Temperature tapestry notes

This month's cover of The Economist, featuring "Show Your Stripes" graphic.

(The information below is intended to supplement a presentation given by Jennifer Wiber, at the Northumberland Rug Hookers Hook-In, Sept 30.)

Our theme today is all about climate change - “The Heat Is ON”. It’s certainly a topic that’s been in the news lately. It’s a very complex one and scientists and activists are trying to raise awareness about it. One of the ways that we can have a hand in this awareness is by helping to generate conversations about climate change.  Those conversations can lead to a better understanding of how our actions impact our environment. 

There’s this thing called data art and it’s being used to highlight important issues. It lends itself very well to rug hooking, as you’ll see. 

Data art is defined as a conceptual work of art created using information from a variety of sources, either scientific data, or self tracked data.  When we’re presented with a bunch of numbers or information, it doesn’t really sink in.  But by working with this data in a creative manner we can achieve greater awareness of complex matters, like climate change.

Data implies the idea of computers, and I’m a big time nerd (I do the web stuff for our branch) so computer-type things don’t bother me, but I’ll show you some examples where computer skills aren’t required.

Much of my talk will be on scientific data, ie weather, used to create art, but for a moment, let’s talk about the self tracked data.  There’s been an explosion in this kind of information: think about those folks who track their daily steps, or monitor their sleep cycles.  Imagine turning that into some kind of work of art.  

Here’s a great article from The Atlantic, on the growing field of data art. 

There is an artist named Laurie Frick who has mapped her steps into an amazing 2 storey display.  The same person has also made a large installation of her mood (tracked via an app), using laminate countertop samples.  She calls it "Moodjam".  

Moodjam by Laurie Frick.  From The Atlantic article linked above.

She feels that her work is more than simply visualizing info - to her it serves as a metaphor for the human experience, and belongs firmly in the art world.  The article says:  "Frick believes that while numbers are abstract and unapproachable, human beings respond intuitively—and emotionally—to patterns."

Bear in mind that you don’t need a computer to do data art - sure, it helps, but there are plenty of folks who have tracked the weather, their eating habits, etc, and then created works of art from it.  Some great examples of this are:

• The lady who tracked how late her train was, and knitted a scarf based on this information.  It was sold not too long ago for more than $10k with the proceeds donated to charity.

• Then there’s the mayor of NDG in Quebec who sat in council meetings and tracked how often men spoke vs women spoke and turned it into a shawl.

So that brings me to knitting.....I’ve been knitting for 50+ years, and have been aware of these things called Temperature Blankets, where you translate the daily temperature into a colour and knit/crochet that into a blanket or scarf, etc.   

Here's a great video on the topic:



Here's another video of someone showing their completed blanket:

Out of that concept sprang something called The Tempestry Project, where temperature data for a given location is used to create scarves/wall hangings representing several years.  These are then hung together in a gallery setting and they tell a very interesting story about climate change.  There is a very clear indication that the more recent years are showing a trend towards more extreme temperatures. 

An example of  a  kit from the Tempestry Project website.

Their website has a great "in the media" section with several excellent articles highlighting their work.

Folks will often do family groupings - doing a wall hanging for the year of birth of each member of a family, or a family tree, showing the weather in the year of birth for each ancestor.

A gallery display photo from the Very Pink website

Another approach is for a knitting group to do a series of hangings for their town, each one for a specific year. They are being used to raise awareness and generate discussion about climate change.  The data doesn’t lie - it’s just facts.
The Tempestry Project has a website run by an enterprising couple who will:

• Provide you with temperature/precipitation data for whatever location you choose, along with a key/legend showing what colours to use for each temperature range
• Provide you with sufficient yarn to knit a temperature tapestry, in the colours and quantities required.  
• In addition to wall hangings people have used this information to do cross stitch pictures, and even knitted a dress, all with this same design. 

An example of  a gallery display of several Tempestry wall hangings from the Tempestry Project website.

When i saw that, i wondered if there was a way to do the same thing in rug hooking.  We have the data, and we can certainly do wall hangings....
I’m a glutton for punishment (and at the time didn’t have a huge stash), so i dyed my own fabric to use for my own tapestry.  I worked out that i wasn’t so sure i wanted to do something with 365 rows in a 4 cut - that’s 45 inches - especially if it wasn’t going to work out, so i decided to do something with weekly data.

Weekly data: Toronto 1957, Montreal 1955

Above is one of my first attempts - my birthday and hubby’s - each of these lines represents the temperature on Tuesday for example.  Not bad, and you could do something bigger with more family members.  Alternatively, you could divide it into 4 pieces and do coasters, each one representing a season.  Christine Van Hees has done several of these as gifts and they were very well received - folks thought it was a thoughtful gift, and she used up stuff from her own stash.

Weekly data coaster,  Orono 1934

Once i had that under my belt, i branched out to do a full year. Rather than work with lines, i opted for inch mat.  Each of these squares is the high temperature for each day in 1923, for Apsley Ontario, just north of here.

Daily data,  Apsley 1923

To make this a tad easier, I created a spreadsheet where I could populate the weather data and it could be used to define what colour to use for each date.  After i did that i discovered that the Tempestry Project has a whole set of instructions and a spreadsheet of their own.  (more on that in a subsequent post)

Ok....so this was starting to show some promise.  Then i started doing what i call “birthday mats” - where you collect the temperature on a person’s birthday for every year.  Here are a couple of examples. This is the year this person was born, and here’s the current year....  I learned that you have to play around with your temperature scale and the colours, or you’ll end up with a fairly monochrome mat.

Birthday Mat: May 5, 1955-2019,  Toronto

Birthday Mat: Jan 8, 1955-2019

Birthday Mat: July 4, 1955-2018

This was all going well, but it's a bit of work to compile the data and then hook it.  I then discovered the “show your stripes” project. It is an initiative started by a scientist at the University of Reading in the UK to get folks talking about and aware of climate change.  He collected the weather data from all around the world and created graphic images of the temperature change over the past 100+ years.  Rather than supply the actual numbers, he decided to show the info graphically using stripes for each year.  He feels that using these images enables communication with minimal scientific knowledge. And remember that we said data art allows us to connect with something on an emotional level, rather than look at a bunch of numbers?

Image from Showyourstripes.org,  Annual average temperatures for the GLOBE from 1850-2018

The bonus? You don’t need any kind of spreadsheet or numbers!
He supplies this data, free of charge, for most countries in the world.  You simply go to his website, find the stripes for your selected location and you can do what you want with it.  here’s an example of the average annual temperature in canada for the last 100 years.  The Economist magazine this month featured one of these on its cover (shown at the start of this post). 

Average annual temperature in Canada,  1918-2018, from Showyourstripes.info

I’ve done all of this in straight lines,.....but don’t be constrained by that.....what about using a tesselation for each of your days or years??  Simone Vojvoden of Red Maple Ruggery is working on that - she has chosen an ogee shape and is showing both the high and low for each day.  It's VERY large - 7'x9' i think?  You'll see also from the colour legend she's developed,  she's chosen colours that go together well, but don't necessarily show a progression.  It looks lovely and will be spectacular when it's finished.

Simone's rug in the planning stages

Simone's rug in progress

Simone's colour legend

As Simone and I have both found, there is quite a bit of planning that goes into one of these rugs.  The hooking itself is quite doable,  tho in some cases it can be a bit tedious!

Just to prove  that  I, too, can do something other than straight lines, here's an example of a mat celebrating an anniversary, featuring "balloons".

Hopefully I’ve given you some food for thought for your future projects.  In a subsequent post I will provide  links to the Tempestry spreadsheets, as well as my own, and give you some hints on other resources to consider for your own project.

Don’t be put off by the fact that computers are often used in data art. I bet, even if you don’t use one, there’s someone in your life with the skills who’d be willing to spend an hour with you on such a project. 

Alternatively, you can take a more mindful approach, and record the weather daily by looking out the window or reading your thermometer, and then hook a few rows each week. 

Also, be on the lookout for non weather data....I found info on-line about the return of humming birds, the freezing of lakes, monarch butterflies, etc.  

The key with these data art projects, especially those addressing the weather, are that they can help to generate a conversation with the audience. Everyone who sees one of these rugs asks what it is, or what inspired it, etc. When I tell them it’s all about climate change, and they see the striped project, they’re amazed at how obvious the change is in the past few years.  It creates a greater sense of awareness about what’s going on and hopefully will help us all to realize the impact of our actions.  It certainly generates an emotional reaction.

If you do one of these projects, either individually or as part of a group, you, too, can be working to stimulate conversations about climate change. You don’t have to be an expert on the topic - you are just presenting the data, and the facts speak for themselves. Think of how powerful a mat showing the weather for your family would be. Or think of the impact a bunch of mats showing the weather for your community would be if shown all together. 
Hope you found this info to be useful!

A screenshot from Instagram featuring temperature blankets