I am a child of the 80’s and thus very familiar with drop shoulder sweaters. It is the easiest way to knit a sweater – if you will: two squares plus two trapezoids make a sweater. If you want to get fancy, you add a front neckline.
The drop shoulder sweaters in the 80’s were very over sized, and the sleeves were huge. Fortunately, for the newbie knitter, drop shoulders are back in fashion, however, thanks to modern aesthetics, the sleeves are a much smaller size than thirty years ago. (Wait, what? It has been thirty years? How did that happen?)
Advantages of the drop shoulder sweaters next to being an easy knit, are also that since most of them are still boxy and over sized, one does not have to worry too much about the actual size of the project. You can choose to knit the pieces separately and sew them up – this, as with other styles, gives more structure to the finished piece. If you please, you can pick up the stitches for the sleeves on the body and knit them top down – this works really well, especially when the sleeves are rather tight in fit and do not have any decreases. Then again, decreases are not hard, and it really depends on the pattern you pick.
A drop shoulder sweater can also be knit in the round from the bottom up. Once you reach the underarms, you divide front and back and knit them separately. If you forgo any shoulder shaping, you can even use the three-needle bind-off instead of sewing up the shoulder seams.
As a first sweater this is a good pick – though maybe a bit more knitting than a raglan or a sweater with set in sleeves due to being over sized!
Happy Knitting, as ever!
– Mona
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