shetland wool – tracey doxey

Finding Colour Confidence

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 9^th Jan and 4 left for Saturday 17^th 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

Kaleidoscope pattern update

Thank you to everyone who commented on my Instagram post on July 30^th when I asked what sleeve you would most like me to finish my jumper in, as I had already knitted the 1^st one in Trees only, not tree and star, like the body.

There were many comments to say what sleeves you’d like to see as the second one, on my latest Kaleidoscope, jumper design. To be precise, I had 166 comments and 544 likes on that post. I also added a poll on my Instagram stories to ask the same question, and below are the results for that.

So, for the first time, I actually did a real research survey to find out what you wanted. The results were really interesting.

The overall winning suggestion was that most of you just wanted Tree sleeves only in the pattern, just as I had already knitted with the first one, but a lot of you thought that I should add the alternative ‘Tree and Star sleeve chart’, to give the knitter options but some of you said that you wouldn’t pay extra for an additional sleeve pattern design even if it took me days to chart , test knit, write the pattern and instructions. This I found quite disheartening as the Kaleidoscope pattern is my most adventurous and my most perfect and I wanted to release it with 2 sleeve options but if people don’t want to recognise the work in that extra design, I have made a compromise.

I will release the Kaleidoscope jumper pattern within 2 weeks week AND I will follow up with a ‘Bolt-on’ pattern which is a chart of the alternative ‘Tree and Star sleeve, plus a Sanquhar alphabet chart for you to be able to personalise your knit with your initials and date above your cuff. This way, I will produce a beautiful pattern with the sleeves requested by the majority in my surveys. And, I will have an additional bolt on pattern with the 2^nd sleeve. The bolt on pattern has more work than a hat pattern and deserves to be recognised as a design in itself.

It’s 3 months since I started the project on 10th May. Not bad for a fast slow knit.

Please comment on what colours you’d like to see this jumper knitted on
I’m excited to bring this pattern out.

Below are a few comments from Instagram. You can follow me here on instagram for more updates and lots of photos

But, I think that the best way to find out about the pattern release, is to become a ‘friend’ of mine on ravelry, then I think you get an update when the pattern is published

Oh, I knitted the second sleeve in Trees only, and I am almost ready to graft the 2^nd sleeve into place, here is a video of the graft after I took the risk of grafting the sleeve into the armpit with double yarn for strength. I am most happy. The jumper has grafted shoulders, the sleeves expertly grafted into the armpit, a mitred V neck and the option of 2 different sleeve patterns plus a Sanquhar alphabet to knit your initials and the year into the design. I hope that you will knit it and make it personal to you.

My test knitter is knitting Tree and Star sleeves to match the body AND, I will also knit a Tree and Star sleeve with my initials and the year knitted into the work too. My test knit will be yellows and greens.

Let me know what you think in comments. Join me on Instagram to get more frequent updates and join as a friend in Ravelry to hear when the pattern comes out first.

Also, if you do want to, there is still the Tree and Star hat pattern to knit before the jumper, to get used to the motif, or after, to have as a twin set. I can’t wait to wear mine.

Just a few comments from my Instagram post asking which sleeve you would like to finish the design.

First of all: what a fantastic pattern! I love it!
😍😍😍 For me, I’d choose option 1, trees only. But I think I’d include both options in the pattern ❤️

Hi Tracey, I would probably knit the trees/stars option but would like to have the tree option open until I get to the sleeves in my project. And I would pay the double if that idea what it takes.

When will the jumper pattern be available? I will be in Shetland on 11-18 Aug and would love to know the amount of yarn and color codes to be able to buy yarn with me home to Denmark.

Hi Tracey! It’s a beautiful design 💙 I’m not in the position to be taking on a large project at the moment, but I’d choose Option 1. I do love symmetry. I’m not sure how many would be open to paying more for a potential 2nd sleeve option. But, if you design another sweater in the future in the same gauge, perhaps with a round/crew neck, or a cardigan

Choices! I’d probably like both sleeve designs because I’d be tempted to do one sleeve of each pattern 🧐 I like the deliberate similar but not matching!

I love the tree sleeve! As much as I’d enjoy the options I know in my heart I would still pick two tree sleeves. I’d also pay more to have the options. Could you release a second sleeve option as an add on pattern later to cover your work?

Could you sell a tree sleeve version and a tree and star only version as separate patterns, or charge a bit extra for a sleeve add-on? A tree only (including body) pattern would be great too

Trees for me as first choice ❤️❤️❤️

Trees on the second sleeve as well !

Both please Tracey

Trees only add a lovely interest.

I would love your new pattern to offer both options. Personally I think i would like the combo best but it’s a rare treat to have a choice. Keep up the good work my flower!

winner chosen. I hope that you’re all up for buying this exciting pattern

Hi! Such a gorgeous jumper! I probably would go for trees on both sleeves. The colours are amazing!! 😍😍😍

Kaleidoscope pattern details

I am almost finished knitting my new design. It has a lot of gorgeous features. – Grafted shoulders, a beautiful mitred V neck band and I have just grafted the first sleeve into the body of the armhole.

I normally knit my sleeves by picking up stitches around the arm hole then knitting down to the cuff, but the reason that I grafted the tree knitted sleeve into the arm hole, is because I knitted it in the round from the cuff up and then worked the finished sleeve into the armpit. The reason for this is because I did a swatch of the tree motifs and to get them standing the right way, (trunk at the cuff end of the knit) if I was knitting armpit down to cuff, I had to start knitting the tree from its top. This is quite an easy thing to do. But, I realised from the swatch that if I knitted the trees from the top to the trunk, starting at the arm hole down, the stitches would be upside down and that really annoyed me. Here is a swatch of what the stitches would look like if I had knitted them from the armpit. Can you see that the stitches are sitting upside down in the tree motif? And to the eye, it would look a mistake when the whole sleeve was knitted and it would really annoy me.

So, I have knitted the sleeve, in the round from the cuff up to the top and it was an absolute pleasure. Detailed images will be in the pattern of the joining seam and how it looked when finished and I will release videos on how I grafted the sleeve into the arm pit.

The question is now that I am undecided whether to do a 2nd tree sleeve, which would look harmonious and cute, or shall I knit a sleeve with the tree and star motifs from the body? Or would you prefer both options in the knitting pattern so that you can choose to knit either one design or both?

So, I am having a little ‘win the pattern post on Istagram’ Anyone who comments on my post which one they prefer will get a chance of winning the pattern when it is released.

My instagram is @traceydoxey and you can let me know your preference on the post for a chance to win.

If you would like to knit this pattern but feel a little daunted, you can start very simply with the Tree and Star hat pattern which is in the link here

I am really excited about this pattern, so much care and attention has gone into it. There will be pages of charts to help you get your motifs, V neck and armpit decreases in the right places and options – for you to choose yourself to make the design more your own.

Let me know your thoughts on the pattern and if you are hoping to knit it. here is the instagram page to join in giving your idea of what the 2nd sleeve will be