A Good Quiet Set of Directions: March 2019

A good quiet set of directions 1000 Words on the Pleasure and Pain of Instructions “I was up there in my room, reading some directions. That’s something I find I like to do when I have a few minutes to myself – I don’t know about you. How to put on furniture polish, transfer patterns with a hot iron, take off corns, I don’t care what it is. I don’t have to do it. Sometimes I’d rather sit still a minute and read a good quiet set of directions through than any story you’d try to wish off on me.” – Edna Earle from Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart Yesterday, I needed a nap. I’d been down to the charity shops in Sydenham, near where I live in London, and I came across a good book on Paper Mache. So, I snuggled under the duvet (what we call a comforter back in Virginia) and began to read directions. There were lists of supplies, there were cautions about inferior materials, there was encouragement about improvisation. Then, there were directions for specific projects, and I fell asleep in the middle of the instructions for a flower in a pot made out of a cottage cheese tub, a drinking straw, and some cardboard. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, if I can’t sleep because I’m too hot or too cold, or I am thinking up too many ideas, I settle my mind on pretending that I’m making something. I go through every step of the project very slowly and then I drop off to sleep. If that doesn’t work, I try saying the alphabet or I just get up and write a song or bend to some Yoga with Adriene (do you know Adriene? I’ve done so much yoga with her, sometimes I turn around to tell her something and remember that she is in Austin, Texas). So, I was tickled when I recently read Eudora Welty’s excellent book, The Ponder Heart, and came across narrator Edna Earle who also loves reading “directions.” I am reluctantly coming to the realization that I might not live long enough to make all of the things I have it in my mind to make. But I am going to die trying. And I can supplement the making with reading about making. This brings me to this year. Recently, I have been wading through a morass of red tape and bureaucracy to do with my life and work visa here in the UK. The directions are very poor. The fact that bureaucracy is so difficult to spell, nearly makes it onomatopoeic. Bureaucracy is where directions are stuffed, in no sensible order, into a sad brown chest of drawers where some of the drawers are locked, others are falling apart, others are boobytrapped, some smell bad, and where dealing with them conjures very crass words in the head of someone who worshipped Pollyanna as a child. “Bureau-crassy.” The great thing about directions for sewing, for making gingerbread, for cutting linoleum, or for playing the mountain dulcimer, is that the authors of these directions have your best interests at heart and they would like you to think of them as worthy guides who will have you making dresses and portraits of your friends in no time. If their directions are poor, misleading, infuriating, or just plain wrong, you won’t be inclined to buy their patterns or books again. I can hear the voice of my mother ringing in my head, “I won’t be buying a Voguepattern again because they just make skirts more difficult than they should be.” But rarely have tears been shed over a Butterick sewing pattern in the Hankins household. Applying for my visa here in the UK has been much like working with a dress pattern that when put together looks like a horse wearing a potato. I am very patient with forms, applications, and questionnaires . My accountant (back when I had one) once asked me if I was really a performer because she’d never seen such organization from her other clients. When my sister needs someone to organize her stationery and toiletries, she knows I’m her girl. But this visa stuff has been much more complicated than separating Q-tips from cotton balls or rationalizing a Quickbooks report.  Because I am working through this visa process, my ability to work in the UK is on hold, and my ability to work in the USA is limited because I need to physically be in the UK to meet the UK residency requirements. This all means that when you look at my touring schedule for 2019, for the first time in eleven years, the page is blank. I can’t in good conscience commit to a slate of concerts for 2019 when my whereabouts and work permits are entirely up to the Home Office, and I may have to cancel or rearrange plans at short notice. If my future was in the capable hands of the cast of Spooks (fantastic British spy series not to be missed by my American friends), I would have my work permit in hand, my residency sorted, and I would merely be a subplot as they foiled a dastardly plan by some criminal to achieve world domination. But, my future is in the hands of an office where, in my last meeting, I came up with the work around for a defective QR code and called technical support while they poked around on their keyboards like chickens. Lawsee-Beesee, as Mawmaw Margie would have said whilst adjusting her pink hair-net.  Why do I mention all of this? Dear reader, I would very much like to play a concert for you and, contrary to conjecture, I have not decided to become anyone else other than who I am – your sewing, singing, songwriting Jewell Ridge Girl. But I do need to have patience with the bureaucracy and I simply have to wait. I wish we could be together in some cozy house concert or eating chips at a bluegrass festival. So, in the meantime, I am writing, singing, strumming, and making things. I am dreaming up a show for my 2020 tour. Depending on this and that, I may make a few appearances on stage here and there in 2019. It is very odd for me not to be traveling around singing for you for the first time in a decade. But, I shall keep in touch and I would be glad if you will, too. Speaking of which, thank youfor all of the kind messages about my being especially ill ten days ago. All better here. Here’s to a “good quiet set of directions” which is harder to find than one might think – all you have to do is look at world politics and little ole household ones, too, and see what a muddle we humans have made of it all. Luckily, the sun is still coming up and so is the moon, so we could do our part, too. I’m going to go work on a song and then try some more linocutting. I wish you well in all of your directions – from the IKEA chair you’re assembling to the yoga tree pose that has you jumping like a pogo stick. Good for you! Keep going! I’m right with you! Your friend,  Jeni How terrific to visit the Pierre Bonnard exhibition at Tate Modern and meet this little girl who was teaching all of the crocheted dachshunds how to read. In the end, she said only one of them could really read. I'm so crazy about Bonnard's use of magenta and purple that I've been to the show twice. Head over to Tate Modern to see a door that can be yellow on one day and pink on another. Only in the world of Pierre Bonnard. Photo by Graham Frear. I've been working on a Jeni rag doll made from tea-stained muslin.  Celia Pym and Visible Mending   I really love this interview with world famous mender, Celia Pym. She talks a lot about repair. Repair is happening all of the time, isn't it? Repair makes me think of my favorite British emergency road sign which says: FREE RECOVERY. AWAIT RESCUE   Wouldn't that be great!? Here is the article. You can now purchase the last Jeni & Billy album, the epic history of the Smiths in Appalachia, Heart of the Mountain, on CDBaby. With 27 tracks including songs, spoken word, and instrumentals plus two deluxe paper inserts, this record harkens back to the concept albums of the 1970s where an album told you a story. The story is fragmented and impressionistic and there are mysteries everywhere, but every song is about a real person. Plus, you can make Aunt Erma's gingerbread to eat while you listen. The directions are good. www.jenihankins.com Facebook Instagram Twitter

Jeni takes a break

Hi friends! I'm taking a week off to do some writing, reading, and sewing. And, I'm taking a break from all but essential email and social media, too. Thanks to everyone who has written, called, and spoken with me about Dad. I've been so grateful for the chance to honor him in songs and stories this past week. He would have been tickled by it all. Have a great week and see you next Sunday! 

P.S. I didn't sew this. Isn't it great -- a vintage handkerchief belonging to my good friend Olive. 

Stitches

This is what I'll be up to today on account of the sudden rush in Britain on Jeni-made cushions! Thanks to everyone who has bought a cushion. If you know we are coming your way and you'd like a cushion, it would be great if you could let me know. I only have a few more of the ones that I made in the USA and brought with me, so I am making new ones here and it would be helpful to think about how much sewing I should do...they are 45 pounds, all hand stitched by me!

Scraps of words and cloth

Report from Nashville, Tennessee, where Billy is mixing songs upstairs and I am mixing words and cloth downstairs; our work on the new record and CD packaging continues. I wrote this a week or so ago when it snowed:

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking around in our house, trying to get some exercise because it was bitterly cold outside and snowing a little. Sometimes, I sing old ballads while doing my indoor walking. Sometimes, I listen to music or call Mawmaw. But yesterday, after I sang a few ballads, I got to thinking about a song that I’m writing. I am in the tinkering stage. Most of the time, I write a whole lyric all at once. I really feel annoyed if I write a verse and nothing else. I am a bit compulsive about getting down at least two verses and a chorus, otherwise I’ll probably never come back to that writing fragment. It’s just a personal tick. I don’t have a rational explanation for it.

But once I have those two verses and a chorus, I can convince myself the song is finished and I feel accomplished . . . for a night or a day or two. Then I tiptoe back over to my piece of paper and acknowledge all of the little things that don’t satisfy me. I start to identify the tin words and irritating parts, the jagged un-singable things, the obvious cliched blunders.

You may have noticed that I’ve been sewing a lot lately. Sewing, like songwriting, is a compulsion of mine, too. I am thankful to be making some income from it because I feel I have to sew and, if I don’t sew for a few days, I feel very strange and slightly sick. I am like this about writing and singing, too. It’s a good thing all of this is part of my job or I’d be very cranky at my work as an astronaut or a book editor.

While I was walking around our furniture, I was thinking how my sewing works quite a lot like my songwriting. When making a patchwork piece I start with this bag of scraps which is like my vocabulary and the storehouse of all that I’ve read and heard. I start the patchwork with a central piece, usually pictorial, like the idea of my song – an image, a title, a phrase, a rhyme. Then I start building blocks of color around my pictorial center. Before I sew a strip or block of color, I test it against what I’ve already sewn, like testing words against each other. Some fabrics just seem to jump and pulse with resonance when put next to each other, just like words that seem to fit so rightly into my meter and rhyme. Some fabrics are quiet and give the eye a rest, just like quiet words, little important joining words. Some fabrics are beautiful, but all wrong for that particular spot in the patchwork and I have to set them aside. Words are like that, too; so gorgeous, but jarring in the song.

I can see how these two of my favorite things to do are both puzzle-like, but also full of freedom and possibilities. They aren’t like puzzles that are already solved, broken, and then my work is to put them back together (I like those, too, sometimes). Patchwork and song poems are the kinds of puzzles I make and solve at the same time. I am the author, the rule-maker, the rule-bender, and for a little while, as I sew or write, the queen of my own colorful labyrinth.

Sewing around

Finishing up some pillows thanks to Harriet & Bruce and their Singer 6215c - an oldie, but a goody. I really love sewing on different machines around the globe. I found the manual online and it was off to pillow happiness! 

Scraps of the old days

We wish you a beautiful first weekend of the new year! May the scraps of the old find purpose in the new. Here we go!

Siblings

Getting ready to wrap these pillows for two brothers & their sister! Really excited about how they came out. They all include scraps from the same two pieces of fabric sent to me by their Mom who ordered the pillows as Christmas gifts. I'm not tagging her because I don't want to spoil their surprise, but thank you for the order JT! I had a blast making these.

Hand Sewn Patchwork Pillows for sale!

Patchwork Pillow happiness. I sold my first patchwork pillow in person at our Huntington Beach concert on Saturday night and our friend Edie who had seen my pillows on Facebook, came by and picked up two that she had ordered. Thanks Edie!! Mawmaw was really excited to hear about it all. It brightened her day to know that I was making an income from sewing. It's exciting for me, too, since it's a skill I've practiced since I was little and I enjoy it so very much.

If you'd like to order a patchwork pillow, let me know. They are $75 plus postage. Entirely hand sewn by yours truly. I can send you a photo of the middles that I have with me – that's the piece of fabric in the middle (often pictorial) around which I build the the patchwork. The backs are made of recycled shirts, some with pockets (for prayers, wishes, dreams), some without. If you especially want a back with a pocket let me know and that will be no trouble at all smile emoticon The pillows vary in size from about 8 x 12 inches to 15 x 15, some wide, some tall. I just decide where to stop when I feel like the colors have all come together.

Buffalo Gap Thunderstorm

Report from Abilene State Park near Buffalo Gap, Texas: This thunderstorm is so loud and relentless that we can't hear ourselves sing in the tent. So, I am sewing up a patchwork pillow top and Billy is mixing and mastering our concert from the Conway Library on Thursday night. We've decided to bootleg our own concerts...still working on the concept.

Being your own boss can be risky (like your office may be a tent that seems to have a tiny leak all of the sudden), but it also means you get to try a bunch of things and there are no committees shaking their heads. If you fail, no biting your nails wondering if you've just lost a promotion. This is a relief.

We try, we fail, we try again, we succeed, we fail, we try again. It's exciting and we learn.

Our friends, you make it all more fun and beautiful, truly. Thanks for all of your lovely responses about my sewing shop. Makes my stitching even happier. 

Jeni's Whatnots on tour!

Report from I-30 in Dallas/Fort Worth traffic: Jeni's Whatnots, my sewing mercantile shop, is on our cosmic scotch tape tour for the first time! I sew all of these little treasures by hand while we wend our way along the trail. Hand stitching! Old School. Yes, indeedy, every stitch a moment. This time around I have pocket squares/handkerchiefs, dresser scarves (as Mawmaw Margie called them, one small white one and one long patchwork one), an owl pillow with a repurposed men's dress shirt on the reverse with a pocket for stowing wishes and prayers, and a grumpy wool whale who carries his own bit of ocean with him. 

If you've fallen in love with anything here and want me to check the price and/or set it aside for you, let me know, and I'll set it aside for you or send it in the mail.

Looks like we'll be getting to the Abilene State Park near Buffalo Gap, Texas, right at sunset just in time to put up our pup tent and make some soup. 

Arm & Leg

Report from I-40 in Tennessee heading east: Sewing up an arm and a leg in the passenger seat of Bebe the Jeep while Billy desperately searches for an NPR station and cracks me up imitating the car commercials and truck songs. 

Sewing Circle in Barnsley!

Report from Barnsley, South Yorkshire: One of the great things about traveling around sharing our music is that I get to see my fellow sewists! And it just so happened that today was an open sewing day among Joy's quilting group, so I got a start on a little gift for a friend and got to share in a rather decadent birthday cake! 

Thanks very much to all of the folks who came out to Barnsley Folk and Acoustic Night​ to see us! One of our MOST favorite things about touring in Britain is coming to this folk club and HEARING our friends sing . . . rumor has it that we will be going to session tomorrow night in Thurlston . . . our first session ever! 

Next week, I will be posting a brand new song, handwritten lyrics, and a story from our show at the Barnsley Folk Club on our fan club site . . . so now would be a good time to mosey over and put a dollar in the pot for this month so you can hear our new country song. It went down a storm last night and everyone asked who in Nashville was going to cover it! Yikes! We had no idea . . . just got in the mood to write a country song, as you do. https://www.patreon.com/jeniandbilly

Purple Frog Friend

Just sent this purple frog off to my Mawmaw. I love making these and she has wanted one for a while. We've been a bit quiet on Facebook because we're mixing the live CD and making Holiday gifts. Hope everyone is doing alright. It's been a time of deep thought and feeling for our country these last few days...