October notes from St. Leonards

When we last spoke, I was mired in dismantling KNITSONIK LTD., closing my business bank accounts, de-registering from VAT and shutting the doors of my online shop. It was all pretty dispiriting and I had to help things along with large doses of gold stars, washi-tape and WELL DONE stickers in my journal but, now I’m out the other side, I feel amazing about my decision; lighter on my feet and happier in my heart.

All my new found joy is going into the Journal with me membership that I quietly launched in September via my mailing list. The membership is a non-overwhelming guided exploration of creative journaling that includes access to:

• KNITSONIK Bullet Journaling and Journal with Me (a repository for all the live class content).
• An informal hour-long hangout via Zoom per month where we cheerlead each other on, and mark the endings/beginnings of our months together.
• Two live online classes: this month we’re carving our own rubber stamps and finding our own special colours.
• A dedicated mailing list and online forum.

A massive thank you to those of you who have joined me for this next chapter! I’m really encouraged that my aims for this membership – to instigate more play, to have more creativity in our journaling, and to create community around our journaling practice – are slowly coalescing. This first quarter is all about overwintering in our journals and later on we’ll be doing classes on themes like sending more love letters; planning the holidays; reviewing the year that’s been and marking the midwinter. If you want to join us for those classes and for all the chat, you can do so here.

When not running my membership, my deep love affair with St. Leonards continues and last week was an especially good one. I gave a talk at a local queer quilting group about my work – one of the most life-affirming things I’ve done in ages. I loved hearing what the other quilters are making – a paper quilt based on mermaid’s purses; a wedding dress torn up and repurposed; geometric shapes fragmenting in both paint and in textiles; photos of cats and plants as starting points for thinking about pattern blocks for quilting… I spoke about my work using three big scribbly diagrams listing everything I’ve done under the headings KNIT, SOUND and STATIONERY and bought a massive basket of stuff to share. It was so nice to show my work to a group of artists who immediately just got the interweaving themes and ideas. Thanks for having me, queer quilters! It was magic.

I also got to revisit a very old sound/stationery project last week. Do you remember SOUND BANK?

I started this project in 2008 and worked on it through 2009 and 2010, and it involved recording everyday sounds using words, notation or drawings. I hand-printed all the envelopes and record-cards myself and wrote/drew and notated all kinds of everyday sounds on them between 2008 – 2010.

There are some beautiful continuities – I am still thinking about the delicate sounds of sourdough fermentation processes and my stove-top coffee pot remains the sonic highlight of my mornings – but there are other records in the SOUND BANK such as the many sounds of dear Joey Muffkins that are a window into my sonic past, to a place that feels like another life and time.

I shared some sounds from the SOUND BANK and some of the joy of recording everyday sounds in this way at a wonderful event at Edinburgh University called Move Slowly and Mend Things last Thursday. The event was organised by Harriet Harris – the lead University Chaplain – and involved her as host, and then myself and Sarah Moss – novelist, memoirist, teacher and journalist – presenting creative exercises and works designed to focus us imaginatively and playfully on the joy of the here and now. It was such a good day. I participated via Zoom but even distantly could feel an important sense of shared presence and attention.

Last weekend we had the outstanding (( XMTR )) festival here, which was rich and full and inspiring and deserves its own post. Today I’ll just mention my top highlights: the Drag Brunch celebrating the sonic forms of the queer community through recorded interviews about creative process interspersed with live acts; an inspired performance at Saturday night’s Sonic Communion titled “Why Should I Brush My Teeth Mummy” by artist-parents Eleanor Westbrook and Tara Franks attesting to the daily dramas of childhood bedtime and the pressures of balancing artmaking with parenting; and the beautiful AudioFlux presentation featuring my dear friend Lorna Hamilton-Brown MBE RCA.

To go into a tiny bit of depth about this last highlight, AudioFlux artists Julie Shapiro and John DeLore have collaborated with Lorna to devise a set of prompts for audio artists inspired by her Tension Birds project. Work submitted needed to be exactly three minutes long; had to take inspiration from the theme: “CREATIVE TENSION”; and must include audible REPETITION (nodding to the rhythm of knitting). In turn, Lorna has been making Tension Birds speaking to the commissioned artworks made to this theme, and will produce four more when the finalists are announced from the open call. It was amazing to sit in community and listen to submissions. There were some really powerful stories; I especially loved Very Fine People by Lisa Woolfork – speaking to white supremacy in American quilting spaces – and xoxox0xo by Thomas Lu – painting the picture of a loved-one going through cancer treatment, as represented in their text messages. This one really made me cry for obvious reasons but it was really powerful and utterly relatable.

Of the pieces commissioned by AudioFlux for this series of circuits, I also relished Nobody Told Me – a piece we heard from Colette Kinsella – speaking to the experience of Menopause. Lorna created a beautiful Tension Bird to represent this piece – beak out of place, body out of shape, white yarn speckled with brown and red – which was just such a moving textile tribute to its themes.

Finally, regarding my love-affair with my new town, I want to tell you about the Refugee Buddy Project, and how projects like this are a beacon of hope during a week like this one, during which we are seeing so much hatred and racism on our streets.

During our first summer here, Mark and I attended Sanctuary Festival organised by Hastings Community of Sanctuary. Many folks spoke about their work there, including the founder of the Refugee Buddy Project, Rosanna Leal, who talked about how grassroots organisations across the UK and especially Scotland mobilised to welcome her family – and many others – who were forced to flee the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s. Rosanna has built Refugee Buddy Project to create a culture of welcome for migrants and refugees in the same spirit with which her family was received here when they came to the UK.

I signed up for the Buddying Programme back at the start of this year. This carefully safeguarded and supported project involves pairing a refugee with a British person who has been vetted and DBS-checked, and with whom that person can safely practice their English… but the relationship inevitably becomes about so much more. When I think of my buddy I am astonished at their courage; saddened by the long ordeal they had to safely get their family here (it took fifteen years); and still struggling to comprehend how their grandparents were forced to flee their homeland of Palestine in the 1940s and never allowed to return. Being a refugee buddy means spending quality time with a person who has never been able to feel HOME in the UK in the way that I have; it means grappling with the idea of growing up as a refugee in a land that is not your land, and trying to understand what that is like. Being a refugee buddy means sharing Eid and Christmas, swapping recipes, having long discussions about cultural differences; talking about mental health and trauma… it means thinking about how much harder it is to access public services when English isn’t your first language. And discovering both how warm and welcoming the UK can be, and also how hard-edged and savage, when its streets are lined with flags.

I’ve been meeting my buddy for one afternoon every week since March and all the little ripples from our time spent together feel like a small push back against the tide of hatred sweeping across the UK. Painting stones together, talking about Palestine, Iraq and the UK, swapping recipes, going for small walks, laughing, learning to crochet together… These are little things, but they are big things, too.

So that’s me, here in Hastings walking away from my limited company; running my membership with joy; remembering old art projects about presence and attention; rediscovering the magic of audio; spending time with my buddy and – later today – putting fliers through people’s doors on my street, reminding them that migrants and refugees are not the enemy.

That’s me, wearing my sister-in-law’s sparkly jumper to all the beach discos, to all the best sunsets, and all the audio parties. That’s me, autistic and ADHD with a wrist that won’t let me knit; still grieving the loss of Mel but also full of hope that with love, courage and creativity, we can create better times ahead for everyone.

That’s me in a town where everything feels possible. It’s not perfect here, but for every St. George’s Cross painted on a roundabout there is a Refugee Buddy Partnership rippling its joy outwards into the community. For every thoughtless word, there are the beautiful ways of listening, speaking and sharing our stories exemplified by the (( XMTR )) festival of joy. For all the divisive shit going on, there are organisations like Afri.Co.Lab and the Refugee Buddy Project, showing us what’s possible and inspiring us to do more.

I am excited for this week’s rubber-stamp making class (offered through my membership) and am thinking that, for my example stamp, perhaps I’ll carve a lighthouse. I feel like we need some more of those.

Until soon, lots of love from St. Leonards.