Grandmother knitted a holiday sweater her granddaughter designed herself

It’s a rare thing for a child’s homework to turn into the best Christmas present ever, but that’s what happened when Julie Cordiner turned her granddaughter’s school project into a personalized holiday sweater.

Cordiner, who lives in Hartlepool, England, tweeted that her granddaughter’s school had them draw a design for a Christmas sweater for Save the Children’s annual Christmas Jumper Day charity drive. The kiddo clearly has a great eye for design — her drawing has a tree with presents and a Santa (drawn to scale with the tree, which is impressive). Bright blue snowflakes are falling on the scene, and she’s given the sweater a surprising pop of orange on the collar in fashionable contrast to the forest-green cuffs.

Cordiner’s tweet shows the child’s drawing alongside her granddaughter wearing the sweater. It’s a perfect fit!

“The look on her face when she opened it was priceless!” she wrote.

https://twitter.com/juliecordiner/status/1342531758525452291

Her gift clearly delighted the child, as well as the 110,000 people who liked the tweet. And there’s a lot to like: Cordiner’s faithful rendering of her granddaughter’s design, the fact that sweaters aren’t necessarily easy to knit, the granddaughter’s big smile, that this grandma thought to do this at all.

The layers of warmth and good cheer captured in one tweet are as cozy as … well, a Christmas sweater.

But here’s another tidbit to consider. Save the Children tweeted that Christmas Jumper Day was Dec. 11. Which means Cordiner must have only had two weeks from the time she saw her granddaughter’s drawing until Christmas Day to create the pattern and knit the sweater.

Two weeks! Even for a children’s sweater, that’s not much time for quite a bit of knitting. Cordiner must be an experienced knitter, both with creating her own knitting designs and sizing a sweater, to have knitted it up that quickly. It’s clear she has skill — and that she knitted each stitch with love.