Practical Color Picking Tips for Knitting Color-work, How to Find Beautiful Color Combinations 

I like Stephen West's color combinations. Every time he introduces a new knit along, he has amazing color combos from amazing dyers put together.

I appreciate the ideas about your closet. We don’t talk about using colors you want to WEAR enough when we talk about colors in knitting. Yes they need to be things you are excited to make, but they also need to be colors you or the recipients will want to wear/use… if you’d never wear a neon colored sweater, maybe think before you knit one for yourself!

What a beautiful idea about looking at birds! Love it! 💕

When I am in a Home Depot or hardware store, I often stop by the paint section and grab any paint swatches that catch my eye. I love how Barbara has used science fiction and space as an inspiration for some of her own designs and color combinations, like the marvelous Mars rovers shawls that look like the tire tracks of the vehicles in the martian sand 🥰

I love your array of knitting advice videos- colour picking!! This is so valuable to a newbie knitter with limited budget. Gotta wear everything they make 😅

I go into material and yarn stores and take photos of the things I like. I’m a spinner and dye my own yarn, and this method gives me some inspiration.

Those are great reminders that color inspiration is out there and can be captured for review. I find achieving a pleasing proportion or percentage of color is a challenge. Also, it’s impressive to see texture or stitch changes in those color changes tell a story like stratification in geology. I admire knitters who have achieved that in their patterns.

I have never been good at putting colors together. Thank you for the terrific suggestion of borrowing color combinations from other people whose profession it is to put colors together effectively! The first thought that came to my mind were some of the scenes from the 2009 Emma mini-series. I've watched it a time or two, and among the many things I so enjoy about it are the wardrobe and set design colors. They "speak" to me! :)

This is so helpful! I usually look at other projects on Ravelry to figure out colour combos, but have never thought to look at other types of colour inspiration photos.

OMG!!! THIS WAS WONDERFUL! THANK YOU! GREAT IDEAS

Great tips. I have a hard time deciding colors of yarn to knit.

Also take a photo in back and white to make sure your colors have enough contrast for your colorwork to show

What great advice! You said it in such a way that I can retain the suggestions. Thank you so much. I looked up and saw my draperies which I love. I’ll take a photo for sure.

Such good ideas, I wonder sometimes what people are thinking when they put some colors together. I like to get a pop color that brings other colors together especially if the are not too bright. Thank you so much for additional places to look for ideas to make color more interesting.

Totally with you on Georgia O'Keeffe

Great podcast ☕️🧶☺️

a lot of speciality yarn shops have yarn kits that contain color combos.....a lot of those kits have gorgeous combos, just make sure the kit contains the yardage you need for your project because many of those kits were formulated for other patterns in mind

Barbara, great advice!

To tell if I have an attachment to the color versus the content, I squint a little to get the picture fuzzy (or just take off my glasses) and see if I still have the reaction to the colors that look like fuzzy blobs or brush swaths of color with no clear image. Always a thought.....then again, I have needed glasses over 3/4 of my life so I have a lot of experience with color blobs.... lol

Wonderful suggestions, thank you!

Wonderful color video. I love instrgram for ideas

I have a Russian cashmere style shawl, I wear it all the time get a lot of compliments but it circles around a lot of brownish colors and I get a bit bored of it, it has however a few specs of burgundy and light blue on a corn hello background and I thought of making myself a capsule wardrobe with all of the colors takzn from that shawl so that I have a cohesive yet broad palette. I have in mind to knit myself a lopapeysa, not because I like the style but because I love doing stranded color work and I love the feeling of look wool and I love the knitting of those as a concept and I figured I might take that shawl and reverse the order of importance of the colors, that way it looks like a completely different palette despite using the exact same shades I also have a few works of art (mainly Leyendecker 's ads) that I love the vibe of and I want to get inspired from, maybe looking at their color palette would be a nice way to ease into that Edit: uuuh oops I just got an idea : I looked at a file I saved on Pinterest and there was this opal themed portrait on a dark background, and I came across a jumper last year of a woman who knitted a strand of fine black mohair with her light yarn to give it a haze so now I want to knit myself in either worsted/alpaca/silk/synthetic/mérinos shiny yarn with a faint color work in muted pastels mixed with a strand of either polar white , uranium green or midnight blue mohair yarn to give it a haze

Go into a yarn store. Pick 1 yarn that you have absolutely adore. Then take it with you around the store and hold it up to other yarns until you find the combination you love.

My husband works in theater so has a really good colour sense and had to study colour theory so I show him the pattern and a picture of the recipient and let him go nuts...he's never been wrong even when I'm no that looks horrible...

Great tips about always keeping your eyes open, not just for finding great color combos, but also because it helps to draw focus to how much color enriches our lives, and affects our mental and emotional wellbeing. It's funny that we can love a shade of one color, like a favorite green, but just slightly alter it with a tiny bit more yellow or blue, and the appeal diminishes. Or, deepen the saturation or tone, and we feel it's to strong; less saturation or a lighter tone, and we feel it's washed out. I can look at two dye lots of the same solid color, see just the tiniest difference, and I'll almost immediately prefer the one that there isn't enough of for my project.

Hi Barbara...I look everywhere for color motivation. Also, a use a color wheel...mostly when I am quilt making. I also use my feelings...how I feel about particular color combo. One day, I saw an extremely beautiful butterfly. Its color combo was used in a project. Ok, I have a question. What happened ref you knitting your first sweater? I must have missed that segment. Thanks so much.

There are apps you can create a palate from a favorite photo

I don’t know how long ago it was but you had a video about choosing colour ways and you showed us a website with inspiration for mixing different complimentary and analogues etc it was really helpful but I can’t seem to find it, are you able to link me to it at all?

Also digital color wheel app free on line

Great suggestions what about knitting colors that are good with your skin and hair example Iam fair color hazel eyes can't wear beige but winter white works my daughter auburn hair olive skin jewel teal army green, mustard or burnt orange she looks poor in red I do not get it

Where can we buy the maneki neko pink T-shirts?