The Bakh, Part 1: His Text

לא ילכו בנות ישראל פרועות ראש בשוק אחת פנויה ואחת אשת איש: נראה דנפקא לן מדאיתא פרק המדיר (כתובות עב.) ואיזהו דת יהודית?  יוצאה וראשה פרוע.  דאורייתא  היא דכתיב (במדבר ה יח) "ופרע [את] ראש האשה"!  ותנא דבי רבי ישמעאל אזהרה לבנות ישראל שלא יצאו בפרוע ראש.

 דמדלא קאמר אזהרה לאשת איש אלא סתמא אזהרה לבנות ישראל אלמא דאחת פנויה ואחת אשת איש באזהרה.  מיהו במרדכי כתב ס"פ [סוף פרק] מי שמתו (ברכות סי' פ) ע"ש  "[וכתב] ראבי"ה (סימן עו) וז"ל [וזה לשונו]: "כל הדברים שהאזהרה למעלה לערוה דוקא בדבר שאין רגילות להיגלות אבל בתולה הרגילה בגילוי שער לא חיישינן, דליכא הרהור" עכ"ל [עד כאן לשונו].

ואין לפרש דדוקא בבית ובחצר אבל בשוק אסורה לצאת  דהא ברפ"ב [ראש פרק 2] דכתובות (טו: ) שנינו אם יש עדים שיצאת בהינומא וראשה פרוע כתובתה מאתים ויצאת פירש"י [פירש רש"י] (ד"ה [דיבור המתחיל] אם יש עדים) מבית אביה לבית בעלה ואפי' [ואפילו] דרך השוק 

משמע, וכן נהגו וצריך לומר דבפנויה בעולה קאמר, אבל הבתולות אינן באזהרה. 

The daughters of Israel do not go with an uncovered head in the marketplace,  both an unmarried and a married woman: It seems to originate in what it says in Ketubot chapter “” (daf 72a): “What is Dat Yehudit?  She goes out with an uncovered head.  But that is from the Torah, as it says (Numbers 5:18) ‘And he uncovers the head of the woman’ [context is the Sotah ritual, as explored in these posts].  The house of Rabbi Ishmael says, a warning to the daughters of Israel that they should not go out with an uncovered head.”

Since it does not say “a warning to a married woman”, but rather simply “a warning to the daughters of Israel”, both unmarried and married women are included in the warning.  However, in the Mordechai, at the end of Brachot, chapter “One Whose Dead”, section 80, it says “the Ra’avya writes: ‘All the matters in the warning about is specifically about erva [nakedness], in a matter that they do not usually reveal, but we are not concerned about a virgin, who is accustomed to revealing her hair, because there is no [concern over] improper fantasy.”

And one should not explain that this [that a virgin goes with an uncovered head] is specifically in the house or courtyard, but [her going with an uncovered head] is still forbidden in the marketplace, because at the beginning of the second chapter of Ketubot (15b) it says that if there are witnesses that a woman went out in a hinuma, and her head is uncovered, her ketubah is 200.  [Going out in only a hinuma is sufficient legal evidence that she was a virgin when she married, and therefore gets the higher ketubah value.  This implies that unmarried virgins do not cover their hair, even in public.  For some more about the ambiguous meaning of the term hinuma, see this post]  Also, Rashi explains (in his comment beginning: If there are witnesses) that this means when she goes from her father’s house to her husband’s house, even by way of the marketplace.  This is our custom, and therefore it is necessary to say that the Tur meant a non-virgin unmarried woman [when he said that unmarried women also cover their heads], but virgins are not included in the warning [from the house of Rabbi Ishmael, in Ketubot 72a.]  

This seems pretty lengthy already- so some thoughts about the Ba"kh's position (and the usual information about who he was) will come in a following post.  I will add here that the quotation from the Mordechai comes from his comments on the recitation of the bedtime Shema.  This is a digression based on the principle that he is establishing for what a man may see of his wife while reciting Shema.  In my mind, that almost makes it more reliable, because it isn't on the topic where he might have something to prove, at that point, it's just a good sociological proof, from his perspective.  

More Pictures of My Head

Another round of what I wore, from earlier this week.  (Today is a major push at the moving thing, plus a trip to the gym, and shabbos preparations- not an outfit that's real worthy of being seen, and I'm already all sweaty- we moved the first part of the bed this morning, and will do the rest this afternoon.  On the one hand- it's a lot lighter than we thought, and I can totally do it.  On the other hand- it's awkwardly shaped, of course, and it's fairly hot out.)

This is a mild experiment- I put on a small square scarf, very low down on my forehead, then rolled the front of my larger square scarf a little before putting it on at a normal place on my head- perhaps a little farther back than I might put a scarf to start with, regularly.  Then I folded the first scarf back over the larger one.

And then I had lighting issues with the webcam.  So- here is approximately the same pose, several  times over with various adjustments.  (So that you can enjoy my very minor trials and tribulations.)

And then, from the back it's just a regular old bun:

I'm always confused about the use of fringed scarves.  A lot of people really like them- but I'm always afraid that they look messy.  (It doesn't stop me from wearing them anyways, when I have them- this scarf, for example, was a birthday gift.)

In Coming Attractions: I have a post on the Ba"kh in progress, you should finally see some halakhic content here again either later today or (more likely) early next week.

Weddings: The Bride

I spent some time, before my wedding, contemplating what I should do about covering my head at our reception.

I thought about leaving my veil on- but it was fairly large, and I thought it would get in the way of dancing.  (As to why I still had my veil over my face on the way Out of our wedding- well, I was too distracted to remove it, and no one else noticed.  In fact, it turns out that my husband kissed me under the chuppah through the veil...)  

I considered going bareheaded for the reception, but that felt very strange and pretty wrong to me.  I'd been wearing some sort of head-covering (kippah/scarf/cap/etc) for 6+ years by that point (only last summer), and  being at a significant event without one- especially when there would be eating, brachot, and divrei Torah involved- did not feel appropriate at all, for me.  So I ruled that out pretty quickly.

I briefly also considered finding a white scarf or crocheting a cap or kippah for the reception.  This would have made putting a hair-do together rather complicated, but it was my default option for a while.  (This would have been one more project for an already DIY heavy wedding.  I made the centerpieces, kippot for our guests, and sort-of-matching kippot for our immediate families, besides starting and not finishing an atarah for my husband's tallis, which was our huppah.)

Then I went to a friend's wedding, who also wears kippot/small scarves.  Her sister had put together a scrap of the lace from her dress (removed during alterations) with a shiny hairclip, and she wore that in her hair as a  kippah during her reception.  When she offered to lend me some things they had gotten for their wedding and weren't going to need afterwards, I asked if I could borrow that as well.  She was happy to loan it, and I did indeed wear that all day- I had the hairdresser put it on when she did my hair, and put the full veil over it, and only removed the latter after the ceremony.  It gave me a great chance to enjoy having my hair out for that last day, and also feel like I was covering my head.

 Here it is under the veil, at the chuppah.

And here it is actually serving its function, during the dancing.  

What did you do with your head/hair at your wedding?

Quick Picture

More verbal content will be coming soon (I'm working on a post about some halakha, but as we're moving, the books I need to reference are over at our new place- but we don't have internet there yet.  I also have one about my wedding in the works- you may see that sooner).  Instead, today will be a quick picture, for now...

Talk to you more soon!

Personal Connections

After taking yesterday mostly off from moving (I packed a few boxes of clothes, but that's about it- my husband's winter things fit in 1 box- that's about as much space as my sweaters, and I'm far from a clothes horse), today, we jump back in.  So I put on a favorite scarf- it's one that had been my mother's, but she didn't use it much, and gave it to me at some point.  Nothing fancy- but the connection makes me feel good, and capable.  The perfect thing for today.

Do you have any head gear that gives you a pick-me-up from its associations or source?

Double Trouble Shabbat

We managed to get pictures of both my head-do's for shabbat this week, since I somehow managed to still be all "coiffed" at the end of shabbos.  However, those daytime photos come at the end of a day with a Lot of walking in it- we walked to have lunch with friends about 4.5 miles south of us, and then decided that hey, let's walk back too, instead of hanging around until the end of shabbat.  So- be merciful on the little strands of hair that are yearning for outer space, in those photos.

Night:

This was me going rather wild- there's a small scarf tied as a headband underneath it all, which you can barely see in these photos.  Then I put on a long rectangular scarf (blue and silver), and a folded smaller one  (pink and purple) around that.  I took a third scarf (light blue and black) and wrapped it around my bun once.  After that, I made two braids, each with one tail of each of the three scarves.  It was a lot of fun, but might have been a bit too much- I think I'd skip defining the bun, the next time I want to do scarf-braids.  On the other hand, as someone who lived in braided hair for years and years of my youth, it's fun to have some again, once in a while.  This was enough fun that it was totally worth it.

Day:

For daytime, I was more moderate than for Friday night.  I used two rectangular scarves, with one tied regularly, and the other sort of scrunched up, then tied a little behind it.  I twisted the tails together, and wrapped them around my bun. Then I topped it off with a dollar-store scrunchie.  I really liked the effect, and it brought together all the colors from my outfit.  (You can also see the progress of our packing and move in the background.  Sorry it's so chaotic.)

I Forgot To Name This Post

These photos came out a little bit washed out, but give the general idea.  There's a bandanna as a base layer, with a full-sized tichel over it, starting farther back on the head.  I took one tail of that scarf and looped it up crown-style, and took the other and wrapped it around my bun- sort of a gentle compromise between the two styles.  I like how the bandanna underneath gives the back of the tichel a little bit of loose volume.  It's a nice little change of pace for someone with very fine hair.

You've been seeing a lot of the same colors lately, because, between the heat and moving, I've been wearing t-shirts a lot lately, and I have only a few of those- about enough to get me through a week without repeats...  Several of them have the same/similar sorts of colors.  The result is fairly obvious, I guess.

A Pop of Color, and Some Thoughts

Today we're starting our moving process.  We're moving just a few blocks away, so we're not renting a truck, etc, and instead are doing this in stages.  How many stages is yet to be determined.  We've acquired a hand-truck to help- but it will still be a ton of shlepping.  We'll see how this works out.

So my head-covering is fairly simple- it's going to be a hands-on kind of day.  On the other hand, I wanted to bring the colors from my t-shirt and my skirt together, somehow.  So I threw this together:

I just tied a scarf, as usual, then took a second one (in this case, a fairly thin one, since I wasn't looking for so much extra bulk), and wrapped it around my bun once to anchor it/shorten it a little so that it matched the length of the tails of the other scarf, then twisted them together, and wrapped them around the bun.

The result: what looks like one, plain scarf in the front, but provides a little surprise of color in the back.








And now for something completely different: I was reading a blog post reflecting on how socially important it is to be beautiful- but not to look like you care about it/work for it too much.  This is no surprise, I'm sure.  But it brought up all those questions about how I use appearance, and what sort of message this kind of blog sends.  On the one hand, for me, this is a hiddur mitzvah.  On the other hand, does it take head-covering and make it something more about attractiveness than about the religious and spiritual aspects of the practice?

I try to strike a balance, but given that a lot of my reflective capacity  has been involved in considerations about work for next year and moving, this week, there have been a lot of style posts, and certainly very little halakha or serious reflection.  Life tugs in different directions, and it needs to be able to adapt.  Still- I don't want this blog to turn into just a "how to make your head look pretty" blog- that isn't quite the point, for me.

Making Use of Narrow Scarves

Between a conversation with a friend and a forum I read, I've recently encountered several people trying to figure out how to use narrow (meaning not wide enough to cover the whole head in one pass) scarves to cover their head.  Here are a few of the "work-arounds" that I've figured out, so far, for making use of a scarf that isn't quite wide enough to easily cover your whole head.

1. You can loop it around your head twice, so that the first time covers the front, and the second loop sits farther back on the head and covers the back of your head/your hair.  This is a little hard to keep on if you tuck it in at the back, though.

2. Use it as an under-layer or over-layer with a larger scarf.  As an under-layer, it frames your face, but isn't being asked to provide full coverage.  As an over-layer, you see the whole scarf, but there's another scarf providing the extra width.  If it's missing only a little bit of width, you can use a wide headband in front, instead of another whole scarf, also.  You have to make sure that this doesn't slip, though.

3. Make it into an accent-scarf: Use another scarf to get the functional stuff done (wrap it, normally, around your head), and bunch up, fold, or twist the narrower scarf, and tie it, like a headband around your head.  You can then take the ends of the two scarves and twist them together to use around your bun or the top of your head, or layer them individually, alternating. Even more options include braiding them or letting them hang loose down your neck.  Similarly, you could wrap the large scarf around a bun, and use the accent scarf to go around the bun, or to cross it (as in my recent posts from this week).

3b.  Another use as an accent scarf is to tie a larger scarf as usual, then twist its tails with the accent scarf, and bring both ends up as a crown.  (I think I should do this again soon, so I can add an illustration.)  This is particularly good for scarves that are both narrow and slightly shorter than the usual.

4.  If you have a cap or large kippah, you can wrap the narrow scarf like a turban/headband, with the cap covering the center of your head, like this.

What other ideas can you add to my list?

What I Wore: Quick Colors

Sorry this is just another, quite simple "What I Wore".  Things have been sort of fretful around here- a possibility (which has come through, it seems) for full-time, rather than part-time work for next year (which had been all I'd managed to line up), and needing to find out if it was possible at this point.  So- here's a belated post for the day.  Perhaps tomorrow will produce something more thoughtful...

So here's a quick way to add some additional color and height to a regular bun-style.  It also adds some definition to your bun.   Tie your scarf as usual, then take a thin scarf, wrap it around your bun, starting from the top, cross it below the bun, and wrap it around the top of your head.  If it's long enough for the ends to come all the way to the back of your head, tie them there.  Otherwise, tuck them under the first scarf, so that they stay securely in place.

Evolving A Variation

I had the idea, yesterday, to take the ends of my accent scarf and loop them straight up over my bun, rather than weaving them in with the ends of the larger scarf around it.  Here's the result:

Today, I figured I'd continue playing with the idea.  Instead of folding the scarf-tails up the way they are, though, I tried twisting them.  Here's how it came out:

I'm not sure that I like it as much, actually, but it might work well eventually. (Possibly because this time, it crosses the whole bun, whereas last time, I wrapped the bun Around the tails as well, which I think was a nice touch.)  I wonder if I could arrange two of them, and cross them over a bun...

Shabbat...

I finally wore one of those kippah+turban combinations out, this shabbos.  (You may remember, I experimented with a variety of ways to use a large cap/kippah in this post.)  While this was a full-sized scarf, this would work well with a thinner one, as well.

This was, I think, a success, even if I needed to fidget with it a little bit after these photos (note the uneven wrapping in the bottom right corner photo- I think I mostly fixed that).  Perhaps I'll keep a couple more of these kippot, rather than trying to find new homes for them... (Just, I think, the favorites- I don't know that this will be an every-day style.)

I enjoyed the chance to wear this kippah- it's one of my very favorites of the ones that I made, for some reason.  It isn't the most complex, or most colorful, and wasn't the most interesting to make, but there's something very attractive and satisfying about it.  Also, I like that green (obviously, based on looking at this outfit), and it's crochet thread that bought in Israel, of a sort I don't usually find in the US.

What I Wore, Without A Snazzy Name

Another braid- this time with a small triangular scarf underneath, then just the one scarf in the braid, and my hair already braided, which shortened it, but gives a little bit of interesting texture (also, I hadn't decided what I was doing with my hair until I'd already braided it up).

Halakhic Prequels

In my anachronistic exploration of halakhic texts pertaining to head-covering (currently, women's head-covering), I went to look at the Tur, and found that in bringing you the Shulhan Arukh, I have already brought you the Tur on this topic- the wording is identical.

(Here it is, as a reminder:  לא תלכנה בנות ישראל פרועות ראש בשוק, אחת פנויה ואחת אשת איש

The daughters of Israel should not walk with uncovered heads in the marketplace, both unmarried and married women)

While I was looking through the Tur to find it, I found that earlier in the same siman, there's another relevant snippet of halakha- "אסור לשמוע  קול ערוה או לראות שערה"  It is forbidden to listen to the voice of a sexually-forbidden-woman, or to look at her hair.   The same thing is brought in the Shulhan Arukh, again word-for-word (E"H 21:1).  

This is presented in the context of a variety of prohibitions on male attention to women, much of which I am, at the least, quite uncomfortable with- as you can probably tell by the beginning of the sentence.  Nevertheless, it presents an interesting balance to the following se'if, which somehow changes the feeling of the thing, for me.  I shouldn't show it, and they shouldn't look.   If I fall through, they're still not allowed to enjoy my error.  

Somehow, I manage not to react to this text by putting my head-covering into that category of "do this to protect your too-easily-tempted men from sin", a philosophical approach to modesty that often irks me.  I don't know why it doesn't press those buttons, since it would be logical enough.  The chain of reasoning would be: 1. they oughtn't look.  Therefore 2. I should have to keep it out of sight.  I dislike the one-sided responsibility for someone else's obligation that goes on in this approach.  Expressing the requirement for women to cover their heads as a separate requirement helps prevent this from being my dominant reading of the rule.  The other meanings that head-covering has both for me and in the text, also keeps it from falling into this hole for me.  

Heads and History: A Silhouettes Sequel

Clearly, I like alliteration a little too much.  But anyway, back to business...

Here's some of my grandmother's input on the use of those padded-front scarves I was talking about:

Hi, Maya; Just read your current blog, and, for some reason, the head covering i see, in my mind, was in the gold/brown tone, with the padding in the front. We wore it to protect our hair do from the wind, or, perhaps, as a babooska in the rain...the one I'm visualizing might not be the one in your dress up chest...I think I had it when I wore a yellow raincoat and bought the scarf to go around my neck...can't really remember, but I do remember wearing scarves on my head, a little hair showing in the front, and the scarb going behind the ears and tieing in the back, on my neck, in a little knot. Wish I had a picture to demonstrate,but we didn't take many photos at that time, and I prob. would have taken off the scarf to show my hair, which was full and curley at that time.

I'm trying to think about why I thought about those sorts of scarves as what was "in" in the Jewish community- I think my mother-in-law mentioned it, from early in her marriage.

In any case, I did end up finding one of those scarves in my parents' attic, and borrowed it to photograph here.  So- here we go.

 It doesn't look so different, although the first time I put it on behind my ears, it had this sort of odd poke-back and ruffle look.  Somehow it didn't happen when I put it on for the camera.  The size and texture of the fabric, along with the color that this one happens to be, gave the back a rather sweet ruffled look when it wasn't tucked in- very innocent, which I found interesting.

The padding made the top rather hot, though.  I wonder if these were more favored for cooler weather.

Silhouette and Style

I'm visiting my parents, right now- my husband and I came out yesterday, on something of a whim.  At some point, last night, I was talking to my grandmother about this blog, and we were talking about her appreciation for what I do.  Somehow, this all got around to bringing me to consider what sorts of silhouettes I seem to want to create.  Don't ask about the chain of thought- I'm confident that it neither makes a lot of sense, nor matters.

In any case, perhaps as a result of my shorter-than-average height, or my mother's dicta as I was younger in praise of hairstyles that "gave me some height", I have lately wanted to wrap my scarves so that they do exactly that- add some height.  This is particularly true for when I want to dress nicely.  Wrapping additional scarves in ways that layer and create a fairly thick "crown" around my head is a style you've been seeing from me quite a lot, here.  The last wedding I went to, I pinned a necklace to my scarf, also drawing light and attention upwards.

I've seen a variety of products online, designed to add height to one's head-silhouette.  Most seem to be padding of one sort or another, added under your scarf.  They seem to be popular already in the Muslim community, and I've seen a number of Jewish women getting into them as well.  This seems to be the stylish silhouette, right now.  So maybe I'm just following the trends.

It reminds me (and this was part of the way I got to this topic, from talking to my grandmother) of a couple of scarves/head-coverings that were part of the dress-up chest when I was little.  They had been my great-grandmother's I think, and I could never figure out quite what they were for, when I was little, because they had a padded section in front.  (At the time, I also didn't like the fabrics much, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to find ways to play with them.)  I don't know if that was the style, then (my bubbe didn't usually cover her hair/head, but I suppose some situations called for it?), or if the padding was to help keep the scarf on.  Nevertheless, those scarves would make a different silhouette from anything I see done now- either the styles that add some height or the more low-lying ones.  Too bad they aren't still lying around somewhere, so that I could make a comparison.

Tichels and Tefillin

One of the more practically complex aspects to being both egalitarian and invested in head-covering is combining covering my head and putting on tefillin in a halakhically valid manner.  If you're not willing to show some amount of hair, this just can't happen in public, because the head tefillin -both the bayit and the strap- need to rest on your head, not on another object (a mistake I see on Purim just about every year, from people with wigs/hats as parts of their costume, who just aren't thinking about it.)

I manage it by pushing my scarf back just a little bit, so that the tefillin rest in the appropriate place, with the bottom edge just at my hairline.  Then I run my fingers around my scarf, pushing it back just enough so that the retzuah- the strap of the tefillin- is on my hair and not on my scarf.  Since I use kippah clips to keep my scarves on, I lift them enough to let the retzuah slide underneath them.  The whole thing adds about 5-10 seconds to how long it takes to put on tefillin, and doesn't muss most scarf arrangements too badly.

Some styles are better for davening in the morning than others- things like a bun style, braid, or pretty much anything that doesn't have much bulk on top will work with tefillin.  When I want to do my tichel in a crown or other top-heavy fashion, I often just either wear a large, crocheted cap/kippah (if I'm davening at home, which has been my default this year- hopefully I'll make improvements to my minyan attendance soon), or tie my tichel just at the basic level for coverage and leave the tails hanging until after I finish davening.

On the other hand, I don't know how to work this sort of thing with a hat with any sort of brim, unless you can take it off to put the tefillin on and put it back on over them.  So berets are doable with this system, but anything else gets tricky, unless you don't mind people getting a view of your hair, if you're in public.

Recap in step form:
1. Put on headcovering.  Expect anything with a lot of bulk around your head to get jostled off or get in the way.
2. Put on tefillin in the appropriate fashion.  When you get to the head, start putting it on, and say the bracha. Then:
3. adjust scarf out of the way of the tefillin in front.
4.  Run your fingers around the strap, adjusting scarf out of the way.  Settle everything in place.
5. Go on with putting your tefillin on, daven, etc.

After Davening:
1. When you come to remove your tefillah shel rosh (head tefillin), do so carefully, taking the strap out from under any clips or other obstructions first, for minimum frustration.
2. Touch up your tichel in any way you feel needed. For example: tug the front forward a little if you want, re-clip to tighten if needed, or put up the ends of your scarf, or additional scarves, to give yourself some height.

What I Wore and A Small Crochet Pattern

I promise more thoughtful content soon, but in the meantime- what I wore yesterday.  (The picture is from evening, so it has slipped back a little- it started out just behind my hairline.)

One scarf with the ends wrapped in a crown style, one behind the other, with a small headband in front of them, and 3 crocheted flowers (sewn onto over-sized bobby-pins) attached to the front "crown".  Not 4th of July colors, but a little bit festive while still aiming for a minimum of heat-retention.  (We did some walking around yesterday, and I didn't want to overheat too badly.)

The flowers are 3 layers of crochet in different colors (great for using scraps of kippah thread).  Let's see if I can remember the pattern- they make a nice little accessory, and I think they work even better on a scarf like this than they did in my hair.
Round 1: Make a loop and chain 5.  (dc, chain 2) 7 times, join to third chain stitch.
Round 2: slip stitch into first space.  (sc, 3 dc, sc) in each space.  join. Fasten off first color.
Round 3.  Fasten new color with a sc around one of the dc from round 1.  chain 5.  (dc around next dc from round 1, chain 3), around and join- 8 sections.
Round 4: slip stitch into first space. (sc, 4dc, sc) in each space.  join and fasten off.
Round 5:  Fasten new color with a sc around one of the dc from round 1.  chain 6.  (dc around next dc from round 1, chain 4), around and join- 8 sections.  
Round 6: slip stitch into first space. (sc, 5dc, sc) in each space.  join and fasten off.  
Alternately, you can substitute (sc, 2 dc, tc, 2 dc, sc) for round 6, to give slightly pointier leaves.  


Then simply sew or glue to a bobby-pin, safety pin, or clip, and you're all set.  

Maya and Hats

I'm much more comfortable with scarves than with hats.  Hats tend to fall across my forehead and give me a headache, for one.  For another thing, finding a hat that can accommodate my hair in a functional way is not so easy to do.  I can wear a braid with some of them, but it isn't always the way they're designed to be worn, and therefore some of them look pretty silly.  Others just don't provide enough head coverage.  So I have a handful of hats, but I don't wear them so very often.  It sometimes feels like a fashion failure- such pretty things, and I don't know what to do with them.

Recently, I found a nice solution that makes at least some of my hats a bit more wearable.  I remembered that my sister-in-law often wears a light-weight tichel under her hat, when she wears one (mostly to weddings and the like).  I've done that in the past, so that I could take the hat off when I wanted to- often a big success.

But in this case, I wanted to wear my sunhat, which is just  a little big on me- so there was room to wear a scarf wrapped with both ends up around the top of my head, one over the other, underneath it.

This let me wear my hat with the bottom of the brim propped up to my hairline, rather than cutting across my forehead, irritating it and cutting off my range of vision.  It also meant that I had a nice-looking tichel wrapped, if I wanted to take the hat off.  All together, it was a very nice combination.

It isn't a real solution to "how to make hats convenient for me", but it's a good step in the right direction- and very good for my skin, in this heat and sun.

Another Day, Another Covering

Just another quick peek at what I've done with my head today...  I seem to be pretty stuck on a "wrap some other colors around my head" kick- so, with the same skirt I wore for Shabbat and a purple t-shirt, here it is:

 So- what seems to be the usual 3 scarves, one tied bun-style, the other two folded up (One, the olive-green pattern, is a smallish square, folded in a triangle, than wrapped up into a tube, basically.  The other, blue and black, is a rectangle, loosely folded.), and wrapped around.  The difference this time is that I wrapped the rectangle around once, then layered the tube/square just behind that, then did up a second loop of the rectangle.  I think it avoids a little of the awkward backward projection that I got on Shabbat.

And here, from the back, you can see that the bulk of the thing is the dark red scarf, even if you can barely see it in the first photo.

Another Shabbos: Layering and A Bangle

I don't know what else to call what I used: it's really some sort of cheap glass pendant that I got at a street fair.  But it's pretty big, and it looked like I could put a thin scarf through it- so I gave it a shot, and it worked.

I wanted to pick up the colors from my outfit- often my main factor in scarf-selection.

I put together a green top with a multicolored skirt, with green and two different reds as its main (non-black) colors.

So I took a little risk and took out three scarves in just those colors, and ended up putting the two reds right next to each other.

(Pardon the non-ideal picture: it was fairly close to candle-lighting, and I didn't want to keep fussing.)



I really like the way it turned out from most angles:

Please pardon my shirt tag in the next couple of photos...  


I do like the mix of colors from the back, though. It feels dramatic and exciting, to me.  

 However, straight on sideways (is that a possible direction?  What I mean is- how it looks from the side, as in the picture below), I'm not entirely sure.  I think it might be improved by folding the second/dark red scarf one more time, so it doesn't project as far back.  

Heat

It's summer- no surprises there.  And generally, I deal with heat fairly well, as long as I stay hydrated.  But somehow, last night felt hotter than usual for me, and I'm still feeling sort of over-heated this morning.  I'll be home most of the day- we're having friends over for a word game party this afternoon, and we don't have air conditioning.  (Ok, we now own an air conditioner, but it doesn't fit in our windows...)  

So I tried out a trick I read about- wetting down your tichel before putting it on.  Now, I only got dressed a little while ago, but so far, it feels lovely, and I don't think it looks any different.