What a month spent living in Joshua Tree National Park. I have seen such beautiful landscapes, flora, and fauna I will have inspiration for years. I was able to finish three pieces during my stay but I have so many more that I am planning. Stay tuned for updates.
Hall of Horrors Shawl: Hall of Horrors in Joshua Tree National Park is made of several rock formations with scrambling boulders, small slot canyons, and beautiful desert scenery. The nooks and crannies of these outcroppings are great to get lost in, finding surprising places to cool from the desert heat.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker wristwarmers: These brightly colored birds nest in the desert trees of Joshua Tree National Park. Their flashy red crowns and black and white speckled plumage demand attention as they drill and fly around the Joshua trees.
Colors of wildflowers I saw in Joshua Tree National Park in March 2026: An abundance of colors peppers Joshua Tree National Park in March. I recorded the color of wildflowers I saw during my month-long stay in the park and knitted them into this cowl. An exercise in data visualization that not only records the colors, but the days spent in the beautiful desert.
Notes on this project:
You can “read” the cowl starting at the slightly darker stripe and reading right to left following the rows in a spiral up the cowl. Each V-stitch represents a color of wildflower, a black color indicates the end of one day.
You can see several trends, at the beginning of March there were a lot of yellow flowers blooming like creosote and brittlebush as well as purples of purple mat and chia. By the end of the month the hotter colors of beavertail cactus, hedgehog cactus, chuparosa, ocotillo, and paintbrush began to dominate. Ubiquitous throughout the month were orange globemallow, blue heliotrope, and purple desert lavender. The white and green Joshua tree blossoms were abundant as well, you can see many instances of white and light green together as young and old blossoms often graced the same Joshua tree. Don’t miss the “cheater” colors I knit in of non-wildflowers like the bright green lichen or the lovely glowing blue juniper berries.
This visual representation of the colors of the desert will always be a better reminder of my time as artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park than any of my journals I wrote during my stay.