Why can't I ever just knit a pattern exactly as designed? Spent a few hours today playing around with knitting Fulmar as a top down cardigan in the style of Janet Szabo's FLAK. I like being able to control the sleeve length and definitely do not need a drop shoulder sweater than comes half way down my arm. My arms are short enough not to need that bulk under the sleeve area.


I used the swatch shown in the post of September 18th and measured each cable both sideways and depth. Thought I had the math worked out and pulled out a blue FLAK knit last year to compare the measurements. Was very surprised to see that my neck opening on the blue FLAK was 9"!! I decided to go from a personal measurement of 17" cross shoulder to the 20.5" on the blue FLAK which is very comfortable to wear on the shoulders.

Next I knit a saddle using Chart C with 2 purl stitches on each side added. One purl will be to pick up and the other to define the cable. In 6 1/2" of Chart C, I got 64 rows which meant 64 stitches to pick up easily. Two 6-1/2" saddles equals 13" which left 7-1/2" for the back neck opening. I will pick up 64 stitches on the saddle, cast on 72 stitches for the middle of the back, pick up 64 stitches on the other saddle for a total of 200 stitches.

The Chart layout would be from right to left with the saddles on the bottom, B,C,D,E,B,C,D,E,B,C,D. This centers the C exactly in the middle of the back. In order to be sure it all worked out, I cut up photocopies of the charts and actually scotch taped them in order to a large piece of paper. The saddles were lined up on each side of the chart layout and the math proved right. Sometimes seeing is believing and as long as my gauge doesn't change as I knit a bigger piece, this should work.

The front of the sweater is picked up from the other side of the saddle. Stitches are cast on for the front either as a crew neck (which will be what I do) or a V neck. More width is added to the sweater once the back and front are knit to the depth of the armhole and the sweater is then knit in the round. This added width can be in cable repeats or in check rib. I'll probably do some of each. For those of you who aren't familiar with Janet's method, FLAK can be found at http://bigskyknitting.com/FLAK/knitalong.html. The lessons she presented are printed off and hole punched in their own folder. I keep one clean copy in case those files every disappear off the net.



Now that I've got my mind wrapped around how to approach Fulmar as a FLAK, I can get back to my daughter's Symbolic Knot's sweater. Body is done and one sleeve picked up. Only seed stitch left to do so it will be hard to finish.