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.
looking at all the colours to really see them
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.
AN EXTRACT FROM MY, ‘DEAR SUSAN,’ memoir from when I lived in Shetland
Shetland, Arrival August 2020
Dear Susan,
I begin with the outside, with what I have to hand; my reason, my eyes, my spatial understanding, and an openness tinged with the unknown.
On arriving, I need my first investigations of your croft house interior to be made alone. I want to inhale the house, listen to my internal feelings at first sight then recognise how my body responds to the old stones – I need to let body and stones talk to me. Thoughts and feelings need space. I need space. I haven’t yet found you. I do not know that you were born in this house 145 years ago.
It is a pale grey day, mist rolling over the hill behind the house as if a blind has been half pulled down a window. The sky is bleached out, the day is calm and windless, not particularly notable.
I open the front porch door, then, I try the house door with its mismatched glass panels. It opens. To the right in the tiny vestibule area, there is a third old, board-door, painted white with a hand-hewn square wooden knob which I turn to the right. The simple mechanism lifts a wooden latch inside. That sharp click sound of the latch lifting and hitting its wooden casing is the sound that I will forever remember of this place. It is my first sound here and it will probably be my last when I leave. It is a click of old wood against old wood, heard by every man, woman and child that has ever entered this house before me, for the last 180 years. Human touch leaves tangible traces of every hand that has opened it before me. The patina of years lies dirty on the paint’s surface.
Simultaneously, within the sound, my heart is given over to the first sight of the flag floor and fire place in the sitting room. In an instant, I am sold on sound and sight. I know I will not pull out of this crazy unseen deal to buy a house and change my life entirely.
Heart over head, I move in three weeks later, with two cats and a bag, the furniture and belongings on a lorry, to arrive a week later.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.Anais Nin
Dear Susan,
I am finding you.
I have been sent an image of your Brother – John Halcrow, in his Naval Uniform. I begin to look at censuses and the local history ancestry website then I ask around to find out about the previous inhabitants of this house. I called in at John’s to ask about you because I know nothing of the woman I had heard lived in the house for many years. He said to speak to Jim, so I went over the road to Jim’s and Martin was there too. They were off to Anne Mouat’s funeral but Jim was gracious with his time with me. He told me of you – Susanna (Susan, Cissie) who lived in the house that I now live in and that he was sent as a child, nearly 80 years ago, to collect the milk from you at your house. He told me that you had one cow on the croft, you sold milk, and you rowed the little hand-written paper milk bills up on a shelf in the porch – the same porch that I have. He was a young boy then but he clearly remembers you.
At the funeral, Martin spoke with Raymond whose Aunt lived in the house after you. You knew her, her name was Alice. Raymond came to see me the next day with a mesmerising handful of photographs of you. He introduced me to Susanna Halcrow (Susan, Cissie, or even Zizzie) The photographs, he told me, had been left in the house after his Aunt Alice had died some 30 years after you.
For the first time I could put a face to the name of a woman who lived in my old house for 83 years. Your face, your name. I sank to sit on the floor to look at your serene face in the images dating back to early 1900. Your candid expression caught by the lens of a camera, looking openly right back at me opened something inside me to find you more deeply.
You were born in this house on the 6th February 1876 and Died on 4th January 1960.
In the archives at the museum, I found that your Halcrow family had lived here through the 1800’s – 1960. They were listed in the 1888 valuation roll of the Symbister Estate, Whalsay, partly owned by the Laird, William Arthur Bruce (In 1888, John Halcrow, your Father) tenant, paid a yearly rent of £4, 10 Shillings for croft number 7. You would have been twelve years old (registered as knitter). The whole family are on the census of 1881 and ‘Susanna’ is listed as being five years old – there were seven people living in this small house at that time – Thomas Halcrow aged 86, Barbara Halcrow aged 83 (your grandparents), John Halcrow aged 40 and Ann Halcrow aged 41 (your parents) John aged nine, you aged five and a boy named John Brown aged 13, but you will already know this. Seven people living in this small two bedroomed house. Afterwards, I looked at records from 1838 and found your family, here, in Upperton.
In the grave yard at Levenwick cemetery, you lie on your own next to your parents and brothers. Your head is against the sea and in May, you rest above a bank carpeted in pale lemon primroses. I wonder if you are lonely, or if you are free.
Over the months after arriving, I became obsessed with you and wrote thoughts that occurred to me about you, on scraps of paper. These papers began to litter the house. I connected with you through a field of built environment in the house, photographs, your old pottery, the view from the sitting room window and eight sessions in the Shetland Museum archive which revealed the legal documents relating to some of the most notable social changes in Shetland between the 1880’s and mid 1950’s. The *Register of the Sasines, recorded the sale of the house from Laird to local in 1923, valuation rolls of rent paid for three generations of the Halcrow family for over 100 years are traceable, the Napier Commission registered the croft and detailed their calculated rental value and reduction of rents for Shetland crofters and the legal rights for tenants, the Small Holding Act, and I found the registered wills of your brother and finally your own, which gave me an insight into over one hundred years of three generations of Halcrow life within this old house. To the very end, with your serene looking gaze of steady calm and with a glint in your eyes, you put everything in order to the very last moment – crossing every t and dotting ever i. All of your wishes are written clearly in the directions of your will.
But, how am I to find out about you – what you thought and felt and how you lived? The neighbours reveal little.
So, I turn to the physical things to look at our lives carried out in the same place – the same stone walls of a house built so long ago – with no record of its beginning, how the breeze moves through the house through its open doors, the sound of the wooden doors and their opening and closing then there is the view – a view that has changed every single day of every single year but it is the same frame from which you looked and I now look out of at the changing world.
Your artifacts have been returned to the house – some pitchers, jugs, vases, plates, bowls. Before mixing them on the shelves with my own plates and jugs, I turn them around and around to connect with a life before and then there is the biggest connection of all – that you were and I am single women, living a life and paying the bills on our own in an old stone house facing the sea. Did you talk to Ralph, the dog, as I talk with Tiggy and Alfie?
I wonder about the touch upon things, the patina laid down by years of paint, of opening and closing the door, of turning door knobs, of opening and closing windows.
Finding you is like the moment I removed a damp layer of wallpaper in one gentle pull upwards, in an old abandoned derelict Shetland croft house, to reveal a perfect hand printed layer of pre 1950’s paper with wildflowers printed up it. Then, in one more pull that strip of hand printed wallpaper also came off the wall completely intact. I folded the paper and placed it under my jumper, its dampness pressed against the skin of my belly. I thought that if I were to paste the top layer of wall paper back over the void, then no one would know what had been before. No one would know what had been removed from underneath the top layer. It was as if it had never existed.
Finding you IS like finding old beautiful handprinted wallpaper lying beneath layers of less attractive paper. Then peeling it off in sections and placing it under my jumper for safety. Susan, you are under my jumper, next to my skin.
I lift the pewter lid of your old Victorian salt ware jug to look inside. Revealing, peeling, pasting, painting, lifting, closing, opening things in the house, as generations have done so before me. I paint over what has been on the walls and doors. I sit quietly to look at the layers of layers, like the quiet man who mediates first thing in the morning, stripping away layers of noise to his core, before all else happens in the day.
I spoke to Marylyn, who, as a 10-year-old child, moved in to this house with her family. It was the year you died. She told me of a wash stand in each bedroom and jugs and bowls, a sink at the bottom of the stairs and a radio on a dresser in the front room. These were your things left behind. I can picture them now. She told me that her and her brother slid down the green linoleum on the stairs and they telephoned their cousins in the house behind by joining two cans with a long piece of string and shouting out the back window in the north bedroom. I can hear their laughter now. Children in the house for the first time in over 60 years.
But, I wonder, who cares for our loved things?
The above words are from the beginning of my memoir which was never published. I did have an agent but she couldn’t get a publisher interested
While I lived in Shetland, I designed many hats and then branched out to my first jumper – The Dear Susan, which was supported by a VACMA award – Visual Arts, Creative Makers from Creative Scotland. The award bought me time to create and the Dear Susan jumper came out of that creation.
The Dear Susan Jumper, was released in July 2021 and had a 13 page story included about the woman that the jumper was named after
Susan Halcrow would have been one exemplary woman – crofter, single, attractive. She was alive through so many huge social changes in Shetland and she knew her rights. She lived in the houses I bought for 83 years.
After I designed the Dear Susan jumper in 2ply and in many sizes – I knitted a very quick, easy Aran, Dear Susan. which was finally published in December 2021. It was designed with love and enriched with the winds and rains of Shetland.
Looking back, I am proud of these two designs and the story behind them.
If you would like to knit either of these jumpers, you do get a 13 page story about my life in Shetland, with it.
Surprisingly, yesterday, someone bought my east to knit, Aran , Dear Susan, Jumper pattern. I made this when I lived in Shetland and the entire piece is dedicated to the woman that lived in the house that I bought.
This is a beautiful, quick, easy knit yoke pullover, knitted in Aran weight yarn. It is entirely inspired from my living in Shetland with the landscape, the sea, the weather, the house I bought – and is a letter to Susan Halcrow, a woman that lived in the same house from 1876 to 1960. ‘Dear Susan’
The pattern (which is here) has a 12 page letter/story dedicated to her which is where the name of the pattern comes from
I originally knitted this pullover in spindrift yarn in the summer of 2021 but this jumper / easy pullover, has been knitted for Winter in Aran weight and is a fun, quick easy knit.
It is one size and fits many people. You can lengthen the body if you require.
It is knitted using 4mm (US6) circular needles and 2:75mm (US2) for the sleeve cuffs. It has been knitted by 4 test knitters – from a complete beginner to very experienced. Some of the test knitters went rogue with their yarn choices and the outcomes are lovely.
You can also make it a little larger by using 5mm needles – as one test knitter did.
Yarn:- Jamieson’s of Shetland Aran weight Heather yarn.
My test knitters used lots of different yarns and you will see this in the projects. You can try your Aran wight stash.
There are coloured charts, photos to explain how to do some of the stages and indepth fully written pattern. (23 pages in all to this pattern) 9 pages for the pattern –
Additional, to the pattern is a 12 page story/ letter dedicated to Susan Halcrow – Dear Susan,
here is an extract from the end of the letter after many months of research and living in the house …
(May 2021) Dear Susan – friend – may I call you friend?
I imagine you looking out of the South Bedroom window as I now do. The early spring evening light is illuminating the edge of the land, holding back the blue, blue sea. Would you have lit a fire in hearth in this bedroom beside you? I can see you putting the animals to bed – the cow in the barn (now derelict) the sheep in the field (now overgrown) or letting them out on the first clear break after 5 days of blizzards, arctic ice and gale force winds? Would you have smiled at the sudden calmness after such elemental ferocity as I now do?
Everything inside the house has possibly changed since you left in 1960 – except the floors, the doors and the view and maybe the sounds of the birds. The nature and intensity of this ever-changing view through the window is both of ours – both yours and mine.
Susan ….
This is not just a pattern but a true testament to a beautiful woman who lived a very long life in a beautiful house facing the sea with harsh weather, managing on her own and living a full life. It is a pattern of love and integrity. ’Dear Susan’ in Aran weight is a great winter pullover entirely inspired by life in Shetland.
Grateful thanks to my test knitters for the Aran jumper – Judi Hurst, Janet Benjafield, Cheryl De Ville and Tracie Bailey.
The owl hoots to his mate every morning around this time at 6 am. Sometimes he calls from within the garden or from behind the house over the road but always, the owl has the same call. Within seconds, the response comes. I like to think that the two callers are mates but I don’t know anything about owls except that their calling is something that I love to hear before any other nameable sound, when I wake.
Yesterday, I started collecting leaves, without having a prior plan. It is just that when I come across fallen leaves of deep beauty, they were too hard to leave behind on the city street. The varying red leaves covered the cobbles in the city centre, by the Peace Gardens. I don’t know what species of leaves they are, but I collected a bag full with an aim to sew the leaves. It’s a spontaneous idea, responding to the season of falling leaves, and this is why I find myself here, sitting in bed at 6:30am, in the darkness hiding where the owl is hooting and I’m beginning to sew leaves.
For the purpose, I’m using the Japanese silk thread that I bought when I was in Kyoto, a tiny needle threader and a Japanese needle in the hope of maybe that using them may evoke some tactile connection between Japan and my red Sheffield leaves
Beneath the dim light of the lamp beside the bed, I go through the leaves without priority and started to sew them together with running stitch. They’re not wet. They’re not dry. They have a moisturised feeling to the facing top side of these beautiful different leaves. I know that I could put them in some glycerine / water liquid to make them last and be more flexible but that would take me too long. The leaves, are after all, right here, right now.
What’s interesting is that I started sewing the leaves in a running stitch with a single thread but then the thread has fallen out of the needle at least three times so I think it’s best to sew using double thread with a sturdy knot at the end like my Grandad showed me how to do. That’s one finding and the other is my eyes are not as good as they were when I was younger and so I now need the help of a small wire needle threader and then the other thing is that from the age of 14, I was sewing all the time, anything even dresses and later, I did a lot more sewing when my children were young – I even made hand smoked dresses for my daughter. I was busy being a young mum but I still did a lot of sewing. I haven’t done any kind of sewing for over a decade but recently, about a month ago, I treated myself to a new sewing machine and I’m really excited to be able to start sewing again but the other thing is I realised that even if I haven’t sewn for years, that tacit knowledge comes back through the hands and through the sewing thread and how I hold the needle. My hands know how to move and hold. It’s quite hard to explain but if you give me a needle and thread, and if I could thread it easily, then I’m away and running – fearless. My hands go back to the knowledge that I have stored within the core of my developing years for over 50 years.
I’ve noticed that the leaves I’m sewing are building up in the centre because I didn’t make a plan. I recognise that I am placing them too tightly but when I move the growing sheet of leaves in my hands, it feels like fabric. They haven’t dried out to be crisp. They’re floppy.
I add more leaves to the little bundle and the owl is forgotten until tomorrow before dawn. I’m finding that I’m looking at the juxtaposition of the colours of the leaves against each other and how I look at one colour behind the other so that they stand out – just like knitting. The pack of leaves gets thicker in certain sections and my running stitches I think are too long. And, I find that the red thread is lost against the red of the leaves so I think I will go and choose a contrasting colour but at the moment I’m just experimenting.
I put a knot in the silk thread at the end and chose a scarlet colour and then I started a gentle running stitch through the leaves. The leaves are so fresh, only having fallen yesterday that they are easily manipulating in a pliable way just as if fabric. I just set off sewing around the edge of the first tiny leaf and then kept adding leaves behind and enjoyed the feeling of sewing through leaves. The act of sewing quietened me. It made me slow down because of trying to place the leaves and I just kept adding there was no order to it as such and this is the first time I’ve done it so I just wanted to experiment. I’m thinking of doing sheets of these leaves just to see how they work but also that they may work really well as a coating to my paper pots.
Another of my findings is that sometimes although all the leaves look the same some, more than others, can tear when the stitch is pulled through the leaf. After the red, I’m using an orange thread now which is more visible and shows more mistakes. I’m not sure which colour thread I prefer.
Sewing leaves is a very slow act and I’m really enjoying it without any aim or goal other than to see what happens.
When I am lost, I come out here – to the base of Stanage Edge where the millstones lie. I eat breakfast and feel the gentle breath of a breeze. I can see for miles out towards Hope Valley, the stones are ancient – have been pushed and fallen, the rocks well climbed by amateurs and professionals alike and the paths well walked. I have so many creative ideas that they are bursting and I’ve stopped to a point of disconnection because I measure myself by reward – but this place, this earthly place brings me back to me, to a core that I hadforget. The stones make me care again, connect and contribute to my creative process. I cannot compete with the millions of knitting patterns pushed out into the world that are for sale, nor do I want to but I know that this Kaleidoscope pattern is a very good one.
When I meet the millstones and the old stone trough, I knit, I eat, drink tea and I am grateful for my thoughts. I have had 3 ideas to put togethere with my Tree and star new sleeve and you will have to wait until I have finally made my choice.
I am heading to an artist residency at the base of Mount Fuji for the whole of December and I am working on a piece called between Silk and Paper, drawing on the Japanese concepts of Ma and Mono No Aware – You can read about it here
I’ve been working on the materiality of the pieces
But for now, I am very much enjoying my new knitted jumper – you could too, use your stash, make it yours, go out into the countryside and knit
This morning, I posted on Instagram, a question to myself and anyone else who wanted to answer.
Here is the post
Dear Friends, For so much of my life, my purpose was clear: raising children, working hard – even from the time I was working in a chip shop at the age of twelve, paying every bill, standing on my own two feet. My days were filled with responsibility, with caring for others, with the thought of always moving forward.
Now, at sixty-two, I find myself asking a new question: can my purpose be me? I was talking to a friend yesterday about giving up work. He said but I need purpose. My work is not my purpose. So, now I wonder Can purpose be found in quiet moments, like the way the rising sun casts a shadow across my wall? And I sit and truly enjoy that moment, Can it be in the joy of growing plants, in sewing, in designing knitting patterns, in feeding my many wild animal friends, and listening to tig’s happy purring, and in simply being here—present in the now?
I think the answer is yes. Maybe purpose doesn’t always have to be about doing more, giving more, proving more. Maybe it can be about inhabiting the life we’ve built, noticing the beauty around us, and letting ourselves rest in who we are today. I am accepting my new purpose in this new phase of my life. What do you think?
Additionally, thank you to everyone who sponsored me for the 30 day walking for a 3 mile walk every day for Cancer Research Uk. We did good for the research and I walked every day and continue to do so.
and, if you would like to support me in this new season of my life, then, please buy a knitting pattern, then you, Ravelry, paypal and I will all get a little something. xxxx
I am off to Japan again this year and beginning to allow myself to be excited. There is still so much to sort but I will write from the place I am staying. I may even do a Christmas online workshop.
I have been used to putting myself inside my knitting patterns to show how they look, but last week, I found a new way to show off the Kaleidoscope Jumper and the way in which my test knitter, Mary, knitted the Tree and star sleeve which is an add on pattern. Here are a few of the photos that I took of both jumpers and some of my clothes – I have a favourite.
I am wearing my Kaleidoscope Jumper as often as I can – last weekend to Yarndale in Skipton, where people actually recognised it. 🙂
I have started knitting a brand new Kaleidoscope Jumper using 3:5mm needles to see how big the jumper will come up when the orginal jumper, knitted using 3mm UK needles, comes up at a 44/45 inch chest. Here is the sleeve that I have been knitting but nights are dark now, so it is not so easy to knit in the evenings. Which colour do you like most?
I am, once again, using a rainbow of colours and, as you can see, I have knitted my initials into the sleeve and the year knitted. There might be 2 years knitted into this jumper 🙂 I am taking it slow – I have got a lot of projects on.
A beautiful Autumn morning – the sky was deep pink ahead of the sun rising. It is not cold but a nip touches my cheeks.
I am experimenting outside where the crows are crawing, with Japanese Kimono silk that I bought from the flea market in Kyoto on Christmas day 2023.
The kimono is of brown silk with plumb blossom flowers, lined in scarlet silk with cranes and chrysanthemum in the weave.
It is 7:45am. A man, over the road, is sweeping leaves from around his house with a yard brush. The sound of brushing takes me back to when I lived in China and all I could hear every early morning, was the sound of sturdy bristles sweeping – sweeping rubbish, or dust, or leaves or anything before the honking sound of horns started. Brushing in the hutongs, is a sound that is so deep inside me that I had forgotten it. But here it is, resurrected over the road – not a leaf blower to be heard.
This morning, I am working on my piece called ‘ Between Paper and Silk, and I have again become excited about the kimono fabrics that I bought in Kyoto. It is a pure joy to look at the patterns in the fabric, like water marks of cranes in scarlet.
But, when I apply the glue and water to the scarlet fabric, I think it will wash away the cranes but they are still visible so the fabric is woven. I am learning the materials and how they react to water and shifting light. When I was in Kyoto, Maki San, said that you cannot wash the old kimonos which is why people don’t really want them. I now see 2 reasons why you wouldn’t was a kimono. 1. The colours do run. They are not moder dyes that are set and 2. The pattern that you see dancing in the fabric may be water marks and not weave. Having said all that, the scarlet silk is holding its cranes and chrysanthemums inside.
Here is my progress. Paper Rice bowl. And Cyanotype flower tea pot.
I’m bringing together all of the tools of my crafts
I wanted to share with you, something that I have been quietly working on alongside my knitting designs,
I have been building a new body of work titled ‘Between Paper and Silk’, rooted in the two Japanese concepts of Ma (間)—the space between things—and Mono no aware, the gentle awareness of impermanence. I don’t begin to understand these concepts but I am building my knowledge and expressing my understanding through making. These ideas began to take shape during my time in Kyoto in December 2023/Jan 2024 and will be further explored during a one-month residency in Fujiyoshida with SARUYA Artist Residency, Japan in December 2025, where I will develop further stages of this project.
I am applying for a local Sheffield residency which will give me the perfect space and time for a continuation and deepening of that work. I will create a series of papier-mâché pots, made from my British tea pots and cups alongside vintage Japanese bowls, as a testament to both British and Japanese everyday home pottery used in everyday family life. And I will be considering the space between the time of use, who used them, how they hold stories and their tactile shapes lend to me feeling my way through these stories. I will cover these vessels with papier mache, initially using Japanese papers that I collected at the enormous flea markets in Kyoto to create objects which will then be covered in vintage Japanese kimono silk, sourced during my time in Japan to create delicate vessels considering both Japanese concepts of Ma and Mono no aware. I can also use my cyanotype prints from when I had my studio at Bloc. But the fabric of the silk will enable me to embroider a into it and some of the stitches will hold the pots together, symbolising repair, connection, and the delicate tension between fragility / resilience and home life.
Kyoto Flea market
This new work builds on themes explored in my previous piece, ‘I Cannot Reach You, which was exhibited at Farfield Mill and Frontier Gallery both in 2025. Those installations incorporated my hand knitted textiles and archival photographs to reflect on the emotional and physical distance between sisters, drawing on my story of memory, identity, and silence between siblings. It was a deeply personal exploration of Ma, using garments and imagery to express the spaces between people and the quiet weight of what remains unsaid. While ‘ I Cannot Reach You’ was rooted in knitting, ‘Between Paper and Silk’ moves into new material territory—paper, silk, family pottery, and embroidery —while continuing to explore the emotional resonance of absence and connection.
I cannot reach you
If I am lucky enough to be accepted on the residency in Sheffield next year, the studio space will become a contemplative evolving installation, where the paper tea pots, bowls and cups are hung and arranged with intentional gaps, allowing the voids between them to become part of the narrative. Torn paper from Kimono packaging will be layered into the papier mache, evoking the beauty of incompleteness and paper vessels of impermanence. The Testing Ground spatial arrangement will reflect Ma, inviting viewers to consider not just the objects, but the spaces between them.
Here is my current work in progress. It is may family Burleigh Tea pot. It has 2 cracks in it. I have covered it in 4 layers of paper before testing the cyanotype paper over the top. But, I think that silk pots will be more tactile and hole more stories. Stories of the family pottery and of the vintage silk from Kimonos.
For the last couple of weeks, I have had some very hurtful, negative, comments about my latest knitting design, from women on social media and in groups – often with multiple exclamation marks about their oppinion about my Kaleidoscope pattern not being size inclusive.
My design was made for me, lovingly and creatively. It took 4 months to knit and design and write, alter, chart, photograph, teach the test knitter and promote the pattern. I put the pattern out honestly, with care and great attention to detail yet I have been constantly hammered about the pattern not being size inclusive because it’s one size up to 44 chest.
To make it every size in this pattern, would be a completely new pattern for each size and a test knit also. It is made up of 44 stitch repeat so to make it work, it would either go up or down in increments of 44 stitches which affects the alignment, where the V neck sits, the exgtra decreases on the armpits and shoulders and then the size of the sleeve would alter each time to fit. This is not just a quick adjustment, each size would be a completely new pattern and test knit. Size inclusive is not a law. It is a design choice if that cannot happen. It would take 18 months to write 4 patterns and do 4 test knits.
But my pattern is just one person’s creative vision – Mine. It is, however, inclusive for boys and my friend shows that in the photo taken this afternoon. It’s a beautiful knit and I’m stopped all the time when I wear it – A little like, ‘that’s a nice puppy’, kinda stopping to stroke and touch.
The negative comments and exclamation marks that I have received this past two weeks have not knocked my confidence in this piece but has made me want to stop sharing, stop teaching online colour work skills and stop designing – so, I put a notice to reflec this on a Stranded Knits facebook group and we broke facebook posts in 10 minutes with over 100 positive comments (just one little snidey comment)
The post that I put on the Facebook group this afternoon re balanced me. The women were supportive and really understood how social media forums are a space for anyone to say anything they like but would not say in a conversation face to face. They were all calm and helpful because I said that I would not answer any negative comments. It went wild. Over 60 positive comments and my responses in about 10 minutes until FB stopped after the 100th.
here are a few of the comments:-
1 Size inclusivity really matters. But as someone who advocates for consumer rights, I find it’s most productive to focus our advocacy on major brands and big-name designers. People may not understand that for indie designers, scaling up complex patterns like this is indeed similar to writing a new pattern in each size—meaning it’s just not feasible. I’m sorry that as an indie designer with just a couple jumper patterns available, you’ve been caught up in these dynamics—but I hope you also understand the advocates’ perspectives and feelings. It’s such a challenging systemic issue.
2 I find that designing sweaters and publishing good patterns is just not worth my time. The return (number of patterns sold) vs. the investment (knit first test, find and supervise test knitters, write pattern, revise pattern, photograph item) is just not workable. Socks are a better return for me as far as writing patterns. I knit sweaters for myself (size 3X) or my loved ones occasionally.
I agree. The wool for me and the test knitter was £200 to cover everything that’s without all the hundreds and hundreds of hours
3 It gets a bit exhausting when the dreamer gets questioned on why wasn’t it the dream for everyone?
I get for plain patterns why some get ouchy that it’s not in many sizes, but for cable work, stranded work: it’s a lot of math and a lot of testing and even then is NOT a guarantee that your construction “works” on a body, even if it matches the inches. Hang and drape and look are very subjective. And then you, the designer, is who gets yelled at because they did make it in size 84” and they spent “a lot of time and a lot of money on this amount of yarn” and then the sleeve didn’t set right “on them”.
People as a whole: if ANY knit pattern doesn’t suit YOU, just edit it. Tinker with it. Frog it and start again. And by the time you’ve redone your sweater five times to make it work “for you” realize the designer would’ve had to do “that” a million fold, if they wanted to make the pattern include every conceivable body. You’re basically expecting a masterclass in custom knitting fitting, for an $8 pattern.
In all, there were too many comments and we were not allowed to add any more – they were automatically turned off.
Here is a beautiful Shetland comment from a lady who also designs –
Your hard work. Your pattern. Your design publication. Your artist license Folk can choose tae enjoy, support & purchase…or scroll on. Dinna pay da moaners (trolls) ony heed & dinna respond tae dem. I received a message fae some een telling me I didna hay tae write in Shetland dialect – as du can see, I stopped, joost fir dem…nah
Dinna stop being YOU Tracey Doxey and keep lovin’ whit you create
I felt stronger after the supportive comments and I will not stop being me but this post, I think, is about the hurt that women cause women on social media when they do not have an informed opinion – it is a dig.
here is the pattern. and yes, the additional sleeve is an extra pattern because it is a design in itself – and here also is the test knit image with the Tree and Star Sleeves.
tracey doxey 