Overview: This was my first completed top-down saddle-shoulder Aran – there is a cardigan hibernating. It is based on Janet Szabo’s FLAK construction. I fell in love with this method of making an Aran because you get all of the fiddly stuff – neck shaping and saddles, shoulder and armhole “seams” out of the way first, then the rest is clear sailing – yay! : )

Cables & Stitch Patterns: The saddle cable is a 3-rib lattice, which was mirror-imaged for symmetry. The two major cable patterns in the body are out of Annie Maloney’s book, The Cable Knitter’s Guide. The center cable is #66, and the cables going down the body from the shoulder are #22.

The cable layout from left to right is:
Wave of Honey (or Little Chain)
Eccentric cable
Pattern #22
Eccentric
Wave of Honey
Little Twist Cable (Barbara Walker’s first treasury)
Pattern #66
Little Twist
Wave of Honey
Eccentric
Pattern #22
Eccentric
Wave of Honey

When designing with cables, I like to make them so that the ones on the right, lean to the right, and the ones on the left, lean to the left when seen on the body. This creates a V-effect which I think is flattering to the figure by emphasizing the shoulders and de-emphasizing the waist.

The filler stitch at the sides and on the sleeves is another of Annie’s original stitch patterns, #3 Rich Texture, out of her book The Knitter’s Guide to Stitch Design. I am so bored with all the usual filler stitches for Arans: seed stitch, moss stitch (or double seed stitch), box stitch (or double moss), and rice stitch, that getting this book absolutely thrilled me! Annie’s books are treasure troves of patterns!

Caveat: One thing I tried with this sweater and in hindsight wish I hadn’t, was to make the entire front and back panels go the full width to the inset for the sleeve which is a peasant or modified drop-shoulder. Cables are bulkier than the filler stitch would be, so there is more excess fabric than otherwise. But my motto is to try at least one new thing with each project, and even if it doesn’t work as I thought, I do learn something.

One new thing that worked: As I was finishing up this sweater, I was making my first gansey and learning about what a difference underarm gussets can make. One thing that has always bothered me about sewing sweaters is that under the arm you have 4 corners of the sweater pieces coming together at one point, right there in your armpit. It is a stress point with arm movement, and hard to keep those 4 corners together without making a knotted blob of it. A diamond-shaped gusset takes care of that. I have now become a convert to gussets, putting them in almost all of my sweaters!

My yardage use is an estimate, probably I didn’t use as much as 10 skeins. I did a lot of swatching and the sweater itself is densely knit and very warm. If I were to make it now, I would probably go up a needle size.