TTFL Fiber & Dye

Letter from Destiny

To: Twin Tiers/Finger Lakes Fiber and Dye practitioner community

May 23, 2018

Dear friends,

After a lifetime of community organizing and entrepreneurial ventures, I can assure you from experience that the risks come with bruising levels of failure and singular successes, each with their lessons and rewards.

It has been a great pleasure interacting with you, on the subject of seeing more domestic textile choices source from our region. Everything has its time. There is much going on! And yet, with so much being lifted, there seems to be little extra energy for coming together in new ventures.

Suddenly, I find myself approaching my mid-70s. The approach has taken me by surprise: that I am aging quickly and have limited energy. I must now focus on selling our home of 33 years and completing the third novel in my Textile Trilogy, no mean feat. I am retiring from a lifetime of community organizing. (Best friend Joe Mullen asks: "Does anyone believe you?") I am fortunate to be passing on all of the ventures I have begun to very able friends and colleagues.

I last said this to Denise Green at Cornell's school of textiles and to Peter Jemison and Jeanette Miller of Ganondagan. They have our endorsement and support in all their ventures. We have common ground between those currently in power in the white world and those bringing about renaissance in native culture. Native people have been processing wild bast fibers—dogbane, hemp, nettle and milkweed, among others—for a long time, alongside Europeans/whites who brought domesticated bast fibers from their homelands.

Below is a downloadable PDF of the brochure that we prepared for curators, practitioners and enthusiasts, for a conference to continue to explore the feasibility of re-introducing a flax-to-linen culture to our region. Many other possibilities besides linen exist, some of which have been produced here historically. Please consider that any group of you may pick up our contacts and ideas at a time when the prospect seems ripe and a group of enthusiasts gather to begin what will surely happen in its own time.

All my best and with great affection,
Destiny Kinal

draft-conference brochure-2018