Each blanket made by Candice Everett holds the story of a single field season in the Northwoods, a tactile diary conjuring vivid recollections of hot and cold days.
Every row, every square, every color reflects not just daily weather data, but the unpredictable adventure of experiential learning and rustic community camaraderie.
Using a hook, yarn and a data spreadsheet on cozy evenings along Douglas Lake, Everett crochets tapestries to literally wrap herself in memories of her time at the University of Michigan Biological Station.
“The end result is phenomenal. It’s peaceful and beautiful. You actually get that feeling of when you’re here,” Everett said.
Everett is the academic program manager for the vast U-M research and teaching campus located in Pellston on more than 10,000 forested acres along Douglas Lake and Burt Lake. It’s about 20 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge.
UMBS is a living laboratory and a historic source of information about how ecology and climate in northern Michigan have changed over the last century.
Based in the Ann Arbor office during the fall and winter semesters, Everett lives a split life.
She moves into a lakeside cabin from mid-May through early-August every year in Pellston where she leads the organization and administration of field-based courses and helps undergraduate students and faculty have successful spring and summer terms immersed in nature. Each term is four weeks long, with students having one day off a week.
When UMBS hired Everett in February 2023 to manage the academic side of operations, she anticipated quiet nights at her lakeside cabin when the time came in the spring to temporarily move up north for the field season.
In particular, she saw an opportunity to capture her experience through a “temperature blanket” — a project that records each day’s temperatures in colored yarn, using UMBS air sensor data collected by Adam Schubel, the field station’s resident biologist who lives in Pellston year-round.
“I wanted something that represented my time here,” Everett said, “and I had previously made a temperature blanket at home during COVID. I thought, why not do something like that? I love data. Being able to leverage data in my craft, I thought, would be a perfect combination during my time at the field station, especially since it’s the home of historic datasets than span generations of research by students and faculty.”
Crochet is a method of creating fabric by interlocking loops of yarn with a single hooked needle, a unique process where a single thread is formed into fabric, unlike weaving which interlaces two sets of yarn.
Everett learned how to crochet as a child from her grandmother on her mother’s side.
“I come from a very creative family, “Everett said. “Lots of woodworkers and people who work with their hands to create. My grandma taught me to crochet. And then I didn’t touch it for a really long time. I took up knitting for a while and then got kind of frustrated with knitting. When you make mistakes in knitting, it’s a little bit harder to correct your errors. I decided to go back to crochet during the early 2000s.”
Everett’s projects at the field station have ranged from single-row blankets to ambitious granny square afghans. She wears her own hand-made shawls at the office, both in Ann Arbor and Pellston, drawing admiration from her colleagues.
During Everett’s first field season in 2023, she made a full-size blanket that recorded the high temperatures of each day she was at the U-M Biological Station.
From low to high, the color palette chosen in advance of move-in day included seven colors: whipped cream (0-59 degrees), hazelwood (60-64 degrees), sepia rose (65-69 degrees), desert sand (70-74 degrees), dark cherry (75-79 degrees), cinnamon stick (80-84 degrees), and sunshine (85-89 degrees).
The next year she increased the data and workload. In the spring and summer of 2024, Everett incorporated squares and doubled the color palette, including shades of blue and green, to record both the high and the low temperature of each day at UMBS.
“I was feeling a little ambitious. I wanted to do a granny square quilt or afghan, but I didn’t want to do a traditional granny square,” Everett said. “I looked for a more modern pattern, and then I looked for something that would be easy to modify so that I could represent both the high and low temperature each day. I chose a color palette that would allow the high and low temp colors to work together.”
The second blanket took about three semesters to complete — extending beyond the field season.
One square on the 2024 blanket that always catches her eye documents the one day that reached a high of 94 degrees — the only time she had to dip into the burgundy color of yarn. The low on that memorable mid-June day was 72 degrees, making the square a combination of burgundy and ocean (ocean looks like teal).
“Oh, the red day. The hottest day. Every time I look at the blanket, I remember what happened that day,” Everett said.
Then in 2025, Everett crocheted a temperature shawl. This time she returned to solely documenting each day’s high temperature. However, she kept the larger number of colors by reducing the temperature range for each color.
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“I didn’t need another blanket,” Everett said. “I found a pretty pattern and decided to make something I could wear in the office when I’m cold, which happens a lot on Central Campus in the fall and winter semesters.”
The art of crocheting offers Everett relaxation, stress relief and a sense of accomplishment.
“It brings me joy,” Everett said. “Most of the time I’d rather be doing that than anything else. I love all the parts of it. I love planning it. I also love the doing. I feel like I’ve been doing it long enough that I can mostly anticipate some of the problems that I’m going to have before they happen.”
From her home in southeastern Michigan, Everett is in the planning stages for her temperature blanket during the upcoming 2026 field season in northern Michigan.
Under consideration is a gender-neutral design to serve as a prize for the winner of the UMBS staff’s annual ice-out competition, where staff members guess the date each spring when 75% of ice cover is gone from South Fishtail Bay, the deepest part of the south end of Douglas Lake.
— For a longer version of this story, visit the U-M Biological Station website
