DIY: Rainbow Cardi by Yelena M. Dasher

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The Rainbow Cardi by Yelena M. Dasher is from the book Mini Skein Knits: 25 Knitting Patterns Using Small Skeins and Leftovers. I had borrowed the book from our library at least three times before, oohing and ahhing over the many beautiful, colourful patterns. This pattern jumped out at me, not just because I love knitting sweaters and cardigans, but because it was a way to use colour when I didn’t necessarily have enough yellow yarn for a whole sweater.

The Rainbow Cardi is a top-down, raglan sleeved cardigan knit in one piece. First you knit the body with some waist shaping, adding in the four-row stripes any way you want. I chose six colours in this yellow colourway gradient. The pattern includes some instructions for how many colours to use, and my size called for 12 colours. As I only had six shades of yellow, I knit the yellows from darkest to light to dark again.

I used a fingering weight six mini-skein gradient from Sweet Paprika Designs. Crescendo includes six 87-yard mini-skeins of hand dyed yarn. Obviously I had to knit this in the yellow gradient! As the main colour, I chose Molto Crescendo in the Slate, also from Sweet Paprika Designs. Molto Crescendo is a regular size skein of the same base as Crescendo, so you can use it to complement the gradient. The yarn is a fingering weight 100% superwash merino. The resulting sweater is really soft and nicely warm. However, it’s not as warm as some of my heavier sweaters, so I think I’ll get a lot of wear out of it this autumn!

I spent a lot of time deciding if I wanted to knit the darker yellows at the top and bottom or in the middle. Since the body of the cardigan uses more yarn than the raglan shoulders, I found I ran out of the paler yellow shades. Thankfully, I had another Crescendo set in my stash!

I used 3.5 mm needles after getting gauge. Actually, I had first knit a swatch using 3.0 mm needles and loved the dense fabric, but then used larger needles to match the pattern gauge.

I found the shaping of the front neckline a little strange. As you can see in the below photo, the raglan shaping around the shoulders starts as a standard rectangle (front, sleeve, back, sleeve, front) before working decreases for that wide v-neck. My size included more raglan shaping before working the front neckline decreases. This results in little ‘flaps’ at the collar instead of a smooth decrease. This shape isn’t as apparent on the smaller sizes, so I wonder if it is a grading error.

The pattern included instructions to make five buttonholes. After deliberating a bit, I decided to make six buttonholes but make slightly closer together. As a result, I’ll have less gaping between the buttons when I wear the cardigan. Instead of knitting three rib repeats between the buttonholes, I knit four. This resulted in nicely fitting six buttonholes in the buttonband.

After buying some gorgeous vintage glass buttons for my Vianne Cardigan, I thought about buying more from the Workroom for this cardigan. However, once rummaging through my button stash, I found these perfect matte yellow buttons that matched my cardigan perfectly! Not only did I have enough, but the yellow adds some fun to the cardigan. I believe I bought a small bag of these at the Textile Museum of Canada stash sale. My other button options were either plain grey or black.

I cast on the Rainbow Cardi on 27 July 2023, and was able to finish 9 September. Not bad for a long-sleeve, fingering-weight cardigan!

Get the pattern from Mini Skein Knits here.

I love my yellow Rainbow Cardi. Check out my other yellow sweaters here:

• Riddari
• yellow Featherweight Cardigan
• Lyngen Sweater
• Deren Cardigan
• yellow lopapeysa from Iceland
• Buttercup Chambray Jacket
• Kenji’s Remi Cardigan
• Vianne Cardigan