Rocking the Lairy-Colour-Pop-Bomb scheme!

Knitting for my 5-year-old nephew who’s favourite colours are red, pink and green.
I am going to knit a hooded jacket and am thinking about added ease.
I am using an 8ply as I want a smaller stitch. As a result, my gauge is critical.

He is tall for his age. Already he wearing clothes for a 6-year-old so I am going to work to the 6-8-year-old dimensions.
That is a 29.5” diameter.
Technically, given my gauge (20.5 stitches per 4”) I will need 151 stitches to create a body diameter of 29.5inches.
So, I am going to use the Small woman’s sizing where with my 8 ply yarn, a 156 stitch number for the body will give me a 30.5” diameter. This is 1” extra than what I need but, a jacket is worn over things so this should work.

The 6-8-year-old length from neck to sleeve separation is given at 7”. Given that my colourwork row gauge is pretty well spot on to designed gauge I will use the 6-8-year-old charts for the yoke and body colour work.

Given that my row gauge for stockinette-stitch is 7 rows per 1” as opposed to the designer’s gauge of 6 rows per inch. I can happily add a few more rows in the body.

I will provisionally cast-on 94 stitches. I will pick up 84 stitches. I will then add a 7 stitch steek.

Thank you so much to viennahavana for gifting me this beautiful pattern.

Swatching Notes
I swatched by knitting a sleeve. This gave me a really accurate idea of the gauge. In addition, it allowed me to try colourwork combinations on a small scale.

I tried two combinations and wasn’t totally happy with either. I wanted to break up that bottom triangle so I introduced the green. I decided to repeat that motif on top.

Swathing by knitting sleeve.
Cast on 37 stitches on 4mm, join in the round to end up with 36.
K1/P1 rib for 1 1/2” finishing the last row of the rib by slipping the knit stitch purlwise, and purling the purl stitch as normal.
Change to 5mm.

My washed swatch comes out at these dimensions
Rib diameter 36 stitches 5” = approximately 29 stitches/ 4” for the 4mm needles rib

Body of sleeve diameter 7” = 20.5 stitches/ 4” for stitch gauge.

10 rows of colourwork = 1/ 5/8” (4.4cm) 22-23 rows per 4” of stranded colourwork.

7 rows of stockinette -1”… that is 28 rows to 4” in unblocked stockinette