by Amy Christoffers (Savory Knitting), rewritten in plain language for a beginner knitter
🧶 For Mary — Christmas 2026 · size 52½″ · Drops Nepal, Green Mix
How this cardigan is made
Completely different construction from a sewn-together jumper — and friendlier: Felix is knit in one piece from the top down, with no seams at all. You start at the neck, work the yoke outward (it grows like a cape), then park the sleeve stitches on waste yarn while you knit the body straight down. Afterward you come back, put each sleeve on needles, and knit it down in the round. Bands and collar are picked up and knitted on at the end. When the knitting stops, the cardigan is done.
Two bonuses of top-down: you can try it on as you go (slip half the stitches onto spare yarn and drape it), and if the body or sleeves need to be longer or shorter for Mary, you just knit more or fewer plain rows before the ribbing.
What you need
Yarn: Drops Nepal in Green Mix — you have 16 skeins (≈1,312 yd) and size 52½″ needs ≈1,000 yd. You have enough, with 3 skeins of cushion.
Larger needles — 6 mm (US 10): 16″ and 24″ (or longer) circulars, plus a set of double-pointed needles (DPNs) for the sleeves.
Smaller needles — 5 mm (US 8): a long circular, plus DPNs for the cuffs.
Notions: 4 stitch markers, tapestry needle, 6 buttons (20 mm), and some smooth scrap yarn ("waste yarn") to hold sleeve stitches.
Finished measurements (size 52½″)
Around bust/hip
52½″ — pattern suggests wearing with 2–8″ of positive ease
Length, underarm to hem
12″ (easy to adjust)
Yoke depth (neck to underarm)
12½″
Sleeve, underarm to cuff
18″ (easy to adjust)
Around upper arm
18½″
Fit check before you start: 52½″ is the finished chest. For the suggested fit, Mary's actual bust should be roughly 44–50″. If she's smaller, consider dropping to the 48″ size — say the word and I'll re-do this page for that size.
Tension (gauge) — swatch first, really
Felix is knit deliberately loose and airy: 14 stitches and 20 rows = 4″ in stockinette (knit one row, purl one row) on the 6 mm needles. That's looser than the Nepal ball band suggests — correct for this design; it's what makes the fabric drape instead of standing up like a board.
With 6 mm needles cast on 22 stitches; work in stockinette for about 5″. Cast off.
Wash the swatch the way the finished cardigan will be washed, lay flat, let it dry. (Nepal relaxes when washed — measuring dry-off-the-needles will lie to you.)
Count stitches across 4″: you want 14. More than 14 → go up a needle size. Fewer → go down.
Stitch school — everything beyond plain K and P
1. Yarn over (yo) — the eyelet increase
The star of this pattern. A yarn over adds one new stitch and leaves a tiny decorative hole — those holes are the pretty eyelet lines fanning down the yoke. It is the easiest increase in knitting:
1
You're mid-row, about to knit the next stitch. The working yarn hangs at the back as usual.
2
Bring the yarn forward under the right needle, then up and over the top, back to knitting position. That loop just sits on the needle — that's the whole move.
3
Keep knitting normally. On the next row, work that loop as a regular stitch — a small hole opens beneath it. One stitch made, one eyelet earned.
2. Wrap & turn (w&t) — short rows, the clever bit
The back of a neck should sit higher than the front — so the pattern has you knit partway across, turn around early, and go back. These "short rows" quietly build up extra fabric at the back neck. The wrap is just a way of tucking the yarn around the neighboring stitch so the turning point doesn't leave a hole.
1
Work to the point the pattern says "w&t". Stop, even though there are stitches left.
2
The wrap: slip the next stitch to the right needle without working it → bring the yarn between the needles to the opposite side (front if knitting, back if purling) → slip the stitch back to the left needle. The yarn is now hugging that stitch's waist.
3
The turn: flip the work as if you'd finished the row, and work back the other way. The wrapped stitch and everything past it just waits.
4
Resolving the wrap: when a later row brings you back past a wrapped stitch, lift the little wrap up onto the needle and knit (or purl) it together with its stitch as one. This hides the wrap and closes the gap. The pattern tells you exactly when.
Nervous about short rows? Work them on your gauge swatch once: knit 15, w&t, purl 8, w&t, knit to the wrapped stitch, resolve it, finish the row. Five minutes of practice and the yoke will hold no fear. Also: a removable marker hung on each wrap makes them easy to spot later.
3. The two decreases: k2tog and ssk
Both turn two stitches into one; they lean opposite ways and mirror each other on the sleeve.
→
Knit 2 together (k2tog): needle through the next two stitches at once, knit them as one.
←
Slip, slip, knit (ssk): slip the next 2 stitches knitwise one at a time to the right needle, then knit those two together through their fronts (slide the left needle into them and knit as one).
4. The other moves, in plain words
Slip marker (sm): when you reach a stitch marker, just move it from the left needle tip to the right and carry on. Markers ride along marking the raglan "seam" lines.
Cast on mid-row (underarms): when dividing, you'll cast on 15 new stitches out of thin air. Use the backwards loop: twist a loop of working yarn and pop it on the right needle — repeat 15 times. Simple and fine here.
Waste yarn holders: thread a tapestry needle with 20″ of smooth scrap yarn and run it through the sleeve stitches, slipping them off the needle. Tie the ends. The stitches nap safely until sleeve time.
Pick up and knit: with the right side facing, poke the needle through the fabric edge, wrap the yarn, pull a loop through = one new live stitch. For the front bands the rate is 2 stitches for every 3 rows: pick up in two row-gaps, skip the third, repeat. (The exact count isn't critical — it just needs to be an even number.)
Knitting in the round on DPNs: sleeve stitches divide over 3–4 double-pointed needles; a free needle knits off each in turn, going round and round. Right side always faces you — so it's knit every round for stockinette, no purling. Pull the first stitch on each new needle snug to avoid a loose column ("ladder").
Buttonhole (yo, ssk): a yarn over makes the hole, the ssk removes one stitch to pay for it. Net stitch count unchanged, tidy little buttonhole.
Bind off "in rib": cast off while knitting the knits and purling the purls, loosely. The pattern's "sewn tubular bind off" is a lovely stretchy finish but fiddly — a plain loose rib bind-off is completely fine for a first cardigan. (If you want to learn tubular later, it's a nice rabbit hole.)
"Work even": keep going in plain stockinette — no increases, no decreases — until the measurement given.
Part 1 — The Yoke
Worked flat (back and forth) on the 6 mm circular needle — you use a circular just to hold the crowd of stitches; you're not joining in the round. Right-side rows are knit rows; wrong-side rows are purl rows, except where the pattern says otherwise.
Neck shaping — 8 short rows
These raise the back neck. Rows 1, 3 and 5 also start the eyelet increases (8 new stitches each). Take these slowly, one line at a time — this is the hardest page of the whole project, and it's over in 8 rows.
Sanity checks while you go: after every right-side increase row you should find two eyelet holes flanking each of the four markers when you spread the work out. If a marker only has one, a yo got skipped — easier to fix now than three rows later.
Raglan increases
Now full rows, still flat. The 8-row block below repeats; rows 1, 3, 5 each add 8 stitches at the raglans, with the eyelets placed 0, 1, then 2 stitches away from the markers — that's what fans them into the pretty leaf pattern. On your first pass through rows 1 and 2, you'll still meet the last two wrapped stitches from the short rows — resolve each wrap as you come to it (knit or purl it together with its stitch), then they're all gone.
Divide for body and sleeves
Part 2 — The Body
Part 3 — The Sleeves (both alike)
Ladder patrol: if faint loose columns appear where DPNs meet, snug the first stitch on each needle and shift the boundary stitches around every few rounds. They also mostly vanish with washing.