My friend Andrea often asks me to explain how I choose my colors, and I honestly have no clue as how to answer the question in a way that is at all comprehensible, but today, I had occasion to develop this visual tutorial about one approach I sometimes take to choosing colors.
I need to be honest and start by stating this truth: I have a shamefully large yarn stash, and no, I won’t ever show a picture because I don’t want the photo used to illustrate several deadly sins all at once.
But because I have a shamefully large stash, it is usually pretty easy for me to find “just the right color,” so today, when I selected this pair of socks as my color inspiration for some new boho hearts:
I was very quickly able to find four colors of yarn I had on hand that came very close to the colors used in the socks I was wearing:
From top to bottom they are: Red Heart Super Saver magenta (discontinued, but I have a stash of it I bought to see me through these difficult magenta-less times), Red Heart Super Saver claret, Red Heart Super Saver aran, and Caron United fresh green.
With my colors chosen, I then had to decide which colors to use where. There are, as it happens, 24 possible permutations if you don’t repeat any of the colors (you can check out this awesome permutation calculator), but I had no intention of making two dozen hearts in the same colors, so I decided to make just two.
After ruminating about which two colors to start with, I settled on the fresh green and magenta:
with the two heart centers crocheted and ends woven in, I continued my crochet journey and crocheted the second round of each boho heart-to-be:
Then, after weaving in and trimming ends, I was ready for the third and final round of this particular crochet adventure:
which gave me two completed boho hearts that coordinated perfectly with my socks:
So when I am stuck, or when I just don’t feel like making all of the color decisions required when working from a stash as large as mine is, I find it helpful to turn to an object that has colors I like in it and that I find pleasing on some level, and then I crochet as I always do: one stitch at a time.
