I am a Senior Research Scientist for the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute and this is one of several pieces made for a project called Wool and Water.

Wool and Water is a data art project that blends fiber art with scientific data to create visual representations of changing water quality conditions in the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Basin. We began in 2022 in association with the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Support from the Lake Champlain Basin Program, the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership and others has enabled us to build an enduring project and to use fiber art to showcase the legacy of protecting clean water in the Lake Champlain Basin and beyond. Pieces here in Ravelry are my own but the project website has additional works made by many others as a part of this collaborative effort.

The shawl and scarf are representations of data from NY-Sun on total installed solar capacity in New York State since 2010. NY-Sun is a public-private partnership working to ensure a coordinated, well-supported solar energy expansion plan in NY and a transition to a sustainable energy future. The shawl, scarf, and suns were created as part of a collaboration between the AWI Wool and Water project and Third Act Upstate New York in celebration of Sun Day (September 21, 2025), a day of action celebrating solar and wind and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind.

This link provides all the information you need to get involved. The individual “recipes” (also accessible from above link) contain information on yarn/needles/hooks I used in the ones I made. Join us!

Pattern for Suns
Pattern for Shawl
Pattern for Scarf