As 2021 drew to a close, I vowed I would take a break from the tyranny of a daily stitch project, especially one tied to current events. My efforts over the last five years, including my daily THIS IS NOT NORMAL stitcheries, the five Flags of Resistance, last year’s calendar headlines project, and the weekly Made on Monday and 52 Weeks of Peace projects that I did in 2016 and 2019, left me depleted and exhausted.
So, of course, I had barely turned the calendar to 2022 when I dreamed up another daily stitch project! This one, however, is much easier and less demanding of my time, or brain cells. I decided to stitch simple circles, one for each day of each month, representing the daily high temperatures for Burlington, Vermont (the closest location for which temperature data are easily available).
Many people in many places around the country, and around the world, have begun to translate climate data into art, to represent the numbers, and the trends, in a visual, colorful, and viscerally understandable form. I first heard about this concept several years ago via the marvelous Tempestry Project, but other efforts, both organized and individual, have sprung up over the past few years. I decided it was time to add my stitches to the growing body of climate data represented in color and fiber.
I chose a palette of 22 graded shades of perle cotton, each color representing a span of 5 degrees, ranging from -5 degrees Fahrenheit to 100 degrees or higher.
Every few days, I check the National Weather Service graphs for Burlington, record the daily highs, and stitch my circles accordingly. At the end of the month I have a stitched disc made up of many colors. My aim is not to highlight any one particularly hot or cold day, but rather to create an overall impression of that month’s high temperatures. I hope that this will allow a comparison of the trends month to month, and perhaps year to year, if I choose to continue this project indefinitely.
And here is 2022, January through March. The range of high temps for January was 0 to 45 degrees; for February, 13 - 57 degrees; and for March, 20 - 65 degrees.
January 2022. Range: 0 - 45 degrees Fahrenheit
February 2022. Range: 13 to 57 degrees Fahrenheit
March 2022. Range: 20 - 65 degrees Fahrenheit
