How to Dye Self Striping Yarn: Handpainting a Pre-Knit Blank with KoolAid

Pre-knit blanks of yarn (machine knit tubes that can be unraveled for knitting/crocheting) are great to dye when you want to create long stretches of color. You can purchase commercially wound “sock blanks” that contain 1-2 strands of fingering weight yarn knit together to form a long tube. I created the following blank myself using a hand crank Singer Knitting Machine.

In the following tutorial, we will handpaint this knit blank with 6 different flavors of KoolAid: Cherry, Orange, Lemonade, Lemon-Lime, Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and Grape. We are painting LONG sections of the blank to end up with six stripes of color, but you can distribute the dye onto shorter sections if you want to have repeating stripes on your yarn. The color is set to the fiber in the microwave.

Video Contents Summary:
0:00 Introduction to Knit Blanks and Crank Knitting Machines
1:29 Prepping the blank for dyeing and mixing the dyes
6:26 Explanation of different ways you can get a striping pattern
7:05 Applying the KoolAid to the pre-knit sock blank
12:12 Mixing colors on the blank itself – creating transitions of color
15:55 Wrapping the yarn and heating in the microwave
19:15 Unwrapping the yarn and washing out the excess dye
20:49 The finished yarn – still in blank form
21:37 Unwinding the dyed blank into a center pull ball
22:25 Conclusion – the final center pull ball

Visit http://www.chemknits.com for free patterns and more knitting & yarn dyeing tutorials.