Michigan

We swam, shedding our rings and tucking them into tiny hideaway crevices, should they decide to free fall off of our fingers into the clear cold.

The small.
The sacred.


Isn’t that what the days that stick out in our minds are most often made up of?

Sleeping underneath the heavy cloak of the brisk arresting air, unhindered by ceilings, the shushing of HVAC units, general beeps or digital lights that we are never able to quite fully emit from dreamland.

It’s so much cooler here than back home. So much so that we felt as though we had transcended seasons.
That, coupled with the simplicity of it all— a kind of coming home.
Of meandering unstructured time associated with an ease that precedes a peaceful and simple joy.
Wanting to incorporate such simplicity into the every day of back home but somehow never quite getting there.
If only it could be as it always is, on The Road.

What Now?

And so, almost a month to the day after walking out of my brick & mortar shop for the last time, and then completely falling apart— I am sitting here working on piecing myself back together.

I have written so many paragraphs, rambling prose, and bullet point lists to try and make sense of what I want to come next, how to figure out what’s next, how to reconcile with decisions made, and chances lost.
Coming to terms with choosing, once again, this town. Which I struggled calling my home the first time around, let alone the second. It being far from the county lines I am much more akin and accustomed to.

This transition was not forced on me.
I chose it. Welcomed it. Was eager for it.
For the thing that preceded it was breaking me. In more than one way. In many ways. But namely in one that has all but eradicated my ability to be curious about other people. A trait I always used to pride myself on.
For curiosity is the window to the world.

But now that I am here on the other side of this transition, I am aware all too fully of the weight of it, what it means. How holding this, means that is now no longer an option.

I thought I knew fully, thought I knew that this was the next right thing, and then I all-at-once realized that I didn’t.
This wasn’t the next right thing, merely the thing that I chose.
But I am also coming to realize that I largely will always feel that way, no matter the decision, with each new direction dictated and decided, I will feel as though there is something over there, that I should move towards instead.

My Father, in indirectly hurtful terms has called this flakiness.
My friends— what makes me the artist that I am.
My husband— something that just is.
And so I am coming to terms with that too. Holding that gently and working in and around what that looks like and means in this context of being 32, not 22. When a decade ago, this wandering and searching spirit was more expected, accepted. A decade later, the wanton rambling way of decision making and solidification of a life constantly untethered is less charming and more chaotic.

And yet, there are elements of this sample self that need not be so critiqued and redirected. There is something to learn here, as there always is. A gentle balance of course must be struck between all of our opposing parts.

And parts I certainly have.

For instance—I thought that the resentment part that I had growing inside of me would go away upon closing this one door, but instead I found that it only grew.

I came to the realization over the summer that it has been fourteen years since I started sharing pieces of myself on the internet.

That realization has come with an alarming awakening of grief.
Grief for the life I have spent on and behind a screen.
Grief for the lives I could have lived but can no longer.
Grief for the young girl who innocently started a blog and now feels as though she spent the majority of her life selling her soul online to pay her bills.
Grief for feeling as though I had no choice.

What comes after feelings like that?
How to separate the weight and meaning and the realization that this self-made world was one of my choosing?
What would I rather have in exchange, if not this?

And as much as I long for privacy, for quiet, for slowness and especially anonymity… I can’t stop.

I feel the urge, the tugging, to share.
If even into a void.
(Sometimes, blessedly into a void— with no response or feedback of any kind…)

And as I wrestle with the dichotomy of it all, what it is to have built a successful and thriving business from the ground up, but the success of which relies on one woman’s heart being shared intimately and compellingly nearly every day…

That comes to the present figuring out— What now?

A Confession Pt. 2

It was never fully my intention to completely step away from this space. This particular corner of the internet. This curation of my creation and dreams and thoughts.
Over a decade of work displayed on a platform that I kept paying $200+ a year to keep alive.

I’ll come back one day…

I kept thinking to myself.

I am more than just Folkling…

And yet— it very quickly seemed otherwise.
My identity became so wrapped up in this shop, this business, this brand that I had created from the ground up.
So much would transpire in three and a half years that I never even considered before then.

I would make more money than I ever dreamed of.
I would pay in taxes what I used to make in a single year.
I would get so low and out-of-my-mind unhealthy to a degree I never thought was possible.
I would be so fiercely proud and exuberant over what has become a career for me.
I would work harder and longer than at any other time in my life thus far.

When I hear about how overworked finance guys on Wall Street are, how demanding the pace and the hours, I think: I know what that’s like.

I have worked 16+ hour days, every day, for months on end, years on end. My brain is never turned off.
I am always, always, thinking about Folkling. About what I have to do to make it work. To make it succeed. To keep paying my bills.
”Vacations” are just picking trips rebranded.
I am writing this in the present tense because, indeed, it is still true. I have made huge shifts since the height of the shops success in 2022, but even still, it is so hard for me to step away. To not check messages. To think about something other than that space.

This makes it sound as though this entire brand and business was something calculated, a sham, a facade of my own creation.

But it was the opposite.

Folkling is one of the most genuine and whole hearted and honest things I’ve ever created.

Which is the problem of course, when it comes to creating and running a business.
My lack of ability to separate myself from this thing that I created nearly destroyed me to say nothing of many of my relationships.

I have thought for a very long time about sharing these thoughts and feelings on the Folkling Instagram, pretty much the only corner of the internet I keep up with on a regular basis nowadays.

But I think that in order to be able to speak more openly and honestly, apart from what is my job and what literally puts food on my table and a roof over my head, I need the freedom of this platform—largely unseen by most anyone, to process this upcoming shift and season.

Admittedly I am also exhausted by everyones thoughts, opinions and voices on my thoughts, opinions and voice.

I very much miss the early days of the internet. When you largely just shared into an unresponsive void. Before like buttons, hearts, comments, threads, direct messages.

Now I wake up to DMs where complete strangers correct me on how I should be behaving, what I should be doing, how I should be feeling, what I should be saying.

As much as I am on the internet for work, I actually rarely, if ever, engage with it outside of the Folkling community and the necessary communications I have to implement for work.
And so it truly baffles me to have people so vehemently and cruelly tell me what I can and cannot do.
(I would absolutely never dream of doing such a thing with someone I didn’t know. Honestly— even someone I did know.)

But oh how quickly we forget that what we see on the internet, especially Instagram, is only a fraction of the story.

And even now, as I write this perspective, share these thoughts, this is still only a fraction of the story.

But the gist of this fraction is this:
I created this thing that people drove across the country to see and experience.
I put immense pressures on myself as a result.
And now, after doing it full time for four years, I am questioning— What else is there?
What else makes up a life aside from the work that day in and day out has largely been for others?
What comes after this, amidst this, because of this?

What now?

A Confession

This month has held a lot of contemplation.

A lot of recollection of what once was, what is no longer, what is yet to be.

Something that Owen and I have been reminding ourselves of in the last few months is— no great thing worth doing is without some unknown.

Some amount of scary feeling.

Some amount of “but what if…”

I’ve been reading some of my writing from 2018 and feeling so deeply—“I miss that person”.

It’s a strange thing to miss yourself. But there are elements of who I am that I have let go of, set aside and placed on the back burner out of what I perceived at the time as necessary in order to survive.

I look back on the last four years and recognize that I’ve largely been operating in survival mode.

A mode that strips away the fringe and unnecessary to some degree, but can also strip away the core of something and push it into a state of otherness and something unrecognizable.

Something it was never meant to be.

All of this probably seems vague and ominous.

And in some ways it is.

I didn’t set out to write this post and be melodramatic.

But I suppose I’m not quite ready to talk about the shifts and changes that are coming, so much as I am ready to talk about the feelings that got me here.

Or rather, more so, the things that I miss.

I miss being curious about people.

I miss being open to people.

I miss loving people.

I miss writing.

I miss taking pictures just for the sake of it, and not to sell something.

I miss reading.

I miss doing less.

I miss living slower.

I miss spending more time off of a screen than on it.

I miss walking in grass barefoot.

I miss the water.

I miss sailing.

I miss creating and not feeling like I have to incorporate and monetize it into the brand.

I miss sharing things on a kinder internet, in a kinder world.

I miss being more open and free with my feelings/thoughts without waking the next morning to hurtful and hateful DMs. Of strangers feeling like it was their duty and right to correct/shame/educate me on how I was wrong for doing what I did, saying what I said.

Or what I didn’t do, didn’t say.

I miss being Leney vs. “you’re the girl with that store!”

I miss being more of a human and less of a brand.

I miss privacy.

I miss not managing people.

I miss weekends.

I miss my family.

I miss my friends. Friends that knew me before Folkling. That loved me before Folkling.

I miss believing in and expecting the best out of people instead of the worst.

I miss Owen.

I miss when my life wasn’t wholly and entirely— Folkling.

Folkling Brick & Mortar Shop Opening

It feels surreal to be announcing this at all, let alone at the end of this particular year.
This contemplation, of having a shop, was long held as a “oh wouldn’t that be fun…” kind of dream.
A hypothetical dream. A dream where you think about your life and all of the things you would do if you could, in an alternate universe, do everything you wanted to do.

And then, this year, things shifted.

Photo work was placed on hold during the pandemic and my side business, Folkling, where I curate beautiful old things from my travels around the country and share their stories, became all I had in the way of making a living.
So I put my all into it.
I worked from sun up to sundown every day on this dream.

This dream to continue to be able to provide for myself a life of independence shaped by my artistry and sharing the beauty that I see in the world.

It took off. Turns out when you can’t go anywhere for months and you have limited options in the way of artistic output, focus and motivation pushed into one direction can do pretty amazing things. The reluctance and reticence I felt at the beginning of the year at the requirement to stay in one place turned into a blessing beyond measure.

A kismet happenstance of needing a change, praying for a sign for the-next-right-thing and a spontaneous drive through a small town and noticing an empty storefront.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In many ways this space feels like the ultimate tangible representation of all I have worked for in the ten years since I started A Girl Named Leney and the three since starting Folkling. To have a physical space to share with others, even with the limitations of this current time we live in, feels like such an incredible gift.

This dream that I held in partial disbelief of it ever being a reality, has now become tangible and it leaves me in awe and more grateful than I feel capable of expressing.

It would not be possible without the support of so many along the way. This is by no means a feat of an individual, so many have helped shape this venture into what it is today and I know there will still be many more yet to come.

But as for the official opening….

I was going to call it a soft opening because, well, we still don’t have a sign, there’s a lot of inventory that still needs to be tagged, we need more clothing racks and a couch and shelves and a bunch of other tiny details that no one but me will notice... and even though I feel beyond ready I also really don’t feel ready.

But I recognize that this space, this extension of me, will be ever changing and evolving as the months roll on.

So whether soft or grand—consider this the opening announcement.

---

Staring December 11th, the Folkling showroom will be open exclusively on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am-6pm.

During the week will be reserved for business-as-usual online listing, photo work and going out on The Road to pick!

So grab your mask and a friend and come out and say hello this weekend!

107 S Main St.
Suite 1
Gordonsville, VA 22942

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Flyer by Maria Scott

The Quilt Coat Project

If you missed the beginning of this story, you can read part one here and part two here.

And so, after a dream.
After driving 1,400 miles round trip.
After turning an internet friend into a real life one.
After taking a risk.

We started to create.

We are turning a very special stack of found quilts into—COATS.

We believe strongly in only using quilts that have damage or wear that would otherwise have deemed them less collectible or usable.

(We can’t bring ourselves to cut into the good ones...)

Sarah has hand washed each and every one naturally and laid them out in the Alabama sunshine.

We both put in the work of planning and dreaming out each and every quilts new life.

Each will be thoughtfully cut and pieced together to make a heritage piece that is in and of itself a layered work of art.

A story of making something old new again.
A garment that will last your lifetime.

Sarah’s doing the sewing—then we’ll be meeting up to exchange them and I’ll bring them back to Virginia to do the photographing, story telling and listing for you all in a few weeks (they’ll certainly be well traveled and steeped in narrative by then!)

We will have a variety of sizes and lengths, but this will be a small collection for now.
We don’t know where it will lead, but we are enjoying the process and the opportunity to create something together out of a shared passion and love for old textiles.

We’ll be sharing more as these quilt coats are created!

Thank you all for your excitement in this project with us. It’s one of hope and redemption.
You’ve been spurring on two women’s dreams.

And if we’ve learned anything from this project of ours... it’s to listen to the dreams.

A Beautiful Unfolding

If you missed part one of this story, you can read it here.

This is my friend Sarah (also known as @potters.daughter on Instagram).
Between us is a stack of quilts that we spent the better part of a month finding and rescuing all over the deep South. Most of these were found on my way to meet Sarah actually. That’s right—we’d never met in person until this day. Until this moment we were, as they say, just Instagram friends. But a dream Sarah had— not even three weeks before this photo was taken— led me to driving over 700 miles, with a car full of quilts, to meet her. Because we share a love of projects.
And a love for old textiles. And for not only *seeing* but *sharing* the beauty of imperfect and cast-off things and believing in their ability to still have life left to live. Additionally, we recognize that there is a lot of beauty to be found in partnering with someone to create something.

As much as you may want to do and create and be all of the things all by your lonesome, there is a special kind of magic that comes in choosing to join together with someone to share in the creation of a work of art.

That’s what this story is about... Collaboration.

But not in the millennial sense of the word. A surface level, here’s-a-thing-created-by-one-person-and-sponsored-by-another.

But a true equal partnership of deep exploration into the possibilities of the unknown and working together side by side in equal standing. To create something that feels layered and meaningful. To trust in the divine and in something bigger than ourselves.

I hope you’ll stay tuned as we keep unfolding the rest of this journey.

(I wasn’t trying to make a pun, you know, with quilts and all, but I kind of feel as though that’s a good title for this chapter of this story: A Beautiful Unfolding.)

A Dream That Led Me To Driving 700 Miles

My life is driven by stories.

This is the beginning of a story that I want to share with you.



It’s about two strangers who became friends over the internet and decided to create something together.

It’s about seeing the beauty in worn-out, imperfect things.
It’s about dreams.



I’ve been in love with textiles since I was a little girl.
Growing up, my Momma would take me to thrift shops and fabric stores.
I’d spend hours in these places walking around with my hard earned money, contemplating old clothes and yards of fabric to cut up to create the patterns I’d dreamed up from taking apart garments I had at home.


For a time I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.


(And then I became knitwear designer. So that dream came true in a way. But that’s a story for another time…)


As I got older, I started to appreciate the history, style and construction of older clothes.
I learned about the toxic fast fashion culture and the harmful ways that most of our clothing today is produced and how much is thrown away.

I committed to only buying secondhand and US made clothing.

Then I became a curator and reseller of vintage clothing.
Which was a new kind of dream.
To be able to share this passion with others and live out this ethos of “saving the world” one dumpster of clothing at a time was a pretty rewarding (and just downright fun) thing.

Then I started learning about quilts.



Each, one-of-a-kind works of art. 


Made meticulously and thoughtfully by hand. 

Many, cast off and forgotten heirlooms from traditions long ago.

Each pattern holding storied meaning.



I realized that many quilts have been damaged beyond use and are cast off, unusable and undesirable because of their imperfections.


I started a personal collection of these quilts because I still saw their beauty, despite their stains and wear.



As it turned out, an internet friend named Sarah (@potters.daughter) felt a lot of the same things that I did about quilts.
In fact, we started talking about our quilt love so much that she ended up having a dream about it…

That dream of hers led to me driving over 700 miles from Virginia to Alabama a few weeks later.


Her dream?
I’ll tell you more about it later this week...

On The Road Again

I am headed out on The Road.

I don’t know yet how long I’ll be gone but I’m connecting some dots between some photo jobs, vintage picking and most of all—

Answering the pull to be out amidst new and natural wonders of the country I call home in the simple, free and easy way I miss so much.

Although, I’m not sure how free and easy it will be.

I don’t know what I’ll encounter out there as the world has changed quite a bit since I was last out in it ten months ago.

Granted, The Road for me usually encompasses large periods of time alone, away from people, out in nature.

But I always enjoy meeting others wherever I happen to be. Hearing their story, exchanging some communal goodness and good will between passing kindred spirits.

But now, I won’t be able to interact with people and make friends quite in the same way.

The Road has been built up and elusively out of reach in my mind this last almost-a-year.
I have felt grounded and content at home and enjoyed my sweet Virginia more than I have in a good long while.
Made new friends and loves and discovered new corners of home that were before unknown.

All of which I am so grateful for.

So I’ll come back.
(I always come back.)

But I am a woman with a two sided nature—I love to be here and I love to also be there.
Here and away—both are home.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to have both in quite this way, or if this will be the end of my wanting it even— but I need to go out and see if The Road, this ever persistent promise, is what I remember it to be.

—————●—————

I am opening my books for @agirlnamedleneyphotography for the next little while, so if you’re somewhere out there and have a photography or documentation proposition for me
(or some of your grandparents clothes/quilts you want me to buy for @folkling)
— shoot me a message.

xo
—————●—————

September

September has long been my favorite time of year.

The amount of feeling encapsulated within this season is hard for me to sum up in a few sentences, but it mostly entails things along the lines of newness, fall on the horizon and good things coming.