Finding Colour Confidence: Trusting Your Eye and Your Yarn
I often have comments on my posts about how people like the colours that I choose. They look at all those colours — beautiful, bright, blended or contrasting and say that they don’t know how to choose their own colour combinations successfully.
I used to feel the same way.
Choosing colour felt like a test I hadn’t studied for — as if there were secret rules I hadn’t learned.
My colour journey started after I went to Shetland to stay on Fair Isle with Mati, then at Brindister just before Christmas of 2019. At Brindister, I found Sea Urchin shells scattered on the hill beside the voe. I began to name the place Sea Urchin Hill and really took notice of the colours and form of the dried Sea Urchin Shells after the sea gulls had eaten the urchin.
In Jamieson’s of Shetland, in Lerwick, I bought colours that I felt worked for me for a new hat project. By then, I had started sampling colours but still didn’t know what I was doing. When I got home from Shetland, I started the Sea Urchin hat pattern with light background and a darker coloured Shetland Tree and Star Motif. And that is where the story of my colour blending started I laid two yarns together on a whim: a stormy and washy blue skies and a flash of dark reds and purples from one of the shells that I had seen.
.
It shouldn’t have worked — but it did. It looked alive.
And that was the start of learning to trust my inspiration and eye and I began to blend the colours.
What Changed
It wasn’t that I suddenly “understood” colour blending – my swatch book will show you that but it was that I stopped trying to get it right and started trying to get it interesting and understand the changes in tone and colour.
I began to notice colour in the world around me — the copper of old bricks, the green of moss after rain, the pink glow of dusk.
Nature never worries about matching. It just works.
That’s when I realised:
Colour confidence isn’t about knowing rules — it’s about paying attention, and being willing to play.
Small Steps to Build Colour Confidence
1. Start with Inspiration, Not Theory
Forget the colour wheel for a moment.
Go for a walk, look through a photo album, open your wardrobe.
What colours feel like you?
That’s where your palette begins.
2. Work With What You Have
Lay out your stash and make little “yarn bouquets.”
Mix fibres, tones, and textures — even scraps.
Sometimes the most magical combination comes from leftovers you’d never thought to pair.
A Palette from the Everyday
This week I took a walk through Sheffield woods — everything was damp and glowing.
There was soft lichen green, deep bark brown, a sudden flare of orange leaves against a grey sky.
When I came home, I pulled those colours from my stash and swatched a few rows.
Instant calm.
Sometimes, the best palette comes from the ground beneath your feet.
Confidence Comes with Play
Colour confidence isn’t something you’re born with.
It’s something you knit into being — loop by loop, swatch by swatch.
Every “wrong” colour combination teaches your eye what it loves.
And every small experiment builds courage for the next.
Ready to find your own colour confidence?
If you want to learn more now, and would like to join my exclusive small Colour classes of 6 people, then, I do teach colour blending workshops online and the information is here.
You’ll get the Sea Urchin Pattern free to work with after your workshop. Many people have joined me in the Colour Blending sessions from my first workshop in January 2021 – held in the window sill of my window in Shetland looking out to sea.
Now, I still teach but not often, so if you would like to grab a space, there is only one left for Friday 9th Jan and 4 left for Saturday 17th Jan. So please get in touch using the form on the workshops page.
If you have knitted the Sea Urchin hat pattern, please tag me on instagram because I do share other people’s knitting using my patterns.
Happy successful colour work knitting 🙂
Tracey
Tree and Star Hat pattern last week above the burning copper coloured fallen leaves
tracey doxey 