Something like fifteen years ago a co-worker of mine gave me three bags of Bouquet Sock & Sweater yarn in blue, gray, and wine. I've been working on using the yarn up ever since. So far I've made a pullover for each of my friend Christine's two sons, a sweater for Cauliflower's younger brother Bug, and a pair of gray socks for me. I also gave my mother enough of the gray yarn to make three pairs of men's socks after she told me she wanted some sock yarn to make socks for my father, and used the three yarns to crochet the Sherlock doll I made for my sister for Christmas one year. There may have been a few other little projects that I don't remember now. And yet... I had plenty left. Those three lots of yarn seem inexhaustible, or at least determined to exhaust me. In late 2025, when I was planning my 2026 knitting projects, I decided I had enough of those three yarns left to make a sweater for my grandniece Cauliflower's seventeenth birthday this summer.
I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern and soon selected the pattern you see above, which is Belleville by Christina Danaee. It's so nicely detailed with such a smart look to it, and it's a free pattern.
The finished sweater. I made just one modification to it, which was to make the sleeves full length rather than cropped. I don't like cropped length sleeves myself, and while I don't know whether Cauliflower feels the same way, full length is the safe, classic choice.
It took way longer to knit than it should have. First I had gauge issues, as the pattern suggests a range of needle sizes to use rather than specifying one. I did swatch, and still made the wrong choice in needle. Then once I had that sorted out, I was afraid I wouldn't have quite enough of the blue and wine yarns to make it in two colours, so I began knitting it with the idea that the yoke and the hem would be in gray. But after getting nearly down to the arm holes, I decided I would have enough yarn to do it in two colours and that it would look better that way, so I began again. Then, after I had nearly finished the body, I realized I hadn't added enough stitches when I separated the body from the sleeves, and had to rip the body all out and redo it. I'm so tired all the time that I make a lot of stupid mistakes like that in everything I do, and then I have to spend more time and energy working to fix the errors, which makes me more tired. (Thanks, chronic fatigue issues!) This sweater should have taken one month, and took two. But it finally got done, and I was very pleased with it.
I did have more than enough yarn to knit it with, and I still have a total of 171 grams of the three yarns left, enough to make a child's sweater. Which I will probably do at some point, because I remain determined to use it all up. IT'S YOU OR ME, YARN.
For the trinket part of the gift, I bought a bottle of vanilla body spray from Dollarama. Not a bad birthday present for a seventeen-year-old girl, especially for under $6.
My mother keeps telling me that Cauliflower prefers to pick out her own clothes and that I should just give her money for her birthday and Christmas, but the thing is I often put Cauliflower's gifts together at such a low cost that the monetary equivalent would mean nothing to her, and it's better for me to prepare a gift for her than to say, "Happy birthday, Cauliflower, here's your six bucks! Go nuts!" And while I'm trying to bear in mind that as a crone of 53, I am almost certainly hopelessly out of touch with what teenagers like these days, I honestly don't see what even the pickiest teenage girl could find to object to about this sweater, unless she's into some sort of specific subculture style like goth or punk, and Cauliflower isn't. Her tastes seem to be very mainstream and generic, even normcore.
Anyway, this birthday gift has already been relayed to Cauliflower, and it's time for me to see what I can scare up for her Christmas present.
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