My Stellar’s Jay Sweater is roughly based on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s EPS (Elizabeth’s Percentage System) sweaters.  EPS sweaters are based on the idea that the size of someone’s arm is roughly proportional to their bust size, which is roughly proportional to their neck size.  It’s not perfect for people with more unusual body types, but I’ve found that most people can make the EPS work for them on the whole.  It’s a great basic sweater recipe that you can customize, tweak and otherwise futz with to make yourself the sweater you’ve always dreamed of.

My Stellar’s Jay Cardigan is knit from the bottom up, which means that make the body first, from hem to armpits.  Then I cast on the sleeves at the cuffs, and knit up the arm.

I wanted a slightly fitted, tapered sleeve, so I cast on 22% of the stitches I used for my torso.  It sounds weird, but EZ spent years perfecting her formulas, until she figured out that a cuff should measure about 20-25% of the torso in diameter.  (Crazy, right?)

Then I slowly increased (increasing 2 stitches every 8 rows in a line along the inside of the arm) until I reached 64 stitches, which was my planned upper arm measurement (about 35% of my torso measurement).  Then, I knit along, without any more increases, until my sleeve was long enough for my arm.

The result was a gently tapered sleeve, that perfectly fit my arm.

The next thing to do was to join the arms to the body.