hand-dyed silks and silk blends
yarns and fibers

Notes

Dissecting the Color Numbers

After ten years of explaining why we don't name our colors and explaining how our system works I finally decided to write a explanation.

Below is a typical color number.

BPbl4a

Translates as Blue Purple black 4 a

The first one or two letters in the sequence are always colors. R for red, RO for red/orange, O for orange and so on around the color wheel.

If there is a bl, which stands for black, after the color designation it means black has been added to the clear color of the same wheel.

The number, in this case 4, denotes the shade of the color. Our normal procedure is to dye 4 shades, 1 through 4, a whole scale can have 12 or more, there are always those pesky little halves. You could see a BPbl4.5a for instance.

The last letter in small case is the wheel. At present, we have 6 wheels, clear a, black a, clear b, black b, clear d, and black d. C wheel is still a work in progress.

As in all rules, there are some exceptions.