Name: Iliana

Country: USA

Message: Hello Paula,

I'm looking for either a web or printed book reference with Lanaset color recipes.  I've found a few color recipe links on your (fantastic) website, but none specific to mixing Lanaset's primary colors (plus black) into pretty purples, lavenders, camels, caramels, cinnamons, etc.

Any and all pointers most welcome!

I'm a new dyer, and dyeing mostly wool fiber and yarn.

I haven't seen any general online guides to mixing colors with the Lanaset/Telana/Sabraset dyes, but there are several useful books available.

Karren Brito's book Shibori includes a few sample formulas for specific colors on silk, as well as tips for using a Munsell color system to decide how to mix other colors. She has good advice on how to measure out and mix stock solutions.

Deb Menz's book, Color in Spinning, has been described as the best resource on learning how to mix Lanaset colors, even if spinning is not something you do. (Her book ColorWorks: The Crafter's Guide to Color provides a useful introduction to color theory, but was not useful for me since I already have a strong grounding in that.) Like Brito's book, it is widely available and easy to find through booksellers. Your local independent bookseller can order them for you if they do not have them in stock.

A more expensive two-volume set, Color by Number Basic Book and Color by Number Book 2, by Sara Lamb and Deb Menz, should truly meet all of your Lanaset color mixing reference needs, if the authors have it in stock and if you can pay $225 for each volume, which is certainly a considerable investment. From the authors' description, "Their particular usefulness is that in addition to containing actual dye formulas, the notebooks contain real samples of dyed fiber showing what the end result will look like. One-thousand-one hundred sixteen color samples to be precise. This complete guide is invaluable to experienced dyers as well as accessible to beginners. The basic book has samples of DOS ranges of 0.1 to 4 of each dye color, each dye color mixed with proportions of black and brown as well as a whole range of analogous two-color mixes in both a DOS of 1 and 0.1. It is a great reference for any level of dyer." These two books are not available from most booksellers; contact the authors through Deb Menz's web site.

Sheep Hollow Farm and Fiber produces Lanaset Rainbows, a Dyer's Reference, a notebook of 422 actual yarn samples dyed with Lanaset dyes, including the formula used to mix each color. The notebook is considerably less expensive than Deb Menz's, at $93 including shipping. It's necessary to order directly from their web site, since bookstores do not carry it. See their Sheep Hollow Lanaset Dyes page for some sample color formula cards, as well as valuable information on how too mix stock solutions, and recipes for using the dyes.

Linda Knutson, author of the essential book, Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers, also wrote a book containing actual samples of dyed wool yarn, called Shades of Wool for Lanaset Dyes, but it is long out of production and extremely difficult to find, even from bookstores that carry used books. 
 
PRO Chemical & Dye carries a color card with actual yarn samples dyed with each of the colors and mixtures of Lanaset dyes they sell (under the name Sabraset). It's worth looking at when deciding which dyes to order, but it does not include any mixes that you could make between the dyes, just the dyes as they sell them.

Aside from the very important question of color mixing, it can be worthwhile to collect more of the unmixed single-hue colors in a line of dye than just the mixing primaries of magenta, cyan, and yellow. There are individual dyes whose beauty and luminosity cannot quite be captured by mixing other dyes as primaries. Lanaset Violet B is particularly noted for its beauty, intensity, and richness. It would be useful in mixing other shades of purples and violets, as well. Also, since there is no good bright magenta in the Lanaset dye line, many dyers, including Karren Brito, combine their Lanaset dyes with an acid dye named Polar Red. Deb Menz prefers Acid Red 138. See the earlier post, "Did Lanaset once make a fuschia dye? Is there a replacement?".

Also see the following related posts and pages:
Lanaset Dyes: A Range of Reactive and Acid Dyes for Protein Fibers
Dyeing variegated wool with Lanaset dyes
Who Sells Lanaset dyes?
Help with Leveling Lanaset Dyes | community of dyers
Do you know of a supplier for Lanaset dyes in the UK?
What colors should I buy to start out with?

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