Here at Littletheorem Knits, we love elongated stitch patterns! Many of our lace and cable patterns use looong stitches to add emphasis.

Many of my patterns use elongated stitches together with Estonian gathered stitches, a technique I first used in my Bracklinn Crop:

Some patterns have elongated stitches with a simple *k2tog, yo* lace, like my Burrell Sweater:

My Ae Fond Kiss Lace Shawl uses elongated stitches to offset 1 over 1 stitch, and cute heart nupps too

and in my Caisteal Sweater, a basketweave cable stitch is elongated, by introducing and dropping yarnovers on each round of the pattern:

But in all of these patterns (except the shawl!) the armhole is mainly either plain stocking stitch or plain garter stitch. I ran into difficulties in my latest pattern, Raineach Cardigan, since its stitch pattern has elongated stitches everywhere​!

Picking up and knitting just one stitch for each elongated stitch would pinch the sleeve in far too much. I needed to find a way to pick up and knit multiple stitches from each edge stitch, and I couldn't seem to find a tutorial for it anywhere. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to work it out for myself! Here's how it's done:

In each elongated stitch we pick up knit three stitches by picking up and knitting one stitch as usual – bringing the
needle under the elongated stitch from front to back, loop the yarn round the needle and bring it through to the front. Next insert the needle from back to front through this same elongated stitch, bring the yarn to the front over the needle, then under the needle to the back of the work. Bring your needle back out to the WS making another two stitches on the needle. These last two stitches will be twisted, so when you knit them on the next row simply knit into the back loops. 

For my upcoming pattern, Goldenacre Cardigan, I really wanted the lace pattern to run all the way from the neckline down to the cuffs of the sleeves. To my mind, the best way to do this is using a Saddle Shoulder construction. In this post, I'll give details on how to knit a top down, saddle shoulder cardigan.

Here's a diagram showing how the upper body is put together, we go through each part step by step below.  In my Goldenacre Cardigan pattern, obviously there are all the exact stitch counts and patterns, but here we just give an overview.

1 and 2: work strips of lace (or whatever pattern you're using!) for the left and right saddle shoulders. These will go along the shoulder from the neckline to the top of the sleeve. I made mine quite long for a drop shoulder.

And that's it! It ends up looking something like this:​

And here's a wee sneak peek at how the finished cardigan looks - it should be out for test knitting soon. Follow @littletheorem on instagram or twitter for the test call!