We LOVE Color

At Fuzzy Goat, it's no secret that we love to knit with rich colors, and often knit with color combos that you all wouldn't naturally think of. We love hearing that we inspire you. When we first opened we sold a lot of grey and neutrals and over time we saw the fun colors we and our dyers love taking over as you all got more comfortable with color. 

We do get asked a lot about which color is best. We have a few tips:

1. Listen for the "OOOOO" The answer I always give is "which one are you most excited about?" If that doesn't get a definitive answer, the next thing that I do is wait for the "OOOOO". The "OOOO" is universally, I have found, the sound that you make when a color or color combination really resonates with you.
2. Interview colors We like to get out our wooden trays when you are the shop looking for color and put the contenders in the tray. That sort of corrals the colors away from everything else so that you can focus in. As we take colors in and out of the tray, we wait for the OOOO. The, "EH, that's OK" isn't going to cut it. You don't need to settle for good enough when looking for the best color.
   I'll bet you were hoping I was going to say something more formulaic, like this green always goes with this orange (colors I like to put together). But the truth is, your eye knows what is pleasing more than you give yourself credit for. My mom was an amazing quilter and was known for her use of color, she would put some colors together and step back and think about it. She was "interviewing them" for her project.
3. Look at undertones A blue red will play better with a blue purple and an orange red will. This is something you can get better at by looking at color wheels.
4. Separate Out a Few Strands Unless you are working a color block design, you will not have a full chunk of one color and then another. Separate out a few strands and lay those next to each other in an alternating line up to see what you think. I used a lovely speckled Ivory as a one row stripe, it looked so great next to the variegated green. It turns out I could have used a plain ivory as with just one row, you really didn't see the speckle (though it may not have been as much fun to knit with, so I'm not sorry).
5. Swatch it You can swatch up your color ideas to do a deep dive "interview" (we're sure you know that you don't need to cut your swatch, but it bears repeating). Sometimes I like to also color it out with colored pencils. I also get great ideas looking at the color choices on Ravelry. There are times when what I thought a color choice would look great, someone else did too! But when I look at it in a finished project on Ravelry I see that wasn't what I had in mind.
6. Make New Friends I always go for the color and will match up different dyers in the same project. I think of it as my favorite dyers having a play date. I do keep them the same weight and mostly the same fiber content. But I will use a single ply with a plied yarn, a merino/nylon blend with a merino/silk blend. I'll pay close attention to the fiber content when it comes to blocking the finished project and likely just wet spray it.
7. Collect Inspiration Go beyond knitting projects and collect photos of color combos that you love from nature, design, art, and more

Try out different colors, go for the "OOOOO"!

Some of our color resources 

I was going to link to a few yarns to try, but truthfully the whole shop is filled with color for you to try!