I first saw this pattern when I originally joined Ravelry back in about 2014. It popped up on my feed somehow and I fell in love with it. It’s a short jacket with a textured pattern and a deep shawl collar. The leather closures add a nice touch. The chunkiness looks so cosy, the pattern intrigued me and the shawl collar is just divine. However, I could not get hold of the pattern as it is out of print. It was a lesson in how ephemeral fashion can be. This pattern was from Bergeres de France Creations Magazine 2012/2013 but was already unavailable just over a year later.

I decided to give up on this several times but it kept springing up to taunt me. I’ve been hunting high and low for this pattern, devoting a few hours every six months or so, to see if I could find it on Pinterest or via Google, but to no avail. By the time I thought to check Bergeres de Frances archives, I was too late by a year, they only went back to 2014. Eventually, I turned to Ravelry and one of the people who had knitted the cardigan responded, and I managed to get a copy of the pattern.

The only snag was that the pattern is written in French and I had to translate it before I could use it. My rusty French and Google Translate came up with the goods and helped me most of the way but a lot of the pattern is written in abbreviations so I still had to work out what these knitting codes were. Once again it was back to searching Google to see if I could get any help with that and eventually, I came across Sophie Damey’s brilliant guide to translating French knitting terms and I used that to help me finish preparing my pattern.

I used Drops Andes a super chunky yarn in lieu of Bergere de France’s own yarn and was very happy to make it up in a colour close to that on the model. I’ve seen several different colours on Ravelry but I did really like the inspiration version.

Knitting the collar was really easy. the two-by-two rib shaped with shortrows grew really quickly and I knit it almost on autopilot. The body pattern alternates squares of garter stitch and cables and gives a lovely checkerboard effect. I had to keep my wits about me because although the pattern is not complex, you do need to make sure you count your rows carefully. It’s a relatively short repeat so it’s easy to overdo the squares. I had to rip back a couple of times because I got carried away and my cables were too long, so it’s not necessarily a thing you can do while you’re watching telly or playing computer games as you are knitting.

The yarn produces a very dense fabric and this cardigan is extremely warm; certainly warm enough for outdoor wear, so in fact, it’s more of a coatigan #coataddict. Bergeres de France used to supply the leather toggles used in the sample as I saw them on their website while I was tracking down the pattern. Unfortunately, they are no longer available so I had to make it with some I found online which do just fine. After just seven months I finished this coatigan just in time for spring.

So this, in a way, is another decade-long project as it’s almost 10 years since I first fell in love with this image, although, unlike my other recently finished object, I only spent a few weeks on and off knitting this project. I cast it on last August and made the collar then I put it away while I was travelling for three months and picked it up again in January, I think total knitting time was about four weeks with a couple of hours a day. I am delighted with how it came out and determined to get a few wears out of it before the weather gets too warm.

I’m with George Benson on the long projects … I 🎼Never give up on a good thing 🎶

Thanks for dropping by,