Sweater No. 10

My grandnephew Bug celebrated his tenth birthday this summer, and of course there had to be a sweater made to mark the occasion... the tenth I have made him in his life.

When I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern for a ten-year-old Canadian boy, I quickly narrowed the search down to this one, which is the 452 Round Neck Zip Sweater, from Bergère de France. It's a free pattern. It's more contemporary in style than the patterns I usually go for, but I thought it rather sharp, and it looked so good in the sample shot that I decided to replicate its colour palette rather than selecting one myself, something I don't often do. The one thing I didn't like about the design was the zipper, which I thought looked rather crude, so I decided I would make Bug's version with a buttoned placket.

Once I'd selected the pattern, I searched my DK stash box to see if I had some of the contrast colours on hand. I did indeed have more than sufficient amounts red, cream, and charcoal yarn on hand that would do. I had no black (I never wear black and seldom work with it, even when making gifts), and I had to buy the main colour yarn. From Romni Wools in Toronto, I purchased 300 grams of Estelle Double Knit in shade Q65503, which I would describe as a sort of slate gray, and 50 grams of Drops Karisma Uni Colour in shade 05, which I would describe as black. And I also bought a card of three buttons from Fabricland.    

Here's the finished item, in a size 10. This was quite a straightforward knit, even with the added complication of my having to wing the button placket modification. The body pieces are just stockinette, and the sleeves are mostly just a simple stripe pattern with the chevrons added in duplicate stitch.  

I did run into one snag in that I had not enough gray yarn for this project. I used a little more than the designer intended to do the placket, of course, but I wouldn't have had enough even if I had made the sweater with a zipper as the pattern directed. And I needed just 10 grams of the extra 100 gram skein I had to buy, sigh. To make this sweater, I used 10 grams of charcoal yarn, 10 grams of cream, and 10 grams of red that all came from my stash. I had 90 grams of the new gray yarn and 30 grams of the new black yarn left, so that's a net stash increase of 90 grams for this project. 

As for the rest of Bug's gift, I bought him a solarium kit from Dollarama. He'll be assembling and painting it himself, which he should enjoy, and it might be a fun way for him to learn the names and positions of the planets. Bug loves Harry Potter, and while I refuse to buy any new Harry Potter merchandise given J.K. Rowling's rampant transphobia, when I came across a perfect condition Harry Potter notebook at a thrift shop, I decided I could buy it for him in reasonable conscience, as she won't make any money from its resale. 

I also picked out a gift bag with an outer space theme to go with the solarium kit, and then decided the gift was complete and Bug's tenth birthday had been duly marked.