ludicrously cute.

The Baby Surprise Jacket is finished, and it is absurdly, ridiculously cute. I want one of my own.


Anybody out there make the Adult Surprise Jacket? I've looked at the pictures on Ravelry and am abivalent: does this kind of thing just not look so hot on adults? Or is it a sizing question? I haven't seen one that was particularly form-fitting.

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!

Saturday Classics

It's a beautiful, partly sunny Saturday morning, and I've been spending it working on some classics:

Currant scones

Button bands on fair-isle yoke sweater (have to be ripped out because too short)

EZ's baby surprise jacket, for when the button band frustration becomes too extreme. This is my first time working with this pattern, and it's been fun -- although knitting what is basically a big rectangle could be boring, my interest has definitely been piqued by trying to figure out what part of the jacket I am knitting at any particular moment. Plus, this is a nice use for some variegated Aurora 8 I bought on sale at School Products a while ago -- I think that this was actually a botched dye lot, but I liked the subtle differences in color.

Here's the recipe for the scones that I adapted from one in Gourmet Magazine:

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick (8 Tbs) butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 Tbs baking powder
1/2 cup dried currants or raisins
1 and 1/4 cups 2% milk

Preheat oven to 425. Cut butter into tablespoon-sized slices. Put flour, butter, sugar, salt and baking soda in your food processor and process until it resembles coarse crumbs. If you don't have a food processor, you could use a pastry cutter or your fingers. Dump in milk and raisins and process until smooth (or until your processor starts having difficulty with it). Lightly dust a countertop with flour and turn out dough onto it. If it's not totally mixed, knead in whatever crumbs are at the bottom of the processor bowl. Knead dough very lightly, adding flour if necessary, just until the dough holds together and does not stick to countertop (the less handling of the dough, the better). Pat dough into a rectangle about 9x12 inches big. Use a knife dipped in flour to cut dough into triangle shapes. Place triangles on baking sheet and bake 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.