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.

A HAB is a Harmful Algal Bloom, a phenomenon that occurs when colonies of algae grow out of control, occasionally producing toxins that can kill fish, mammals, and birds and cause human illness. HABs are a growing problem in waterways everywhere, including the Adirondacks. HABs are associated with cyanobacteria, some species of which are capable of producing powerful cyanotoxins. These are improvised bowls meant to mimic the look of some of the cyanobacteria that we see in the microscope when we look at images from water samples associated with HABs. Some were made with yarn and a mix of glue and water, others were woven on a small circle loom and then felted.