surprise!

Well, old habits die hard, and so I have gone back to my old starting - and - finishing - other - things - when - I - should - be - working - on - the - fair - isle - cardigan ways. This time the project in question was the Baby Surprise Jacket, which took me exactly three days to knit and which is freakin' cute. It's also freakin' heavy -- knitting worsted weight wool in garter stitch on size 6 needles results in quite a dense and squishy fabric. Luckily, the friends for whom I knit this jacket are super chill about their kids and won't think twice about putting a relatively heavy sweater on their baby.

EZ is awesome. As promised in the Spun Out pattern, the finished project looks "like nothing at all" when laid flat, but folds up into amazing cuteness. Here's the "before" shot:


I am going to wait to sew up the shoulder/arm seams until I show it to my mom this weekend when I go home for Easter, because she's the kind of person who'd take some pleasure in the way it all comes together.

I had avoided the BSJ phenomenon because I am not a fan of striped or variegated yarn and thought that some of the finished jackets I had seen with a lot of stripes looked kind of tacky. However, having recently seen some more subtle ones like Flint Knits's lovely brown striped one and Knitty Gritty's lovely pink one led me to think that it was possible to make a BSJ that retained the EZ coolness factor while not being quite as dated-looking. I think all in all I was quite successful. I also think that, given the wide variation in the dye job of this bunch of skeins of damaged Aurora 8, I don't know what else I could have knit with it. But the modular mitered shape of the BSJ turns a flaw into a design feature, I think. Go Zimmermann!

Of course, now that I've done one of these and saw how fun it was, I am tempted to do more. I still think that my top-down raglan or yoke cardigans will remain the go-to baby sweater, but when I'm looking to shake things up, the BSJ is a cool alternative!