Gramps is the new black

Have you noticed that the shawl collar is seeing a resurgence in menswear? Everywhere on my campus, hip young and middle-aged men are sporting cardigans with shawl collars – and not just the librarians. Even the less-than-hip young men are wearing them.

Boy 1 is no fashion icon, but he has always loved shirts and pullovers with snuggly collars. He went through a phase when he owned a lot of quarter-zip fleece tops, which he always wore zipped all the way up. It didn’t look hip, but he loved that snuggly feeling around his neck. (Surprisingly, he does not care for turtlenecks.) So it was no surprise to me that he pounced on this pattern, Gramps by Tin Can Knits. It comes in sizes from 0-6 months all the way up to 4XL.

He picked out a shade of Cascade 220 from an online photo, and I bought the yarn when I was at WEBS for the Spinning Summit in late September (it is 9456 Sapphire Heather). I also found buttons there.

This was a pretty easy knit… a standard, top-down, raglan sleeve cardigan. I did a lot of the knitting in public – it was that straightforward. My swatch gauge was very close to pattern gauge. I chose to make the “Ladies XS” size, which has a 33” bust. Boy 1’s chest is 31.5”. I added some length in the sleeves and body, though. The finished sweater weighs 498 grams (with buttons). I had to wind my 6th skein, but if I had unraveled my swatch, I could have gotten this sweater out of 5 skeins. I bought 7 because I hate stressing about running out of yarn. Now I have some beautiful leftovers for hats.

I also used the “wrapless short row” technique on the shawl collar. I loved it so much on my Blank Slate sweater that I actually tinked a couple of rows of this one so I could use that technique throughout. Here is how I marked all my wrapless wraps with locking stitch markers:

As always, I used Margaret Fisher’s One Row Horizontal Buttonhole Technique (from Seven Things That Can “Make or Break” A Sweater) instead of whatever the pattern calls for. I feel it is superior to anything else I’ve tried.

He seems happy with it. If I were to make it again, I would have made the sleeves a little wider. This is a “slim cut” cardigan, but that’s fine, because he’s a slim guy.

I think that I’m going to have to start looking for actual men’s patterns now, though. Those shoulders are only getting wider, and we all know that “unisex” is not a thing in adult clothing.