Trash looms, bears, and dolls
Nothing goes to waste on my watch
Hello, hello!
In December, many of you found me through my story on Substack Notes about the Swedish children’s weaving loom1 which I found in the trash. Welcome! It turns out all of the parts were there except for the shuttle, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a shuttle or two lying around. It turns out I really love weaving!
Also, in December, my writing mentor and friend
wrote a very nice paragraph about me in her newsletter. Thank you, Charlotte. So, perhaps she sent you here.I am not a weaver, but I’m also not not a weaver. I will turn my hand to almost any craft or textile at least once. But one thing I am always doing is saving things from the trash. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. I can’t bear to see good stuff going to landfill. Sometimes space becomes a problem, but I have a whole chain of ways to pass things on, sell things, and donate things which helps. Admittedly, many things become part of my studio which is why my studio is also like a personal museum. I come from a family of savers of stuff. My great-grandmother always said, “You just never know when it might come in handy.”
The loom was one of my most recent finds.
Underneath it was this vintage doll made in England. I’ve named her Clothilde and she lives with me now. I named her after Clotho, the youngest of the three fates, who spins the thread of human life.2 That seemed a fitting name for a doll found underneath a loom. Some of you have also found me recently through my bears and dolls! Hello, bear and doll friends!
Some of my most exceptional bear and doll finds in the recent past were Albee Bear3 and Rosamund Doll. I found both of them in industrial dumpsters full of building and garage waste. Rescuing things from the trash means I also have a part-time “job” as a restorer of things, especially bears and dolls, but even sewing machines.
I go out and about in the world to see what I can see because I’m a writer and a songwriter. I’m either telling stories or singing stories. In concert, I tell and sing stories mostly about my childhood in Appalachia. Sometimes, I even sing with my sewing machine.
My Substack letters started with the newsletters that I sent to the email addresses I collected on paper in actual handwriting from fans and listeners when I started touring across the USA, Canada, and Britain back in 2008. So, many folks here have known me for a long time now because you wrote your name on a little clipboard beside my CDs on a table in Naples or Santa Cruz. Hello, old and kind friends. If you’ve met me recently through weaving, sewing, knitting, or my doll and bear hospital, but don’t know much about me otherwise, you can read a mini-history of me and my musical roots here. Just click on my polyester trousers.
What’s going to happen here in 2025?
Last year, I generally sent out two letters each month. In one of those letters, I included a recording or video of a newly written or rare song (you can go back in my posts and hear them all). Paid subscribers then received a link to download the new song. In the other letter, I generally wrote a story about my family in Appalachia or about something I was making or repairing.
This year, my intentions are the same. I’ll send out a new song each month which everyone can hear or see. Paid subscribers will receive a link to download the song. So, there isn’t actually a paywall for my letters. You can read and hear everything. I send a download link to the songs to Paid Subscribers as a thank you for keeping my songwriting and my doll and bear hospital ticking along! Thank you!
Last year, I was also very conscious of not wanting to overwhelm my readers with frequent letters, so I posted additional stories and photos on Substack Notes. I also post nearly every day on Instagram and Facebook. I enjoy this because I have made a lot of special real life friends through social media and I don’t end up interacting with a lot of contentious or soul-sapping stuff. I tend to follow people who like sewing, knitting, coloring, bears, dolls, ancestry, folk music, and recycling. So, if you’d like to be friends, let’s be friends.
This year, I’d like to send out more frequent actual letters (Substack posts) rather than just posting in notes or on social media. So, we’ll see how that goes for all of us.
I am pleased that you found your way here and I hope that my stories and adventures make you feel good, thoughtful, hopeful, and curious.
I have so many ideas for the year ahead. I wonder which ones will find their way to the finish line? Having you as readers gives me the sense that you, too, are curious about what might happen for me. For all of us. And that keeps me going, too.
You can always write to me if you have any questions or if you’d just like to say hello!
I’ll see you later in January for another little story and, also, for a whole new song which I finished writing in December!
I’m wishing YOU good surprises, like a free loom from the trash, in 2025,
Jeni
P.S. Here is a link (scroll halfway down the letter) to the most popular song I’ve released here on Substack so far. The writer
, who deservedly has thousands of readers, recommended this song in a note. Thank you, Tom.P.P. S. Do you love tinkering with fabric, paper, natural dye, wool, and thread. If so, perhaps you would like the work of two artists who inspire me –
and Sarah at .P.P.P.S. I look forward to every poem by
and this one makes the hair go up on my arms every time!Tip Jar for songs and the doll & bear hospital. PayPal or Ko-fi.
My website.
My actual shop where you can buy albums that you can hold in your hands and spin around in a CD player. And where I am paid more than .003 cents (I’m looking at you, Spotify) per play for my music!
You might wonder why someone would throw away this doll rather than give, donate, or sell her. Based on where the trash can was, I am pretty sure someone tried to donate her and perhaps the loom, too, and were told that they couldn’t be donated because they lacked safety tags. Safety tags are a big deal for charities because they can’t sell toys unless the toys have them. So, I imagine the person got mighty frustrated and stuffed these things in the trash when the charity shop couldn’t take them. It’s not the fault of the shops. They are probably up to their eyeballs in red tape to do with the health and safety of resold goods. I once bought a basket of vintage bears from a charity shop for very little money. They were locked in a glass cabinet and clearly labeled “NOT FOR CHILDREN. ADULTS AND COLLECTORS ONLY.” The relief of the shop worker when I asked to buy the bears was immense. She’d saved them from going into textile recycling because they had no safety/manufacturing tags. All of the volunteers were a bit nervous about selling these unlabeled bears. She must have thanked me five times for giving them a home.
So, we live in a world where sometimes we can’t donate things, but we don’t want to throw them away, but perhaps we also can’t keep them in our homes for some reason. The mountains of discarded things keeps growing. The mountain of new things keeps growing. The regulations (some necessary and sensible, I am sure, others not so much) keep growing. The dolls and bears and looms are turned away. What do we do?
On my watch, some find a home. A small, but good victory for the dolls, bears, and looms, and the environment, for now. I like to imagine one day (hopefully a very long time from now) there will be a very quirky auction of the contents of my studio museum and a bunch of people a lot like me will go home feeling victorious with a big pink plush dog and a sewing basket in their arms.
Albee was in serious jeopardy when I met him. He was in a dumpster under a laundry basket down a bumpy road which is home to garages, metal crushers, and car body paint services. His former owners fly-tipped (British for dumped) Albee and a bunch of other household things into an industrial dumpster. I was SO glad that I spotted him under the laundry basket. I use the laundry basket to this day and enjoy its hot pink color. I found some clothes in the same dumpster so I washed those and donated them. But Albee!! Wow. He needed a good spa time with unstuffing and washing and a good dry in the breezes of Lancashire. He’s such a beautiful chocolate color and he has this great waffle texture to his fur. He’s soft to hug and lean on. His original tag is almost completely faded but I can just make out that he’s a Chad Valley Bear. That’s a brand with a long history in Britain. He wears his original satiny purple neckerchief and he’s just a delight. He’s generally in charge of the guest room in Carnforth, but recently he came down to London to spend time with the friends there. He loves being part of the group. Albee is the king of second chances. Someone thought he was trash, but they were so wrong. He’s a treasure.
It made my day to be mentioned in such fine company, Jeni. Thank you. 🧡
I still use a paper calendar, and I try to capture a quote each day, something I’ve read that I want to remember. From your 11/2023 post, I copied “I’m glad to be holding one end of this thread…”