“Love isn’t Love until you give it away.”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Happy April Fool’s Day! With a pinch and a punch for the first of the month, white rabbits, white rabbits and all that tomfoolery!

I am indeed feeling a bit like a fool as I attempt to type on a keyboard full of animal hair. Everything on the farm is shedding its winter layers like kids on a playground whose grannies bundled them in too many sweaters. To pet anything from cows to cats is to have your hand in an instant mitt of fluff. I am vacuuming multiple times a day, but the kitchen still seems like a snow-globe. Who wants hairy eggs for breakfast?

Having never had cats before I adopted five skittish barn cats from my dear friend who died two years ago, I had no idea they would generate this much fiber. For the first year, they skulked around the perimeters of the house and barn and cellar. In December, I was so charmed when two of the cats chose to move indoors to winter by the wood stove. In the past three months, they have become cuddly pets. I had no idea that I would be able to spin a skein of yarn from all the fur they leave on the couch. It makes me wonder, why do I even need sheep?

Yes, I was a Fool to take all five cats when other homes could not be found. But it’s worth being a fool now and then for either Love or Learning.

The fools in Shakespear are always my favorite characters. They are the wise innocents whose wit exposes the foolishness of their “betters” and thus subverts the social order. Like cats, they supply life-affirming comedy in dark times. The Fool archetype is often one who is unconventional, naïve, and willing to challenge boundaries. The fool is the Ignorant who embraces Learning while not having the foggiest idea how much learning will be required by the end.

I have been a Fool for most of my life. Occasionally, it is my pleasure and privilege to meet and welcome other fools on this Mending journey. Sometimes, for brief, heady moments, I get to play the part of a Wise One, though my favorite role, of course, is always The Fool.

And only a Fool would help another Fool make a pair of Vogue slacks—complete with pocket welts—from scratch. Vogue is not the “starter” pattern. Simplicity, New Look…these are easier for most beginners. But Fools and Beginners are not always the same thing, as we shall see.

This week’s Fool was sitting outside my shop door when I arrived breathless and late for work. I had had to use bolt cutters to free the horns of a sheep who had gotten stuck in the hay feeder and lost time doing chores and lost more time getting stuck in single lane traffic due to road work (Mud Season, y’all). When I saw him sitting there, I panicked.

“Did we have an appointment?” I ask, frantically searching my brain for a memory. It was not a day I typically take in new clients but I might have told someone to come in and forgotten I had done so.

“No,” he said. “I just took a chance to stop by and see if you were here. I called you and left a message about needing help with a pair of pants I am making.”

“Oh, yes!” I remember now. Something about plackets on pockets. He holds out several muslin samples and a pattern.
“I think this pattern may be wrong. I keep following the instructions, but it does not make any sense to me.”

“Come on in,” I say. “Let’s have a look.”

I read the instructions many times. They did not make sense to me either. I know how to make plackets without a pattern and do it my own way.

“If it’s plackets you want, I can show you what I do,” I offer. “Because this doesn’t look like the easiest way to do it. My way is easy.”

He very polite but insistent. “I don’t want short cuts. I’ve watched hours of video on You-tube and it’s not like this pattern. I’m going to be making a lot of clothing from patterns. I need to learn how to learn new things from a pattern. This pattern.”

Damn.

This means that we two fools are going to have to figure out this pattern together.

“Ok!” I cried. “Challenge Accepted! Let’s do it together step by step from scratch.”

So I get some scrap fabric and read each step aloud and do it as he watches. I don’t trace any of the actual pattern pieces or markings. I just cut rough facsimiles and follow the directions. Sometimes, reading doesn’t make sense; only DOING does. Following patterns step by step, reading things aloud over and over again is actually how I learned to sew. Figuring out what the vocabulary means and what the instructions require is the bulk of learning ANY craft. To do it alone is frustrating but effective.

Just recently, I had made three custom vests, all with welted pockets. (I know how to make a welted pocket!) For the uninitiated, a welted pocket is a functional, internal pocket that is made by cutting through the outer fabric, then a welt, or separate strip of fabric, covers the opening. Sometimes they have single welts, sometimes double—above and below the pocket opening. You see them most commonly on jackets, coats, trousers, and vests. They are not for the average beginner to attempt, though I, perhaps controversially, approve of beginners attempting to do whatever the hell they want to do! So much Good comes from Challenges only the highly motivated can withstand. People generally are not motivated by the mundane, hence the invention of plackets.

Still, these instructions are a bit of a muddle. I must return to “Beginner Mind” and, to my surprise, I learn a lot. Funny how, from fiddle tunes to placketed pockets, a return to basics is always the jump start towards mastery! I learn so much that I now like the way the Vogue plackets turn out way better than my “easy” version. The Vogue way adds several steps that make the resulting plackets infallibly precise and beautiful.

“Thank you for teaching me,” I whisper humbly to the pattern on the table.

Both my student and I are overjoyed by the neat, flat result.

“Can I keep this?” he wants to know of the sample we have created.

“Yes, of course!” I say, “But I did most of that work. If you have time, I think you should tear apart the two disaster samples you brought in and follow the directions on your own so that you know that you can do it yourself before you leave.”

“Are you kidding me?” he asks, astonished and delighted.

“Do you have time?” I ask. “I can do my own work around you. I will ignore you. Talk out loud if you have to—sometimes that is the only way to do it. There’s something about hearing our own voice out loud that aids in comprehension. Do two of them on your own and then you will really own this.”

We both get to work. As a teacher, the hardest thing to do is to watch a student struggle. I resist the urge to make three plackets in succession for him, knowing that a butterfly’s wings need the heart-pumping struggle against the trapping cocoon to be able to inflate and soar.

I wait. I put a new zipper in a ski coat, remembering all my struggles with learning how to do that. I take a moment to revel in all I know and the joy of being able to share it with one as passionate about making things as I am.

He reads things aloud. He sews something backwards. He has to cut it free and try again. He works on how to orient the right sides and wrong sides of the fabric, which is tricky because he is using muslin to practice and it looks identical on both sides. He keeps at it until his head begins to cave it.

“I need a break,” he says. We have reached the point where the thoughts are like old film, stuck and bubbling into goo over the hot projector bulb. The brain needs to cool.

He takes a walk down the hall but he is back soon. This time, it is to triumph.

This is the moment I have spent the last hours living for. I am not disappointed. He HAS it! He can do not just one but twenty-one if he has to. And he will. He is going to make himself a lot of trousers. His excited internal designer is already cutting up all kinds of fabulous fabric and fashion combinations. All he needed was for his fingers to catch up with his dreams and now, watch out! This guy is Empowered!

All of it—the struggle, the many attempts, the failures, the need to take a break, the return, the tenacity that leads to triumph—has been necessary. I have been the happy doula while he has given birth to the part of himself he longed to become. We have been Fools and it has been worth it.

As he packs up to leave, he says “What do I owe you for your time?”

I say slowly, with dead seriousness, thinking of my dad, who always told me my treasure was in my head, “There is no way you can pay me for this. For one thing, it is a privilege to know what I know. I understand that as blessing and an obligation, just as I could never hope to repay all those who help me along the way as I learn. There are teachers and students who come up as we need them. When it is your turn, please, be a Teacher. Promise me you’ll share our treasure with someone else. That would be the only payment I ask.”

He nods slowly. He gets it.

In less than a week, he is posting a video of himself in the most gorgeous pair of pants. They look amazing. He turns to show the back of the trousers. There they are: PERFECT plackets. The whole effect is stunning. He may have begun as a Fool trying a New Thing, a new skill in mid-life, but he is sprinting towards mastery.

I am filled with gratitude that I got to be part of that story. I think about that saying “Love isn’t Love until you give it away.” When we share what we love with others who then go on to share with others, the love ripples back to us in ways we cannot imagine. It’s never Foolish to share our skills or love. What better way to mend a ragged and magical world? And think of the Fabulous pants we’ll get to see!

Keep Mending, Dear Ones! How will you be a Fool today?

With Sew Much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy