Climate community: How knitting turns climate data into something you can snuggle
Tempestry Project co-founders Emily and Asy turn temperature records into hand-knit tapestries, a hands-on way to build climate community, one of the highest-impact climate actions in the SHIFT guide.
What started as a joke after the 2017 US presidential inauguration, worried that government climate data might disappear, grew from a single museum exhibit into a worldwide community: handcrafted tapestries, or as they call it, tempestries, made by local knitting groups everywhere, turning local temperature records into physical, wearable art.
Host Dr Kimberly Nicholas shares her research behind why community is one of the highest-impact climate actions in the SHIFT guide.
Take action to build your own climate community : SHIFT shows you how to start or join climate knitting groups, reading circles, and generally find your climate peeps: https://jointheshift.earth/climate-actions/climate-community
Want more like this? Subscribe to Kim’s monthly newsletter ‘We Can Fix It’ for science-backed tips on facing the climate crisis with facts, feelings, and action:
Funding for Climate Actually comes from Formas, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Communications Grant #2021-02906.
Subscribe or follow Climate Actually right here on this platform to catch every episode.
For more information and material from the episode, visit climateactually.com.
Resources
- The Tempestry Project: https://www.tempestryproject.com/
- ShowYourStripes climate visualization for local temperatures (Ed Hawkins, University of Reading): https://showyourstripes.info/; individual participation page: https://www.reading.ac.uk/planet/events/show-your-stripes-day/individuals
- SHIFT guide to high-impact climate action: https://jointheshift.earth/
Announcer:
This is Climate Actually, a podcast about real people making everyday choices with extraordinary climate impact. Today's episode is about building climate community: finding people near you who care about climate too, and want to do something about it. Host Kimberly Nicholas talks to Emily and Asy from the Tempestry Project.
Kim:
We're talking to you because you represent climate community. So that's the most powerful role model action in the SHIFT guide, the climate action guide that we've put together.
Asy:
Collective action, like wanting to do something about it. We knit and create physical representations of climate data.
Emily:
People often will have knit togethers and come and work on them collectively, 22 feet long.
Kim:
Oh my gosh.
Asy:
Yeah, I'm holding up a roll of knitted fabric.
Kim:
Wow.
Asy:
And it's a global deviation from average temperatures from the year one to 2021.
Kim:
Well, Emily and Asy, it's so nice to have you here. Thanks so much for coming on.
Emily & Asy:
Thank you for having us.
Kim:
Tell us, what is the Tempestry Project?
Asy:
The Tempestry Project is our brainchild from 2017, that we knit and create physical representations of climate data for various places around the world.
Emily:
And work with people in those places to knit and crochet them and weave them, and sort of create handcrafted tapestries of changing climate and weather in their local areas.
Kim:
It's so beautiful. I can see it behind you. And it's based on Professor Ed Hawkins' climate stripes, right?
Asy:
This one is.
Emily:
Some of it is.
Asy:
But the original ones that we started with are not. Those are just daily high temperatures for a single year in one location. These two are both these these are Vassar, right? Yeah, yeah. So these are both here local to us. 1905 and 2021.
Kim:
Wow
Emily:
So we actually started with this kind where each row is a day and each piece is a year, based on a really common knitting and crocheting project that gets really popular every January, people will start making a temperature blanket for the year, and get bored by March and then never finish it. And so we decided scarf sizes would be a little more manageable. But so those are mostly the ones we do with groups around the country and other places as well.
Emily:
But then when Ed Hawkins came out with his warming stripes, we decided we wanted to knit that and help people knit that for their areas as well. So we reached out to him to make sure that was okay with him, that we start selling kits for people to knit these for their towns and personal display and all that. So those are based on his warming stripes.
Asy:
And we got to do a podcast with him like five years ago. Yeah. That was fun.
Kim:
Oh that's awesome. Wow. That's so neat. Yeah, I think I came across your work first years ago, and I was familiar with the warming stripes, where each year is represented by a color from blue to red, and you really see this striking change in many places around the world where temperature has shifted so much.
Emily:
Pretty much everywhere we've seen that, you know, it may be more staticky and not as consistent as the global data. But we've done pieces now or kits now for all fifty states and I think thirty countries or so. And even where it's more sporadic, you can always tell that in the last thirty or so years, it's a lot warmer than those first years. Yeah. So it's, it's universal. It really is global. Yeah.
Kim:
So how did the Tempestry Project start?
Emily:
As a joke? It was definitely a joke. You know, when Donald Trump got elected the first time, we obviously had some very immediate concerns about how the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord and what that would mean as far as regulations here and information to data.
Asy:
Yeah. Data preservation.
Emily:
And yeah.
Asy:
Just like worried about the like the EPA and NOAA and these government databases getting shut down or made not publicly available anymore. There was an article in Wired the day before the inauguration, about scientists and hackers getting together to download these repositories. And leading up to the inauguration.
Asy:
And then it was after we went to our local Women's march on Inauguration Day, and then we were at the bar afterwards decompressing, and I made a joke that we should be recording this information in like, like physical methods that last thousands of years, like cuneiform tablets or tapestries or something. And then we decided to do that.
Emily:
I happened to be managing the local yarn shop at the time. So I had this built in contingent of willing knitters, to start knitting these temperature scarves. And it kind of came out of that.
Asy:
Yeah, it took us several months of tweaking and ordering colors online and trying to put together a spectrum that we felt made sense. We initially started with zero to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And then because like that was plenty for our area, which was really temperate in the Pacific Northwest. And then it was not. When we started looking more broadly.
Emily:
We had to widen our scope a bit.
Asy:
And so now we have thirty two colors that range from negative thirty one and below, and then up to one hundred twenty one and above.
Kim:
Wow. Okay. You span quite a range. So wherever you are in the world, you can knit a tempestry.
Asy:
That was the idea.
Kim:
We're talking to you because you represent climate community. So that's the most powerful role model action in the SHIFT guide, the climate action guide that we've put together.
Emily:
We love it.
Kim:
And you're mentioned there as a way of building community, because I thought your work was so creative and hands on. And I love the idea that you kind of standardized so that everyone is in community can talk to each other and make those comparisons. And is there, why did you choose knitting and climate?
Emily:
Mostly it was practicality, since I was at the yarn store and knew a whole bunch of knitters. It's what I do myself. And I think one of the things that was really the impetus to get it going right away was that I had been asked or invited to participate in a knitting exhibit at a local quilt and textile art museum in Washington. And I had been in this exhibit the year before, and I had put in a shawl that I had made. And that's what most people put in these sorts of exhibits. But we decided to knit our first tempestry and hang that in the exhibit instead.
Asy:
I think we had four of them.
Emily:
By the time that happened. Yeah.
Asy:
Like, you know, a little panel of our local climate history for four pieces.
Emily:
And I think a lot of people got excited by that. So we had, you know, within a few months, fifteen or twenty people knitting them with us. Again, for our local data, we were getting it from a Navy base near our town. That only went back to the 1940s or so. So it wasn't very old data, but it was a great way to get our community involved in sort of trying to think about a way to talk about climate without having to talk about politics. And so we would knit in the local coffee shop on Saturday morning sometimes and be talking about what year we were doing and other stuff as well, of course, but that was sort of the underlying current of it.
Kim:
So that's really powerful because research shows. And the reason that I chose building a climate community as the number one action where we can influence others, is that research shows that it keeps people engaged and motivated. It can help prevent burnout and reduce climate anxiety. And it is how you make structural change, getting groups of people together and building institutions. I don't know if you think of the Tempestry Project as an institution, but, you know, organizations and grassroots groups and more formal institutions are how you make structural change. Big changes happen because they can outlast any one person's willpower or input. I'm just curious if any of that resonates from your experience.
Asy:
Very much so. I've found it like I've been someone who's been like paying attention to and stressed out about climate change for most of my life. And it's very and like having started this and continuing with it for nine years now. Geez. It's, it's definitely like a catharsis for me, like having the community. And I mean, we joke that we're like the people that you bring out at your dinner party when you want everybody to go home because you can't talk to us for more than ten minutes before we start talking about like existential crises.
Kim:
Those are my favorite dinner parties.
Asy:
Yeah. It's like, it's really helped me with my own anxiety and, and having this project that's constantly moving forward has been really beneficial.
Emily:
Well, and I think too, because I think you have a little more of the existential crisis than I do. I'm a little better at compartmentalizing severely so I can lock it away sometimes as needed. But the ripple effect of working with different communities to start their own tempestry collections and then hearing them talk about it with their friends and with their partners and their children and, and getting pictures of them, hanging them in their local town halls and libraries and that sort of thing.
Emily:
I think for me, that's where the rejuvenation comes from is knowing that it's rippling out and just getting people to talk about it in their own lives and their own connections to it, rather than just trying to get people to understand data or read articles or, you know, look at charts about places a long way away. So that's where my catharsis is as well, I think.
Asy:
And we get a lot of comments from people participating in knitting their pieces, and they'll be like knitting out in public, or they'll take it to lunch or take it to a meeting at work and be working on it. And like, it just starts conversations like they're beautiful, very bright, vibrant colors. People want to ask you what you're doing. And then you start like, oh, this is data. And they're just like, mind blown. Like, okay, tell me more. I'm in. And we find that we get a lot of feedback about that.
Kim:
Yeah.
Asy:
Pretty cool.
Kim:
I love that bridge from facts to feelings. I mean, taking data and making it something physical and tangible that you can hold in your hand and share and see and bring to coffee or whatever. And also that it evokes, it sounds like some strong feelings in people and creates a way for people to connect. I would love to hear more about why knitting was important to you?
Emily:
You know, my grandmother was an avid knitter, a self-taught improvisational knitter, but she she tried to get me to knit for about thirty years. You know, as soon as I was old enough to hold a pair of knitting needles, she, every time we visited her, would bring me yarn and try to get me to knit, and I just never would. And finally my mother and I, when I was about thirty five years old, were going to spend a weekend with my grandmother and my aunt, and we decided that we should let Grandma Edna teach us how to knit. She was getting up in years and she had been wanting to do this. And so we spent a weekend looking through all the yarn shops in the area to find the perfect yarn. And we let her teach us how to knit. And it sort of took off from there.
Emily:
I discovered I loved it and I loved the community around it. I found right away that other people that I was friends with and had known for years and we had never talked about knitting, had always wanted to be in a knitting circle, even though none of us knit. But there was some sort of, a camaraderie associated with the term knitting circle that we all were craving. We were living in Manhattan, all in different careers and different parts of our lives. And somehow that really resonated with people. So I ended up teaching a couple friends how to knit and just really jumped into it, to the point where I quit my job at Columbia University and moved across the country to manage a yarn shop.
Kim:
That's commitment.
Emily:
But that was sort of how I got into knitting. And then it was this perfect match of knitting and activism and community, and data, which is where you come in: spreadsheets. We had to bring spreadsheets into the knitting.
Asy:
Yeah.
Kim:
So you're the spreadsheet expert.
Asy:
Yeah. Yeah. And I also learned to knit because I felt after a year or so of doing this work, and people are like, oh, do you knit too? And I'm like, no, that's all her. But I did learn to knit.
Emily:
She knit me a hat.
Asy:
I knit a hat and a half, and the half has been in the needles for years
Kim:
Nice
Asy:
And so, and like, when we started all of this, we didn't set out to create a business out of it. We just wanted to put it out there and let people kind of take it and run. We didn't have our own yarn company. We just like we were using an online retailer's yarn because it was a pretty low barrier to entry with their costs. But when we took it to the local knitting group after the first museum exhibit of our pieces that Emily and our roommate Marissa knit, we, I wrote up a guide for how to gather your data from NOAA, and I created a Google sheet that you could import it, and then it would auto propagate all the color names and like the day and temperatures going down. And we sent all that to the local knitters, and they came back with, like, you want us to do what with spreadsheets?
Emily:
Make us a kit!
Asy:
Yeah.
Asy:
Yeah, can you make a kit? We'll buy it. And so then we were like, okay, I guess we're getting a business license and like doing all the things now. And then it's kind of grown from there. And then during the pandemic, our online retailer, like our yarn retailer had all kinds of supply chain issues. And so that's when we decided to just take it into our own hands and create our own line of domestic yarn. All of theirs was imported, from, I think Peru. So domestic yarn milled and dyed in the US, it shrunk our carbon footprint and then we're able to control our inventory a little better.
Kim:
So the knitters didn't want to download government climate data. They just wanted to knit.
Emily:
Yeah, yeah.
Asy:
They just wanted like a thing that they could grab and go, not all the behind the scenes work.
Emily:
They wanted to get to the fun part right away.
Kim:
Cool. Well, how did it feel when you saw people start sharing their knitting stripes?
Asy:
It's amazing.
Emily:
It's amazing.
Asy:
It's incredible. It's I mean, we just, on Saturday, we were at a library about an hour from here and they were showing the it's the Mid-Hudson library collection. So it's our regional library system. It's sixty six libraries. And they got together to do a collection with us going back to 1896. And they've done, we did kits for every year. Not all of them have been turned in yet, but there's over one hundred pieces in this collection that span that 1896 to 2025 range. And it's just incredible to see a hundred of them lined up together and get to talk to the people who made them.
Emily:
They always show us the one they made and what their birth year was, and what it was like when their kids were born. And it just it brings out so many memories for people that it's just, it feels really special to be a part of that and to be a part of them, sometimes unearthing memories related to climate or situating their histories within climate that they hadn't done before or hadn't thought about in a long time.
Asy:
You even did that on Saturday.
Emily:
I did, yeah. We were.
Asy:
Emily grew up in this neighborhood, not this neighborhood, but near here in the Hudson Valley. And a couple of her friends from elementary school and middle school came out to the exhibit on Saturday, and they were talking about, like, how bitterly cold it was their senior year and how many days of school they missed because of ice. And then we could go and like, look at the piece and see that winter and how cold it was relative to the other years that they were in high school, which was.
Emily:
Really our memories were right. There was a lot of ice that year. It was very cold.
Asy:
It was very blue.
Emily:
Yeah.
Kim:
And did that feel like a loss? I mean, is that something that you miss, those cold winters you grew up with?
Emily:
It does. So the, where I grew up, I grew up a five minute walk from a lake and that lake froze every winter and we for months would go ice skating every winter on that lake. From the time I was quite little, five or six years old when I moved there, until I graduated from high school at eighteen. And it freezes now for a couple days every winter, but not solid enough so that it's safe to go ice skating on. And so I… there's this big loss around it. It was an ice skating community. You know, the ice fishermen and the kids would run around on the ice and the dogs would slide around and we'd bring thermoses of hot chocolate and bags of cookies. And, you know, the kids growing up in that neighborhood now don't really get to have that experience. So it definitely, you know, I think a lot of us feel that these very immediate losses, possibly not thinking about them all the time, but to have that memory come up through tempestries was really, you know, special to me. But I think that's the exact connection that a lot of people end up having with the process of making them and the process of seeing them for their community.
Asy:
Yeah. And that's part of the impetus for doing it this way and using, like, doing custom kits that people can choose a location and we get data that's local to them. Is that, a lot of times the, the climate reporting and journalism and the science is talking about what's happening at the poles or what's happening at the, you know, with glaciers and things, because that's like where it's the most extreme and where the measurements are the most drastic and the headlines are the most like eye catching, but that's not where people live.
Asy:
And so I think for many, many people, especially in the US, it's easy to sort of like distance yourself from that reality. And so the hope with our project was when communities do their collections for their own local data, then they're contextualizing it within their lifetimes, within their communities. And you get memories like this that come out of the woodwork and then you're like, oh, this is happening to me. It's affecting my family, my kids. It personalizes it.
Emily:
Yeah.
Kim:
Yeah. Well, you've been so effective at building a group. I came across this model in a book called The Psychology of Collective Climate Action. And there they propose these three elements that are essential for building effective collective climate action, which is building group identity, having shared moral beliefs, and believing that you make a difference, that you're you are able to reach your individual goals.
Kim:
So I'm wondering if that has been part of your experience with the Tempestry Project. Do you think you've built a group identity that people feel connected to as a part of the project?
Emily:
I think people do, and it's sort of funny because there's a group while the collection is being made, you know, people often will have knit togethers and come and work on them collectively. And then the group doesn't really last. Beyond that, after the exhibits are over or the, you know, the displays.
Emily:
But I feel like there's this sort of shared sense of accomplishment that people have coming out of that experience that lasts much longer than that. You know, knitting is, is so historically women's work and craft work is women's work. And I think for a lot of people, the concept of having this women's work be part of a collective experience and be part of an art experience, really resonates deeply with people and sort of puts their work at the focus in a way that it hasn't been before.
Emily:
You know, we've had exhibits in local museums in the Design Museum of Chicago. There was a workshop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a couple years ago. And it, there's this sort of magical moment of seeing some of these makers come in and see their work in a museum or in a town hall or city hall or. And that lasts forever, I think. And so even though the community itself is fleeting, the the ripples that come from that community are permanent, hopefully.
Kim:
And what about cultivating shared values? What are the values or beliefs that connect the people who join the Tempestry Project?
Asy:
I guess.
Emily:
Collective action.
Asy:
Acknowledging climate change is, like, number one. And then yeah, collective action, like wanting to do something about it, feeling the need to like put your, your concerns into physical form.
Emily:
Well, it's, it's neat. We did this big project over the last year, again, with our regional public library system. And there's so much overlap between the goals of public libraries and the goals of climate activism in general and sustainability. And so to be able to fold our work into this system and to know that they are doing so many practical, practical things to make their communities more resilient has been a really neat overlap.
Asy:
Yeah. Some of our libraries locally have like kits you can check out that will help. They've got like a thermal camera and they'll help you like do a thermal like energy audit on your home. And you can see like if your front door is leaking a lot of heat or like, it's just these kits that are kind of designed around increasing sustainability and increasing community access to the resources to work towards sustainability. And I think that that dovetails with what we're about really well.
Kim:
And what about that third piece of building, the belief you can reach your goals, your individual goals collectively. How do, how do you think the Tempestry Project achieves that?
Asy:
I think there's a couple examples of that that I would point to. We've got a group right now of knitters in New Jersey, and they're all making the warming stripes pieces to give to their various representatives in local government and in state government. And so all I mean, how many did we send out?
Emily:
Like, we sent out twenty. And then they're getting more people to make them as well. And there's some specific environmental legislation coming up in New Jersey right now. And so the idea is to send these out to all of their representatives statewide before this legislation comes up for the vote. So it's neat to see our work support their work in that way. And I'd say that that's one of our main, you know, hopes is that this can, can be used in ways like that.
Asy:
And that's like a pretty concrete, like first the tempestries and then pushing it into the State House and politics and legislation with a specific goal. And then another example that I love is, there's a church out, a church group outside of Atlanta, Georgia, that did a Tempestry collection, and they had like a whole month long thing on environmental responsibility. And like, the whole congregation kind of participated. But the knit group in the church did a Tempestry collection. And then as. Okay.
Asy:
Rewinding a little bit as part of this work for me, I started, I stopped using the phrase data visualization and started using data representation, because visualization is like limited to one sense and not everybody's a visual learner. And so I've thought a lot about how to make it more accessible, engage other senses. And so we had the global piece up in, museum exhibit at Ursinus College. And then that one traveled a while, but, I, I took that dataset and set it to the C major scale and we had a little QR code next to it so you could scan it and listen to it. And you can just hear the pitch change. And they had heard about that, this church group, and they wanted to play my piece on there, with their handbell choir. And so there's a handbell choir in Georgia that has played global climate change on handbells, which is just.
Kim:
Oh, wow.
Asy:
Amazing to me.
Emily:
All going back to Ed Hawkins and warming stripes.
Asy:
Yeah.
Kim:
Yeah. Wow. It's traveled so far. Yeah. This is incredible.
Kim:
So I want to hear more of your advice because you've, you've taken the facts and you've harnessed your feelings of, in some cases, anxiety and concern and wanting to build community. And you've taken these amazing actions. And I think you have a lot of valuable knowledge to share with other people who are earlier on in their journeys of building climate community.
Kim:
So what would your advice be to someone who's kind of just getting started, who cares about climate, is concerned, but maybe doesn't have a climate community already and doesn't know where to start. If you can maybe put yourself back in your shoes of 2017 or earlier. What would you tell earlier you to focus on to get started?
Emily:
I mean, one thing I'd say is don't assume that it needs to start as a climate community. That can grow out of lots of other overlaps of interests and concerns and, and abilities. You know, for us, it started with a knitting group, that originally didn't have anything connected to climate or activism or environmentalism at all. But even just a group like that can get you talking about shared interests and shared concerns and who knows where that can take you.
Asy:
And just like to piggyback on that, like whatever you're interested in, like focus on your strengths. Like, I know there's a, I've heard of a streaming channel, like a gamer who streams and just talks about climate policy and like answers questions and stuff while he's gaming and like.
Emily:
So that reaches a very different audience.
Asy:
Than it reaches a very different audience. But it's kind of the, the point is to just like, take whatever you're interested in and figure out how to dovetail that into something where you can start having these conversations with people.
Kim:
I love that.
Asy:
Like be a part of your community, local or otherwise. Like just be out in the world. Don't be afraid to talk to people. Like we're not all scary.
Emily:
Only some people are scary.
Kim:
So make those connections happen. Yeah. And what would you definitely not do? Either a mistake you learned from, that you wouldn't repeat, or just something you see that doesn't work or isn't a good use of time and energy to build community.
Emily:
Don't assume any one thing will work. We would come up with fantastic ideas and think, this is it, this is amazing. And it just crashes and burns and that's okay. Then you go on to another thing.
Asy:
Um, yeah. Learn to pivot.
Emily:
Learn to pivot.
Kim:
Good life advice in general. How do you keep going? How do you keep putting your time and energy and heart and soul into this project?
Emily:
Sometimes with difficulty, sometimes with financial difficulties, sometimes with emotional difficulty. But you know, we know it's important enough to enough other people that it's worth continuing to do it in those moments when it doesn't seem worth it to us.
Emily:
And I think we kind of went through that this year a little bit. You know, earlier in the year, it's just been a struggle this year with tariffs and our political scene. And it's been a demoralizing year. But I feel like we're sort of coming out of that again.
Emily:
And, you know, we just got married a couple of weeks ago and so a lot of…
Kim:
Congratulations!
Emily:
…family were in town and they'd never visited before. And so getting to show them our workspace and getting to show them just some of what we've been doing here since we moved here five years ago, I think was pretty encouraging for me and getting us out of the doldrums.
Asy:
And then having the first exhibit of the Mid-Hudson library system. And like usually when we do these collections, it's like somewhere far away. And so we just send out the kits and then we don't see it until they post it on social media. But this was like local to us. And so we got to be a part of it. And all the kits came to us, or all the finished pieces came to us and I cataloged everything, created another spreadsheet, don't be shocked. And, and then we got to help set it up. And the first couple times and then we had this, they organized this, this, first opening exhibit for the collection. And all of the knitters were invited. So everybody that made one and they could bring their families and see it for the first time, like all together. And it was incredible. Like it was probably one hundred to one hundred and fifty people.
Asy:
And it just like the energy that we received that day was really sustaining. And we had all these amazing conversations, and people would tell us the stories about why they chose the year they chose or what some sort of connection that they had to either the place or the information. One woman was.. So we used data from a specific weather station at a place called the Mohonk Preserve, and her husband worked there during the year that she knit, and he was the one recording the data from the weather station. And so it was like this really full circle moment that was incredible to like get to share in that.
Emily:
And she brought her husband to the exhibit. So we got to talk to him about it as well. And I got the feeling that he didn't quite get what this thing his wife was volunteering to participate in was. He, like, seemed a little confused. And then he walked around and I think a light went on. And for him to feel like he was part of this thing that was happening, you know, fifty years later.
Kim:
Wow.
Emily:
I think it was special to them, and it was definitely special to us.
Asy:
I love this story.
Kim:
That's so beautiful.
Kim:
Because it also really shows. I mean, we never know for sure what the impact of our efforts will be. This man had no way of knowing this, that, you know, fifty years later, it would be this incredible exhibit that he was contributing to. Yeah. So yeah, it does keep you going, because we all have those ups and downs for sure. It's very tough sometimes.
Kim:
And I wanted to hear more about the libraries. Is it right that you've reached over five hundred thousand people through your partnerships with libraries?
Emily:
No, not quite. But so, the library system. Not yet.
Kim:
Okay. Okay. Sorry. Growth mindset. There we go.
Emily:
The library system that we partnered with this year has five hundred thousand people who live in the region and two hundred thousand?
Asy:
Three hundred thousand with library cards.
Emily:
Library cards. And so the potential reach for this collection is exponentially larger than ones that we've done before, in part because it's a traveling exhibit over the next year and a half at least. And so it's going to be in, half a dozen libraries for a month or two at a time, spanning the entire district in the region. And so it has just passive visitors coming into the libraries who will see it, and children who will ask about it. And, you know, parents who might want to knit one for themselves or, and so it just has a lot of potential reach.
Asy:
And teachers are finding it.
Emily:
Teachers are finding it, yeah.
Asy:
So we're hoping they might take their classes when it's in their town and, and visit it and talk about climate.
Emily:
Yeah.
Emily:
So I think that's a real push for us coming up is to continue to do outreach with more public library systems. We're working with another one in New York right now and then hope to start reaching out to others across the country as well, just because they have these built in communities already focused on sustainability and environmentalism. And there's so much.
Asy:
Just about every library has a knitting group, almost every library.
Kim:
So when you approach a library, do you just go knocking on their door? Or how do you establish these new partnerships?
Asy:
This library found us. We went, we got invited to table at a local climate mixer event for activists and different organizations. We're all like getting together. Two years ago in the fall, they had an event with some speeches and some music and just like beverages and stuff, just like kind of get everybody together. It was probably like one hundred people there. But the executive director of the local library system came to that and saw our table, and she spent like half an hour talking to you.
Emily:
Yeah, it was amazing.
Asy:
She was just like, blown away with like the concept, and how educational it is and communal and like just, you know, she really got it. And so then we started working with her to put together the collection.
Emily:
And then I think most people find us through other people. We haven't actually done very much outreach or marketing. You know, one of the first big things for us was we were interviewed on a podcast by a woman who's one of the best known or better known knitting instructors. And so that was the in for that. And then, you know, we've been on podcasts more from the environmental and scientific slant of it. I think with people wanting to figure out how to bridge the gap between science and the public in some ways. And so we're sort of a good fit for that. But we've, we've worked with, more universities than library systems at this point, and they tend to find it through articles or word of mouth and then reach out to us. And then we sort of figure out how we can work with them and what kind of thing they're trying to do, what kind of data collection they're trying to create.
Kim:
Well, you're already doing so much. I mean, you've made these kits to make climate data accessible and visual and beautiful for people around the world and building communities around that and exhibits.
Kim:
But if you're going to commit to doing the next step, what does that look like? You said something about wanting to expand the library work going forward.
Emily:
Yeah. I mean, I think that the libraries are such a great match for us that we would like to sort of recreate what we did with the Mid-Hudson collection for different regions throughout the country. And libraries are such a wonderful space for having conversations in as neutral a way as possible, in more conservative areas. And so I think that's one of the nice things we've learned from this collection is that there are more conservative areas here in the Hudson Valley, and certainly much more conservative in other parts of the country. And so we'd love to start working with libraries in those areas, because the librarians often are very progressive and aware of climate change and want to be involved in it. But can't be forthright about it because of politics in the United States. And so to be able to work with them to create these collections and get people talking who are then voting in local elections and, you know, volunteering to be on school boards and that sort of thing could be a really great way to soften the discussion, but still engage people with it.
Asy:
Yeah. And I think the next concrete thing that we're working towards is working with at least one library in every state to do a warming stripes visualization for that state and then bring them all together and have a collection of fifty or maybe more, if we were able to get data for the territories as well. And have that travel around the country and be able to be displayed once it's put together. So I'm really hoping that we can get that in motion.
Emily:
Yeah.
Kim:
That'll be beautiful. Well, I mean, you've done an amazing job of harnessing your superpowers in crafting and wrangling data from government sources and spreadsheets. And I think you really have shown how people can make this happen themselves. So start where you are. Build the community that you're already a part of and be a part. You know, reach out to others and share what you're doing and just keep going.
Kim:
Are there any final thoughts, anything that surprised you or something that you think is something that you're proud of with the work that you've done?
Asy:
Well, I want to share something that you did.
Emily:
Oh.
Kim:
Oh, nice.
Asy:
Which is this piece here.
Kim:
Wow.
Asy:
For the audio listeners, I'm holding up a roll of knitted fabric. It's probably about eight inches in diameter. It is a single scarf about eight inches wide, 22 feet long.
Kim:
Oh my gosh.
Asy:
Yeah. And it's.
Kim:
Wow.
Asy:
Global deviation from average temperatures from the year one to 2021. So it's 2,000 years of data.
Kim:
Wow. Each row is one year and it's 2,000 years.
Emily:
Yeah.
Kim:
Wow.
Emily:
Again, based on warming stripes.. But they released that data set and Asy was like, you should knit that. And I was like, there's no way I'm knitting 2,000 years of data.
Asy:
I was preparing a much longer data set because I was trying to use dendrochronology and looking at bristlecone pine data from California, Nevada region, which that data goes back to like 2500 BC.
Emily:
Yeah. That would have been…
Asy:
Yeah.
Kim:
Oh my gosh. I would love if you knit a bristlecone pine. My first job in research was in the White-Inyo Mountains where the bristlecone pines grow. They're the world's oldest living things.
Emily:
Another connection.
Kim:
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I need to knit that.
Asy:
Well, along with, like, trying to process that data and learning how to do dendrochronology and all of that. And then Ed Hawkins released the two thousand year data spectrum I was like, oh, shortcut. We're just going to do that.
Kim:
Amazing.
Asy:
An immense amount of knitting, but a lot less than it was going to be.
Emily:
So it took about a year and I ended up finishing it when we were all quarantined because we had Covid.
Kim:
And so, oh no.
Emily:
This cathartic processing of two global catastrophes all at once.
Kim:
Wow.
Emily:
But we loan it out to conferences and art exhibits and, different things, you know, loan it out for a couple of months and then it comes back to us so that's been a good conversation starter as well.
Asy:
But it's a really just powerful, impressive piece. We, we have a booth at our local sheep and wool festival every year here in New York. It's one of the largest ones in the country. And we put it across the front of our tent, and people will see it from really far away and come over to it. And then when they read the little description of it, they're just like, oh, and just like, get depressed and walk away.
Emily:
It's not great for our sales but it's eye catching.
Kim:
Well, it's so striking. I mean, from what I could see with it rolled up, ninety nine percent of it was blue. And then the very last little bit becomes red. So you just see this context of the time we happen to be alive is where the fossil fuels we burn have caught up with us. And we've increased temperature so much and it's so unprecedented.
Emily:
Exactly.
Asy:
Yeah, it's the hockey stick chart.
Kim:
Wow. Yeah. Well, it's really beautiful. I have learned so much from talking with you. I'm so grateful for your time and for the work that you're doing. Please keep going. And you've inspired me to start knitting again. I'm going to knit something flat.
Emily:
We'll get Asy to finish that dendrochronology chart and send you that.
Kim:
That would be…. But did you say it has 4.000 lines? Yeah, yeah, four thousand five hundred.
Emily:
That would take forever.
Kim:
Oh my gosh. Okay, maybe I can condense like one line per hundred years or something.
Asy:
I mean, when I was doing it, I was thinking like, we could, you know, break it up and just give people a hundred year chunk and then stitch them all together.
Kim:
Okay.
Asy:
Falling to one knitter with this one, we sort of talked about doing that, but it was.
Emily:
It was manageable.
Asy:
Manageable enough. And we wanted to have like one that was like we had quality control on.
Kim:
Right. I would love to knit one section of one hundred rows. That would inspire me.
Emily:
You could knit one, I'll knit one, and see who else we can get to do them and then piece them all together.
Kim:
Oh, I would love that.
Emily:
Globally created history of Bristlecone Pines.
Asy:
That would be.
Kim:
Cool. So it was 1996 that I was studying the Bristlecone Pines. So no, '97. It was 1997. I would love to have that year actually.
Emily:
You can do the most recent century.
Kim:
Okay, perfect.
Emily:
Oh, it was so nice to meet you.
Kim:
Wonderful to meet you both. Thank you so much. Thanks for the inspiration.
Emily:
Thank you.
Kim:
Hi everyone, I just wanted to pop in to say thank you so much for following season 1 of Climate Actually, we hope you enjoyed.
Kim:
You now know your top 5 climate superpowers and the most effective action within each and I hope you're taking them.
Kim:
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Kim:
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Kim:
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