How to’s and downloads
In this section you’ll find:
- How to download your own climate information from Met Eireann
- Downloadable year/colour charts
- External links to raw data from Met Eireann
- Question and answer section
- Links to our how to videos
How to’s
You can use any aspect of the climate for Purls of Wisdom, whether it be temperature, rainfall or wind speed! This download - How to prepare Irish climate data - covers detailed instructions of how to find, download and work with climate information from the Met Eireann website to make yourself a craftable pattern!
We also have a series of youtube videos on the iCRAG YouTube channel - here.
Downloads
Here’s one we made earlier: All Ireland provisional long term data series with multiple colour ranges - do you want to craft with the all Ireland provisional data series (mean temperature)? We’ve worked through the data set and sorted years into colours for you! If you’re using anywhere between two and ten colours this document - Annual colours download - will work for you!
Blank year/colour template – building your own colour range and climate series? Use our template - Blank colour chart - to help work out what colour to craft with and when!
External links
All the data that we’ve used comes directly from the Met Eireann website. Purls of Wisdom and iCRAG are incredibly grateful for this free resource and the help and support given to us by Met Eireann. We claim no rights to this data.
Met Eireann website: https://www.met.ie/
Long term averages: https://www.met.ie/climate/30-year-averages
Historical data: https://www.met.ie/climate/available-data/historical-data
What we measure – Temperature (Island of Ireland provisional long term temperature series): https://www.met.ie/climate/what-we-measure/temperature
FAQs
So how does it all work?
We use real climate information to create crafts that visualise our changing climate. Each year forms a ‘stripe’ or section of our crafted work, and in this way, the finished project will work like a graph – showing change in climate through time (but will be the most beautiful graph you’ve ever seen!).
What crafts can I use?
For Purls of Wisdom, we are championing yarn and yarn crafts, but don’t let that limit you! Where there’s a will, there’s always a way. We would like to highlight that crafts that lend themselves to rows or stripes do work best with this, like knitting or crotchet, so this is what we’d recommend.
Do I have to use stripes?
No! Although stripes display the climate changes very well and are what we’d recommend to start off with, any pattern that can be split up into sections will work. We created a climate blanket made out of squares where each square represents two years of climate data and we think it looks great!
I’m not based in Ireland, do I have to use Irish climate data?
Purls of Wisdom is centralised around Ireland, but if you’re not located here, why not use data local to you? We’d love to see your finished projects and compare them to ours! You can find climate information quite easily using your local meteorological association (e.g. Met Office https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data (UK) or NOAA https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/time-series (US/Global))