Temperature tapestries (called tempestries elsewhere) are a means of visualizing climate data through rug hooking. There is a fair bit of planning work that goes into one of these projects, and these instructions are intended to help you in that planning. Once that's done, the hooking part is fairly straight forward!
(Note: I'm calling them tapestries, as they could end up as rugs, or mats, or pillows, or purses, or......you get the idea.)
1. Think about what kind of Temperature Tapestry you want to produce:
a) do you want to show the average annual temperature for the past 100+ years for a specific location? This is by far the easiest type of temperature tapestry to work with, as there is minimal computer involvement. These tapestries are what i refer to as Show Your Stripes. BTW, the finished project doesn't have to be done with stripes.
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| image from Showyourstripes.info |
i) do you want to show the daily high temperature? If you're working with a year's worth of data, there would be 365 temperatures to be hooked.
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| example of a year's worth of data, 365 days, hooked as inch mat |
ii) do you want to show the daily high temperature for one day of the week. If you're working with a year's worth of data, there would be 52 temperatures to be hooked.
You can also "double your fun" if you incorporate the low temperatures for each day as well. Some folks have added in a feature to show precipitation, too!
c) do you want to show the temperature over the span of a person's life? There would be 65 entries for someone who is turning 65, etc. I call these Birthday Mats, but they can be used for anniversaries, too!
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| example of a birthday mat - May 5, 1950-2019 |
2. Also give some thought to what your tapestry will look like, and what size it will be - do you want to show stripes? or squares? or some other shape? What size cut will you use? A #8 with a year's worth of stripes will be 90 inches long! It's worth taking a moment to plot all of this out on paper before proceeding.
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| example of options i considered when doing my first birthday mat |
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Here are the instructions for the 3 types of tapestries described above.
a) For a Show Your Stripes Tapestry:
If you want to do a tapestry for a specific country, or a global tapestry, go to the Showyourstripes.info website. Choose your region/country and then click on the Download Image button. The image of the stripes can then be saved to your computer or ipad.This site will supply you with data for regions and countries. If you want to feature a specific Canadian city, the CBC has created ShowYourStripes-type images for several locations in Canada. Go here to get the images.
This next step is a bit tedious, but once you're done, you're done! For the blue and red colours appearing in your downloaded image, identify the values, and assign a number/letter to them.
Above is a snippet of an image from Showyourstripes.info. I've labelled each of the values with a letter, and then totalled how many of each letter there are. It helps if you can use an "eyedropper" tool available in many photo editing programs (like Paint, Procreate, Photoshop) but it isn't totally necessary.
Next, determine what colours you want to use - either replicate what you got from the Showyourstripes website, or create your own. You may want to use your existing stash, or you may want to dye/purchase swatches. Figure out the number of strips of wool (or yards of yarn) each motif (stripes or whatever) will require.
You're now ready to start hooking!
b) For an Annual-style Tapestry:
These tapestries can be real time, or historical. They don't have to cover a year - they can cover whatever time frame you choose - a week, 3 months, whatever you want.Consider the colours you're going to use for each temperature range and adjust this to suit the weather in your area (ie folks living in a more northerly area could have a greater range of colours thank those in a more temperate region.) There are many web pages and facebook groups with helpful info on choosing colours for a temperature tapestry/blanket. Here's an example for a crocheted blanket, but much of that info applies equally to rug hooking. For alternate info, google "temperature blanket" to see what else is out there.
For a real time tapestry, you're going to collect weather data as it happens. You don't have to use a computer at all. Simply go to your source for temperature - newspaper, tv/radio or the thermometer outside your window. Record that information on your computer/laptop, or on a calendar. Consider adding other information like rain, or sky (cloudy/sunny) - elements that will personalize your tapestry.
You can either hook the day's weather on that day, or save some up and do a bunch at once. Either way, this is going to be a loooong project, spread out over your chosen time frame.
For a historical tapestry, you're going to collect data from any one of a number of websites.
For Canadian data, i find that Environment Canada has the best info, tho it can be a bit spotty. For example, data for Cobourg is only available for 1948-1958 and 1970-2019. Be prepared to look at other nearby locations, like Port Hope in this case, for those missing years.
Some locations have weather data available all the way back to 1840. This is great if you want to do a weather tapestry for several generations of a family.
Click here to go to the Environment Canada website.
These tapestries involve a fair amount of "computer work", so if you're not comfortable with this kinda stuff, enlist a family member to help out (bored spouses and willing grandchildren are particularly useful here!).
A spreadsheet has been developed to minimize some of the work. Click here to access it (excel format - it can be exported to mac format). Follow the instructions to download the data and update the spreadsheet.
I have not been able to successfully download the Environment Canada data to an ipad, so this portion of the work will require access to a computer, or working with screen shots on an iPad.
If you follow the instructions in the spreadsheet, you'll end up with a page of data with suggested colours. Feel free to substitute your own colour choices.
If you want to do an historical tapestry for another country, fear not! The Tempestry Project website has very detailed instructions on how to access international data via the NOAA website. They provide you with information on how to get data, and then give you their own spreadsheet to work with. It's based on KnitPicks yarn colours, but you can easily change those to suit your own requirements.
Click here to access the Tempestry Project instructions - 11 pages of very good explanations!
c) For a Birthday Mat:
I have not found any spreadsheets to provide this data, but they're relatively straight forward. The following instructions apply to Canadian data only.1. Go to the Environment Canada website to find the data for your chosen location and data. Remember that some of the data for some locations may be missing so you may have to be creative and choose a nearby location for some of the time frames.
3. You may be presented with several choices for a location. Choose the one that best fits your situation. Set the year and month for the first entry in your mat.
4. You'll be presented with the weather data for that year/month. Record the info for the date that you want. I used only the max temp but you can see from the image below that there is other info you could incorporate into your tapestry.
5. On the same page, go to the drop down box for the year, and move it to the following year, and hit the GO button.
6. Repeat steps 4, 5 until you've captured all of your data.
7. Follow the instructions in (b) above on colour choices.
8. Start hooking!
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