Yellow Tambourine

We all live in a yellow tambourine, a yellow tambourine, a yellow tambourine…

Despite the fact that I haven’t been around much on this blog (or on the podcast – eek, I’ll address that another time), I have actually been knitting, sewing, and doing all manner of crafty things. So, behold, a finished cardigan!

This is the Tambourine cardigan by Julie Farwell-Clay, published in the Spring 2015 edition of PomPom Quarterly. Typically I have a policy of avoiding magazine subscriptions since I hate building up clutter (I do that without any help, thank you very much), but after realizing that I was just buying each edition as it came out, I caved and purchased a subscription earlier this year. If memory serves, I actually purchased this edition at the Beehive Wool Shop in Victoria, BC, while on a somewhat ill-fated vacation (a story for another time, but suffice it to say that we had no idea how long the ferry trips would take – oops, live and learn). Lovely, lovely shop. I’m about to dig into some yarn that I purchased there as well.

This is the first time I’ve attached a grosgrain ribbon to the buttonband, and although in a perfect world I would have preferred an actual color match, I think the contrast looks ok. I did find some better color matches, but they were polyester, and I much prefer this 100% rayon. Most likely there are better approaches to this, but all I did was run a line of basting stitches down the center of each one – after matching up the tambourines on the front and making sure the bands were the same length – and then stitched as close to each edge as possible. I considered handstitching, and then decided I wasn’t in the mood.

Since the yarn I used, Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, is really more of a sport weight, I had to make some adjustments to the pattern to account for the different gauge, but nothing too major. I did add some overall length since cropped cardigans tend to make my shoulders look enormous, and shortened the amount of twisted rib at the bottom and cuffs, only because it’s somewhat hard on my hands, and this yarn wasn’t particularly elastic.

Despite being a little concerned with the yarn when I first started knitting, I eventually found a tension that worked for me and the finished sweater is light, with nice structure, plus I love the slightly nubby, heathery look. It could be a new favorite.

And, here’s a lovely shot, minus the top of my head. It’s pretty hard to take photos of yourself when you don’t have your remote, so I’m cool with how these turned out, but the running back and forth made most of my poses slightly hilarious (nope, you don’t get to see those photos), but this awkward shrugging position actually looks ok! Except I’m missing a large chunk of my head. You can’t have it all.