While she doesn’t knit or crochet, Amy DuFault has discovered a sense of making by putting colour on cloth. She’s been a journalist for decades and now evolved into a regenerative thinker and storyteller about farming, history, food, and textiles. Based on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, USA, Amy is used to working from home unless travelling and everything still feels normal right now until she leaves the house or reads news about the pandemic. I was due to visit Amy for my Churchill Fellowship study tour, but we made do with this ARISING from Disruption #13 conversation as a Virtual Churchill until overseas travel becomes possible again.
Amy says DIY is arising. “Many people are gardening, they want to grow their own food, make face masks or do natural dyeing. Everybody is doing things. I am patching things, working on a denim jacket with patches sewn on and it spurs on all kinds of ideas. I’ve written about this in a ‘Foraging for Self’ article in Taproot magazine. I can’t knit, I can’t crochet but I can do natural dyeing. Putting colour to cloth, you can be proud of yourself. This is my form of making. Now I am making things, my shirt is dyed from madder root and most of my wardrobe is naturally dyed right now.”
Tips: I want to say slow down but I am having a hard time doing it. Read poems, drink coffee, listen to morning birdsong. It is important to keep moving our bodies, to be quiet, to stretch and listen, to realise we are not the only person going through something.
Changes: I am hoping regional supply will become more important to people. I hope we look at our communities as support systems – for emotional support, for food and for fibre. There may be a massive push, after being told you can’t, for crazy shopping and to live life in excess as a form of rebellion.
Listen to Amy DuFault in conversation below, or read notes at the bottom.