion and I really think that I captured some sort of likeness.

As I mentioned, this Bar Mitzvah boy is wearing tefillin on the cover. Tefillin (sometimes called phylacteries) are cubic black leather boxes with leather straps that Orthodox Jewish men wear on their head and their arm during weekday morning prayer. Jewish men start wearing tefillin just before their Bar Mitzvah and so it seemed suitable to show this young man, who is religious, wearing his newly acquired tefillin.

Tefillin have two leather boxes, one of which is worn on the arm and the other of which is worn on the head. If you are right-handed, which this young man is, you should wear tefillin on the bicep of your left arm. The tefillin box worn on the head should be centered just above the forehead with the two leather straps wrapped around the head, then hanging down over the shoulders.

Phew! I hope my illustration was accurate enough!

The Bar Mitzvah boy's interest in physics and all things science-related was included inside the album. The other pages display his love of tennis, his precious Acer tablet, open of course on the his facebook page, his grey, white and red striped bike helmet and, finally,  those big old-fashioned earphones, surrounded by a few music notes.
I either put a Magen David (Star of David) or a Tallit (prayer shawl) as a graphic element on the corner of my album covers and on each embellished page inside. This young man is now wearing a Tallit during prayers but his Mum preferred me to use a Magen David.

When you read a Hebrew book you open the rightmost page and flip pages until you get to the leftmost page (just the opposite of an English book) and this family chose to have their album open that way. The Hebrew writing on the cover repeats the name and date, also shown in English.

The Monastery at Latrun and Ben Gurion House

I really don't why it has taken me over 12 years to take a look at the Latrun Monastery. After all, it is situated about a ten minute drive from my home! I've driven all over the country to visit some amazing places, but sometimes I guess we miss the ones on our doorstep! Anyway, a recent cancelled afternoon plan meant the youngest son and I had some time to spare so I decided the time had come to visit this special place.

The Monastery at Latrun was established in 1890 and served as a way station for pilgrims from Jaffa to Jerusalem in the 19th century. During the First World War the Turks expelled the monks and destroyed the monastery. The Monks returned in 1927 when they built the present building. The clock tower of the church was completed only in 1954.
The Latrun Monastery, where until 1960 the monks took a vow to refrain from idle talk and to uphold silence at all times except during prayer,  became famous for the good wine and olive oil it produces and which are available from a small shop run by the monks. The monastery garden is also beautiful and so is the outside area surrounded by olive trees. In fact the son and I took books with us and, after we had been inside the church and looked around the gardens, we sat for a while under the trees, thoroughly involved in our reading material until the 5 o'clock bells began to peal and announced to us that it was perhaps time to go home.

A couple of days after our visit to the monastery we took ourselves off to another building we have passed many, many times and yet had never been in. Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, left his home on Ben-Gurion Boulevard in Tel Aviv to the State of Israel when he passed away in 1973. He requested that the house become a public institution for reading, study and research. Situated very near to the beach, we have often been too sandy to go inside, but this time we planned a special visit.

The house was built in 1930-31 and was Paula and David Ben-Gurion's permanent home until they settled in Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert of southern Israel, and then they lived alternately here and there until Ben-Gurion's death.
All the items belonging to the Ben-Gurions are in the house, in the same condition and in the same place they used to be when the house was lived in. It was, in fact, a little bit like stepping back in time. The hubby said that some of the items in the house reminded him of his grandma's possessions. The youngest son was rather taken with Ben-Gurion's four library rooms where he used to work, write letters and his diary, and to receive guests and friends.
Afterwards we watched a film all about Ben-Gurion's life in the neighbouring Hillel Cohen House, and finished the day eating frozen yoghurt on the beach. It can't all be educational you know!

The Barkan Experience

I am by no means an expert on wine. Like many Northern English "lasses" I do enjoy a little tipple now and then, but I do not have any real knowledge about what I am drinking except whether I like it or not. Our recent guided tour of the Barkan Winery at Kibbutz Hulda enlightened me a little bit and now at least I know how to taste my wine in the correct manner!

Looking for interesting things to do with my Dad, I discovered that Israel’s second largest winery, Barkan, has vineyards - actually the largest single vineyard in Israel - and a visitor's centre at nearby Kibbutz Hulda. Okay, it wasn't the most kid-friendly activity we did when Dad was with us, but I figured that the boys could learn about how wine is made and, yes, I allowed them a little sip at the end of our tour too!

We were greeted at the brand new Barkan Visitor's Centre by our delightful guide, Nani, and there is no doubt that she was the reason that our tour of the Barkan Experience was so interesting. She really knew her stuff!

Barkan receives grapes from vineyards from several regions in Israel - from the Golan Heights and the Galilee, to the Jerusalem mountains and Southern Mitzpe Ramon - and transports them to this modern winery with its state of the art equipment. The entire Barkan operation, including a 12 million litre tank farm, an automated crushing and fermentation plant and a 10,000 square metre air conditioned filling and case storage building, is located at this site.

We learnt about the production of Barkan's kosher wines. To be considered kosher, a wine may only be handled by observant Jews from the time the grapes are crushed. If, however, the wine is boiled or pasteurised, it may subsequently be handled by anyone without losing its kosher status. Although not all Israeli wine is kosher, all of the wine produced by Barkan has kosher certification.
Nani, our guide, showed us the bottling plant and explained the steps from the bottles being filled to corking, labelling and boxing. Nearby the wine is stored in huge metal vats or, for the more expensive wines or brandies, aged in wood barrels brought in from various parts of the world.
The visitor's centre offers a small selection of wines for tasting, though sadly my Dad was the only person who could really enjoy it. I was the designated driver for the day and the kids, well, I allowed them a sip.
Barkan wines can be purchased at the shop and Dad treated us to a bottle of barrel-aged Cabernet Sauvignon for Shabbat. That way I really got to taste what I had learnt all about. And pretty good it was too!