Crochet Kit - Olivewood Cardigan

I'm beyond pleased with how this cardigan worked up. It's not the first cardigan I've made but I do consider myself a confident beginner in the world of crochet having started learning about 1 year ago. The pattern was very clearly written, nicely formatted, and easy to follow with relatively helpful pictures. It does require three different hooks which some may not find ideal as a true beginner. It involves techniques that would be very confusing to an absolute first timer but felt approachable and like a good learning opportunity at this stage in my crochet journey! The logic of the pattern is explained well so it was easy for me to adapt it to be a size smaller than the smallest size written. While this is a review of the kit and not the yarn itself I'll also mention it took some getting used to in order to successfully work with the Coboo yarn but it was well worth the effort because the drape is beautiful, it is so soft, and I just love wearing it. I get many compliments on this very stylish cardigan, I am so grateful to the designer for this beautiful creation!

You will want to give this sweater a chance. If you are new to crochet, it may take some time to get used to a lighter weight yarn and a smaller crochet hook, but the stitches are very simple. Almost the whole sweater is made with a single crochet-chain combination. The yarn I received was all the same dye lot and I'm not having any problem with the yarn splitting. It may be the best yarn I have worked with since beginning to crochet about 15 months ago. Thank you to the designer and Lion Brand.

To be fair, I really should have read through the entire pattern and tried the stitch the pattern called for before I started. Also, my fingers are fat and I don't enjoy crocheting with small hooks. Lesson learned! However, I was sent two different dye lots of yarn for this project and didn't know it because I didn't think to check the dye lots before I started. Because why would they send me two different dye lots for one project, especially something as large as a sweater? There was a noticeable difference in shade on the sweater back so I had to pull it all out and start over again so that the whole back of the sweater would be one dye lot. As far as the pattern goes, it's a simple enough stitch - single chain column stitch, which is just single chain, skip one, repeat. But when you're using really small hooks, it makes it very slow going and hard to squeeze your hook into every other single chain. It would have taken me years to finish so I just found another sweater pattern to use the yarn with. Maybe I'm just slow and inexperienced but this was not a pattern I could recommend. Also, shipping took a really long time.