Pleasantly Generic and Useful

My grandniece Cauliflower is to turn 15 this summer, and as always, her birthday will be marked by a sweater from yours truly.  

Cauliflower is probably physically full-grown now, and wears a women's size small in sweaters and tops. Surreal as I find it to be the great-aunt of a grandniece just three years away from becoming an adult, it does open up the sweater pattern options, there being far more patterns for women than there are for children or tweens. But I didn't spend long browsing. I decided that since her sweater from last year was a solid colour and a worsted, that this sweater would be patterned and either DK or fingering, I looked through the knitting patterns I have saved to my Pinterest board, and I soon came across the one you see above, which is the Gardengate pattern, designed by Jennifer Steingass. 

For yarn, I purchased 450 grams of Sandnes Garn Sisu in Blue for the main colour, and 100 gram skein of Lang Yarns Super Soxx Silk for the contrast colour. The colours should look good on Cauliflower, who has light brown hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. 

The finished sweater, which I knitted up exactly as specified by the pattern in a size 36. The colours and the pattern are pretty, but I'm not too thrilled with the proportions of this sweater. The yoke is very deep and the sleeves look too long. I just hope it doesn't sit too poorly on Cauliflower. 

I returned two skeins of the blue yarn, and had just 13 grams of the blue and 57 grams of the variegated contrast colour left, for a stash increase of 70 grams. 

As for the little extra trinkets that I like to include when giving one of my grandnieces or grandnephews a piece of homemade clothing, I purchased a little notebook and pen and some hand lotion from Dollarama. I don't know what Cauliflower's tastes are, and at 50 I am probably hopelessly out of touch with what teenaged girls like these days, so I stuck with pleasantly generic and useful.