Daily Craft - The search for the perfect cardigan

I don't knit things for myself very often.  One factor being that I live in Southern California, which doesn't present itself a ton of opportunities to bundle up with warm wooly items.  [Really, it probably would have been a good idea for me to learn to knit when I was still living in England, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.]  The other factor is that I do a lot of sample knitting - which I enjoy, but it is work and leaves me very little time to knit for myself because I tend to gravitate toward other crafts between sample knit projects.

As the weather is starting to cool off out here in sunny CA, I have concluded that it's about damn time I made myself a cardigan though.  I love the patterns for cardis and jackets using fun, chunky yarns that knit up in no time...but realistically, I won't wear a lot because the cold season is so short.  I also wouldn't wear anything too thick in my office.  A month from now they'll be turning up the heat in the building and I'll end up sweating with my desk fan blasting at my head because my office is a closet (complete with fuse box for the entire floor - ah yes, I have the power to turn stuff off!) 

So, yesterday I continued my search for the elusive cardigan pattern that would carry me through some of the colder days, but also work nicely during fall and into spring.  Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner!  Check out this jacket by DROPS Design.

I will admit that despite being pretty advanced with my knitting, even if I say so myself, DROPS patterns have always been somewhat intimidating to me.  I think it's because a lot of them are converted from Scandinavian into English and aren't written in the standard knitting language that I know and love.  I decided to copy and paste the pattern into a word document and reformat slightly so that the directions were a little easier to follow.  Now, all I have to do is find the right yarn and I'm ready to go. 

Naturally, I picked something that's done in sock yarn so potentially could take me until the spring to finish anyway, but I love it and can't wait to finally be working on something that I'll be able to proudly wear and say "yes, I made it!"