BF's late aunt was a tapestry weaver, an artist, she painted with yarn instead of paint. She had a tiny house, and her looms took up most of the space, and lacking in storage space she would line the walls with her hand dyed yarn in every nuance you can imagine. It was beautiful. As far as I can tell it was all fingering weight shetland wool, and she had a gazillion colors but only a little bit of each -like a painter's easel.
When she died her looms were placed in storage, and the yarn was going to be donated to a school, but they couldn't find any that would take it, so it went into storage. This Spring MIL decided it was time to try and use it, and we had a good look at it for the first time. Big boxes full of yarn, but very difficult to use for knitting, because the amount of each color was so small. It seems almost a sacrilege to use it for mere knitting, but it's certainly better than leaving it unused in its storage boxes. MIL wanted to use it for something nice, and came over to look at my knitting books, and we settled on Hanne Falkenberg's Mermaid pattern, which I have knitted before. I asked if I could make one for her, and she put together a kit of colors that more or less resembles the poppy-coral-tomato colorway that is one of Falkenberg's originals. This yarn is slightly heavier that Falkenberg's yarn, and seems drier and scratchier, but otherwise it's very close, so i think it's going to work. It's certainly going to be an interesting project.
Here's a photo of all the little balls of coral-tomato nuances - they are all different:
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and these are the ones I chose to use:
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I am going to use three colors, coral, orange and brick red, and I hope there's enough, but I might have to use two close nuances of each color, if there isn't enough of each color.
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