A report back on the last Craft Snippets event at Upper Riccarton Library. The next one will be held on Wednesday 29 July with guest speaker Gina Russell, co-founder of Papahoa Fibreworks.
What a great turn out we had to hear Ana Houseal talk about her sabbatical exploring where science, data, storytelling and fibre arts hang out together.
Ana is from Wyoming, in the Northwest of America. It is ‘pretty high up’ and the high altitude is very different when you are baking. Ana is finding baking at low altitude a little tricky.
Ana’s first dip into story telling using yarn was the Tempestry Project. In 2015 the project focused on national parks in the United States using climate data. Ana did her project using data from Yellowstone National Park, showing the year Ana was born and the comparison to what the temperatures are like now. You can see the colours shift in average temperature.
Along came 2020 and a lot more knitting time. Ana looked around for a new project using data and decided to try using information from a major trucking route near her (name of road). The road closes a lot in the winter, and Ana thought she could tell the story of the road closures in a knitted blanket. To make things easier they have an app to keep track of road closures on this piece of road. However, it suddenly became complicated. Ana had questions, for example which part of road to do, the whole road or part of the road? The length of closures to include, part or whole, some days the road would be closed for days and sometimes for hours. Also the comparison between now and 10 years ago. To make things even trickier over the years they had added more variables to the road closures. This made it much more complicated. In the end, Ana decided to back up and do something simple.
Along came a koozie and data showing the very lonely scientist. A koozie is a knitted cover for a glass jar for her local coffee shop. The knitted cover has 800 stitches with 8 red stitches. Each of the red stitches represents a scientist who doesn’t believe in climate change.
Another fun project involved a friend’s flock of chickens - Ana recorded data around how often the chickens laid and what colour the eggs were. The resulting cowl shows more lines when the chickens are on the lay in the middle of the year. It would be interesting to do a NZ version when our hens would be off the lay in the middle of the year.
Using temperatures is quite common for people wanting to experiment using data with their knitting and crochet. Ana showed a pair of wristies (fingerless gloves) she had made and along with them the key to the yarn she used to create them. The colours represent temperatures that start at 4 degrees Fahrenheit and go up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The left hand being what the temperatures were in June 2012 and the right hand the temperatures in June 2025. The wristies show that the temperature is getting warmer at night. Climate data over times shows a striking change. Perhaps seeing this in knitting and crochet might help the climate change sceptics?
Ana and a friend did a project studying daylight and latitude. The scarves show the difference in light at different latitudes. The first scarf, made by her friend, has three panels. The first panel is Quito in Ecuador which is close to the equator and acts as a control showing an even number of daylight hours. The second panel is Laramie, Wyoming and the third Fairbanks, Alaska. Different knitting stitches show the hours of daylight and darkness. Ana did a scarf showing where she will visit on her sabbatical travels – Quito (didn’t visit there, but it is the control), Copenhagen, Denmark, Christchurch, NZ and Laramie, USA. Ana used calendars to find the data.
Ana showed some great examples of data being used to tell stories in knitting and crochet. Including a crocheted rain cloud with crocheted droplets representing rain data, a blanket showing temperature data from the birthyear of a grandmother, Mother and daughter. A German train delay scarf that subsequently sold on eBay for a lot of money and brought about changes to the train timetables. Socks based on soil sample data from Dartmoor National Park.
The idea for another data project came from a protest hat made during the Nazi occupation of Norway in WWII. Melt the ICE hats were made in response to ICE operations in Minnesota, USA. Ana took this a step further and for the tassel used six purple strands, each strand represents a person killed by ICE in 2026.
Ana’s research project most recently took her to Denmark where she was working with students there to explore storytelling using data in crochet and knitting. Some of the examples of what the students worked on were:
- Anita who recorded all the books she read in a month.
- Chris mapped places he had travelled to over his 17 years.
- Another student recorded data relating to what pictures she had taken on her phone. She found they were mostly of her dog and came up with a code to record the many dog pictures.
While here in Ōtautahi, Ana is working with students from Riccarton High School exploring data and storytelling using crochet and knitting. So far there is a student making a jumper with data relating to her favourite band and the songs they have released. Another student is making a jellyfish that will have tentacles relating to emotions. One of the teachers helping is making a stratigraphy hat based on the sediments of the Port hills. While here Ana is thinking about the Kahikatea trees and what data could be used to tell a story about them. Also, eels and piwakawaka, which have so intrigued her and her husband.
Someone asked Ana how she decided on the countries to visit. Ana said she had wanted to go where knitting was already embedded in the culture. She had thought that would be the case in Denmark but found that the curriculum had moved away from teaching crafts. Here in New Zealand knitting is not taught at school and some of the time spent with the students has been teaching them how to knit and crochet. Both Denmark and New Zealand were on Ana’s bucket list of places to visit.
There is a lot of research about the benefits of knitting and crochet. Two recent studies surmised that students who spent time knitting during school day showed more concentration and persistence..
What’s On
We did a round up of what’s coming up in the way of craft events including:
- Craft Clubs at Rekindle
- Matariki Needlefelting Workshops at the Climate Action Campus
- Matariki Mākete at The Arts Centre
- Winter Encraftment Market at Pioneer
Latest craft titles
Angela chatted about some of the books and magazines on display.
Items shared at our May gathering.
Our next Craft Snippets event will be held on Wednesday 29 July with guest speaker Gina Russell, co-founder of Papahoa Fibreworks.
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