A day to the Fabric District

On Sunday around midnight, I decided I needed to get out of the house a little; what I really needed was probably a short break from the kids, but that didn’t look like it was on the horizon for, I don’t know, at least ten years. I’ve just begun to build a blog-hi!- and for the hair wrapping tutorials I plan to post in the near future, I wanted some cool fabrics, and thought it sounded fun to hit the fabric district in Tel Aviv, the city of dreams. After finalizing my plans, I went to bed.

To all the parents who manage to put their children to sleep in their own rooms and keep them there, I salute you. My daughter will close her eyes in her crib and then, at some point in the night, sneak into our room. She has a real sneak, probably for this purpose, where she goes on her tiptoesand actually does a chicken neck. I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw it, now I’m just wary and will subconsciously grab whatever it is sitting next to me before it gets snatched. She bends her elbows like a little T Rex and then she says “shhhhhh” to whoever it is shes sneaking up on. I’d like to tell her that it defeats the purpose of her sneaking at all if she says “shhhhhh” first, causing me to see her, but I really prefer the heads up.

When this act happens at night, I’m usually not up to see it, rather I wake up to her blonde head on the pillow next to me, or an elbow in my face. Last night, she kept trying to cuddle with me, and she’s a great cuddler, except her toenail was scratching my leg and waking me up every time she touched me. Besides that, my husband was snoring so loud it sounded like there was a tow truck in the bed, forcing me to shake him awake, somewhat violently, every few minutes, which momentarily stopped the noise but not for long. Thank Gd this was a one time thing. He never snores. My baby, meanwhile, was so congested that he couldn’t nurse for more than a few seconds without taking a breather, poor thing! Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.

In the morning, I somehow managed to be out of bed, or at least awake, by the time Sim left for work. I had a coffee, got the kids dressed with my moms help (she was driving) dressed myself, re-dressed Elianna and put the previous under shirt, which looked like it came straight from Little House on the Prairie, in the ‘I will never dress you in that again’ pile. The baby made so I changed him as well, and then I re- dressed myself. Incredible really. We managed to be out of the house by eleven and in the city at half past noon.

We found a parking spot about three blocks from our destination, a spot that I said we would fit in(I don’t drive) but after 5 minutes of directing my mom and realizing it wouldn’t happen, I said to forget about it. The entire street was backed up and I started looking around and feigning frustration so the people waiting would feel my empathy and not hate us as much. To our luck, a bigger spot opened right in front of us and we wedged in pretty quick.

I was looking for colorful and soft fabrics to use as tichels(the Yiddish word for headscarves worn by Jewish women), and something for a shabbos tablecloth. We walked in and out of a lot of stores, some clearly nicer than others. When needed, I used phrases like ‘oh I’m exhausted’, and ‘the baby is fussing lets go’ to the most-of-the-time pushy Israeli salesmen.Excuses that were true! There was a beautiful store called ‘Dando’ with drool worthy fabrics, pillows with prints of giraffes and bright yellow trim, and lovely upholstered chairs and ottomans. The prices were high but downstairs I found a clearance section- from 320 shekel to 30 a meter! The stuff I liked for the tablecloth needed to be dry cleaned and with the amount of grape juice that spills every Friday night at our house that is simply not practical. I ended up getting overwhelmed and I went outside and didn’t go back. But I still can’t get those pillows off my mind!

The perfect headscarf material I found in a random store-one of the nicer ones. Shocking yellow with parrots and a light cream with pink roses and a million lovely things. When he heard my plans, the salesman gave me a hundred shekel off, SCORE! I can’t wait to show you all, we’re going to create beautiful scarves that I’d like to make to order! Hopefully coming soon..It’s always fun to adventure, but you know how it is when trying to stifle a toddler tantrum every fifteen minutes, carry around a five month old, shop, and keep milk off your shirt at the same time. Physically taxing I say!

The fabric distric at Nachalat Binyamin is the perfect place for picking up materials for all you’re DIY projects, like re- upholstering wooden chairs and covering Ikea pillows! More on that to come...till then, Estee.

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