Ocean Breeze Cardigan

Last year I discovered that DROPS has tons of free knitting patterns, one of them the Ocean Breeze Cardigan.

I completed this already last summer, but only last weekend I got around to sew on the buttons.

I had some yarn in my stash that I wanted to use, but is was thinner than the yarn recommended. So I knitted a gauge and tried to recalculate the pattern for my yarn. This didn’t work though and the pattern didn’t look nice with the thin yarn. In the end I was so frustrated that I bought the DROPS yarn that was used for the model. Think their strategy worked on me: offer free patterns, and people buy the recommended yarn. I am slowly leanrning to match fabric and patterns, but with knitting I am still such a bloody beginner that I am quite lost.

The instructions are OK, I sometimes had to read them more than once, but this is rather due to my sparse knitting knowledge, I think.

The pattern was fun to knit and never boring. And a lot of knots!

The fit is great, only the armscyes turned out to be a bit tight. I also found the buttonholes to be tiny and the little rose buttons I found are still a bit hard to pull through the holes. It is OK though as I hardly will wear the cardigan closed.

Other than that I do not have to say much about this project (because I already forgot everything else. This is the downside of having projects lying around for so long).

I plan to wear the cardigan with dresses. It is a bit unpractical because it only has short sleeves, and when it is too cold to wear a sleeveless dress, I need something with long sleeves. But we will se how it works out.

BTW, the dress I am wearing is Vogue 8787. I made it several years ago and still love it as it is so easy to wear.