Whelkies is SOLD OUT! Thank you to all who have made this possible.
Nathan Lowell wrote a series of books... I had heard of them. Heard people raving about them. Seen tweets... By the time I got around to listening to them, all six were out. And, it's a good thing, because I couldn't get enough of them. I was able to listen for 8 hrs a day at work...and that wasn't enough.
One of the things that struck me the most from these stories was the whelkies. These are hand carved wooden figurines of animals with a bit of purple shell as the heart of the animal.
I wanted to do a colorway to pay homage to this series of stories but for the longest time couldn't get an idea. The stories take place on various trading ships or ports on distant planets and space stations. The only color reference I could remember was the sapphire eye color of one character. And then I remembered the whelkies and knew instantly that was the colorway.
So, when I dyed the yarn for this colorway, I didn't apply the dye uniformly to all the skeins. Whelkies are all unique. So are these skeins of yarn. I put a splash of purple in just one place on each skein to symbolize the purple shell heart. Some are bigger, some are darker. Again, each is different. Each is special. I wanted the browns to streak, swirl, and pool in their own way like the grain of wood. I'm so pleased with the results, I hope you enjoy them too.
You can see all of the colorways, with links to the original work and the artists/podcasters/websites that inspired them, on the Balticon 2012 page.
