The Endless Skein is delighted to be collaborating with The Tempestry Project on an exciting project for the 2023 Cold Spring in Bloom festival. The Tempestry Project is a collaborative fiber art project that stitches together a colorful, visually stunning, and astonishingly clear record of climate data.

The Tempestry Project has also created their own line of 100% US-sourced worsted-weight wool, custom milled and dyed in Pennsylvania, which we are now carrying at The Endless Skein.

The Tempestry Project's Asy Connelly and Emily McNeil, who will be at our store Saturday, June 11, 2022 to kick off a trunk show of their samples, Color Bundles, and kits, spoke with us recently about their journey.

Tell us about the origins of the Tempestry Project. What inspired the idea? What is the purpose of the project?

The idea first formed as an almost flippant joke about data storage. In 2017 there were lots of articles about scientists and hackers teaming up to download publicly available government data -- especially climate and environmental data -- out of concern that it might be censored. We were thinking about how ephemeral modern data storage is when huge quantities of information can be deleted with the push of a button or the unplugging of a server. We joked that we should be recording important information using time-tested techniques like cuneiform tablets or tapestries that continue to tell their stories hundreds of years later.

There is a long history of individual temperature projects in the fiber world, and we wanted to create a framework that would shape these individual efforts into a more global visual representation of climate. The climate crisis can seem both insurmountable and far away, and we wanted to use fiber and color and craft to inspire connection between people and their own experience of climate. Our standardized color/temperature spectrum is a crucial part of making the project come together – while each Tempestry is unique, every single one fits into the larger mosaic of shifting global temperatures over time. Together, we are telling our planet’s climate story year by year, town by town, person by person.

Have there been any surprises along the way? Has the Tempestry Project taken you places you didn’t expect to go?

So many! We often marvel at how every year something completely unpredicted happens. We were invited to participate in the Creative Climate Awards hosted by the Human Impacts Institute in 2018, which for two thirds of us was the first time we’d ever been on a plane, let alone to New York City! The Tempestry Project has been featured in a range of publications -- everything from the NRDC, Smithsonian Magazine, and Chemical & Engineering News to Interweave Knits and the New York Times. Asy was even interviewed on the Weather Channel! 

Another thing we didn’t imagine at the beginning of all of this was the process of developing our own line of US-sourced, milled, & dyed Tempestry Yarn. It wasn’t our intention, but after Covid-19 wreaked havoc on fiber supply chains and we were shut down for months, we decided it was time to take the plunge and just go for it. 

And last, of course, was the surprise of deciding to move our family, several cats, and over half a ton of yarn across the country in the midst of a pandemic to make a home in the beautiful (and fiber-rich!) Hudson Valley. We’re just absolutely delighted to be joining this community.

How can people get involved with the project? What skills do you need, and what materials? How can people who don’t knit or crochet get involved?

Mostly all you need is a pair of knitting needles or a crochet hook and the most basic skills to use them. We’ve had people almost brand new to both these crafts take to Tempestry-making with great excitement and end up making a whole little collection themselves. The easiest way to get started is to order one of our custom knit or crochet kits, but we are always happy to help you find your own path. We’ve even had participants use our framework as a jumping-off point for developing fused glass Tempestries, woven Tempestries, cross-stitched Tempestries, painted Tempestries, and beadwork Tempestries.

We’ve also had non-knitters purchase collection kits such as the Cold Spring kits on behalf of a knitter. This has been a really lovely and generous way to bring more people into the process – both those who may not want to create a Tempestry themselves but want to support the project, and those who might want to make a Tempestry but for financial reasons aren’t otherwise able to.

What is a Tempestry collection? What collections have already been created?

While each individual Original Tempestry merely shows daily high temperatures for one place over the course of one year, a collection of these annual pieces for the same location begins to show shifting temperatures over time. The first of these was the Deception Pass, WA Collection, which was crafted by over a dozen volunteers in our then-hometown of Anacortes, WA. This collection was exhibited at the Anacortes FutureFest over Earth Day weekend in 2018, and later at the Museum of Northwest Art in conjunction with a larger climate art exhibit.

Another favorite collection is the Philadelphia Tempestry Collection, permanently housed at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, made by several dozen Philadelphia-area knitters and spanning the late 1800s to the present. They also developed a smaller loanable crocheted collection that has been exhibited as part of data / climate exhibits at Temple University and Ursinus College.

Undoubtedly one of the most expansive collections is the National Parks Tempestry Collection. Over fifty volunteer crafters from around the country chose their favorite national park and created a pair of Tempestries for it. Each pair included 2016, which was the centennial anniversary of the National Parks system, and either 1966 or 1916, depending on how far back we could get data. Many of the finished pairs were photographed for a gorgeous online photo gallery (linked above), and a book about this collection will be coming out later this summer.

What are some notable places where Tempestries have been on display?

Tempestries are displayed in our former Congressman’s and state senator’s offices back in Washington, which means a lot to us as both are vocal advocates of tackling the climate crisis. Local groups have exhibited their collections in their churches, libraries, city halls, diners, coffee shops, and even sorority houses! We love the idea of Tempestries sparking interest and conversation in the public sphere this way. Oh, and one last thing we would never have imagined – the Philadelphia Collection volunteer coordinator actually ran a Tempestry workshop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art! This just continues to amaze us…

Tell us about the Paleo New Normal Tempestry!

Our Paleo New Normal is a single, 21 foot long, piece of knitting depicting annual deviation from average global temperatures from the year 1 CE to 2021. We used a data set created by combining records from tree rings, coral growth, shell growth of oysters and mussels, ice cores, and other sources used to create a climate reconstruction. Each row of knitting represents a year. The colder than average a year was then the darker the blue and the hotter than average, the darker the red. It’s stunning to see nearly 2,000 years of shades of blue and then, in just the last 70 years or so, a rapid shift into the red.

Eventually we’re hoping to have this piece become a traveling exhibit.

What’s next for the Tempestry Project?

This summer we’ll be working on finding places to display the Paleo New Normal, and are having fun brainstorming with friends, family, and other Tempestry participants about what historical events to add markers for over the course of the 2000+ years it represents.

Anything else you’d like to share?

We are thrilled to have The Endless Skein be the first local yarn store to carry our custom yarn and we’re so looking forward to developing a Cold Spring Tempestry Collection with you all. We are excited to be continuing our fiber journey in the Hudson Valley and we hope to meet many of you on Worldwide Knit in Public Day!

Be sure to follow The Tempestry Project on Instagram @tempestryproject! Stop by the shop on or after June 11 to see The Tempestry Project trunk show and check out their yarn!