FO: Baby Surprise Jacket

I actually finished my Baby Surprise Jacket almost a month ago, but I had trouble finding a model, then I was just busy blogging about other stuff. I don't see any babies on a regular basis these days. So I made do with this stuffed gorilla that I found on stuffed in a closet.



He's no Poncho Pig. But Poncho Pig is living in storage right now, and even if he was here, his arms don't move away from his body. In fact, they don't move at all.



I used US Size 2 needles and Baby Bee Sweet Delight yarn in "Crayons Ombre" (115). I found the buttons with Mom's sewing stuff. I hope I placed them correctly. It looks like they're making the jacket gap in this picture.


Elizabeth Zimmerman recommends putting button holes on both sides and sewing buttons on the proper side depending on the gender of the baby once the baby is born. Since I will probably donate this to charity, I sewed them on the right side. Today it's more acceptable for women to wear buttons on the right side rather than it is for men to wear buttons on the left side.


Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm accepting suggestions for where to donate it. It's about the size a one-year old would wear. (According to Elizabeth Zimmerman, that's what you get when you knit a five stitches per inch gauge.)


If you haven't made your own Baby Surprise Jacket yet, you can buy the pattern here. It's essentially a garter stitch rectangle that folds into a cardigan. It's easy and baffling at same time. It will blow your mind.



All my Baby Surprise Jacket pictures are here, and all my Baby Surprise Jacket blog entries are here.

The Trees are Naked! (and a Baby Surprise Jacket update)

All good things much come to an end, and on Friday, March 25, A Knitted Wonderland* ended. That evening Mom and I took down our tree sweater and Dad came to help us carry everything and take pictures.



We had just gotten started when my friend Stephanie saw us while she was walking through the plaza. She works downtown and walks past the Blanton Museum almost everyday. She walks a lot. Recently she walked a marathon. I don't know where she gets the energy.



Anyway, Stephanie stopped to talk, help us take the seam out and take a picture or two. I had started at the bottom of the seam, Mom started at the top and Stephanie jumped in in the middle. It went pretty quickly.



While we were working, we saw one of UT's famous Albino Squirrels. Several people, including Dad, took pictures of it. In fact, Dad took more pictures of the squirrel than he did of the Capitol.



We were one of the last groups to take our tree sweater down. We had a couple of people stop to ask questions and take pictures of our tree. I know at least one group came specifically to see our trees, but they didn't know that that we would already be taking down the tree sweaters. I saw one guy stop and take a picture of Flat Stanley with our tree, which was awesome. I wish I asked him to send me a copy of the picture.



I had a hard time deciding what to do with our sweater. The group in charge collected sweaters from anyone who didn't want to keep them. Half were going back to Magda Sayeg to be unraveled and used for future projects and half were going Emancipet to be unraveled and used to knit dog sweaters. I had considered holding on to ours and using it for a wall hanging. Katie had expressed some interest in keeping it, and she wasn't there to weigh in. It would have been an easy decision if they weren't going to be unraveled.

Finally, with some gentle nudging from Mom and Stephanie, I put it in the Emancipet box. They use old towels and blankets for the animals to snuggle with. I hope if they have too much yarn they'll keep mine intact and give it to a pet. Or maybe I'll see a dog around town wearing my former tree sweater. Maybe they'll keep the flower intact and use it to embellish the sweater.

At any rate, that's one less piece of clutter in my life, and Katie didn't mind that we donated it. And there will always be lots of other chances to make wall hangings. Wall hangings that fit my wall better and don't curl.

All my pictures from "A Knitted Wonderland" are here.


Baby Surprise Jacket Update


My Baby Surprise Jacket grew pretty quickly. Since the last update, I knit the center stitches only for rows 80-99. In rows 100 and 101, I picked up the rest of the stitches, including stitches along the gap you can see in the picture above. The problem with picking up stitches along the gap is that a ridge is created. Because you pick up one side on an odd row and one side on an even row, the ridge is on the outside on one side and the inside on the other side. (Say that last sentence 10 times fast.)



I cast off on row 114. I'm not sure exactly when I did the button holes and how I spaced them out. I lost track of that somewhere along the way.


This is the finished knitting piece before the shoulder seams. I asked Dad to try to fold it in to a sweater to see if he could figure out how. (Elizabeth Zimmerman actually suggests this in her book.)  He did pretty well. He got half the sweater right, but couldn't quite get the other sleeve to do the same thing.


 It took me a while to figure out the best way to do the shoulder seams. I used this tutorial on Pamudom's blog. I think the Yarn Harlot uses the same technique, but I had trouble with her tutorial because it has pictures only. I guess I'm a verbal learner. The one ridge (two rows) to one stitch ratio worked well.



A couple of nights ago I worked on placing the buttons by placing bobby pins where the buttons would be. This gave me a chance to make adjustments. I plan to finish sewing on the buttons tonight.


All my Baby Surprise Jacket pictures are here.



* - Mom, Katie and I volunteered to knit a tree sweater for "A Knitted Wonderland." If you're tuning in late and want to find out more about it, I recommend reading all my tree sweater blog entries.

WIP: Baby Surprise Jacket

I've been so distracted with "A Knitted Wonderland"* that I've gotten behind on my blogging. I have two FOs, a cake and a new WIP to talk about. I'm starting with the WIP.

It's my very first Baby Surprise Jacket!


Back in January I said I was daydreaming of a sweater made from my stash. I wanted a cardigan that was seamless or almost seamless. Mom suggested that I look through her old Wool Gathering newsletters for patterns. When I saw the Baby Surprise Jacket pattern, I immediately knew that was what I wanted to make.

In The Opinionated Knitter there's a pattern for an "Adult Surprise Jacket," the Baby Surprise Jacket's grown up counterpart. It's perfect for my epic stash sweater.

But first, I'm taking the author's advice and making a Baby Surprise Jacket before I embark on a larger sweater. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the pattern.


The Baby Surprise Jacket is both very simple and very complicated. Basically, you knit a wonky rectangle, fold it, seam the shoulders and end up with a cardigan.

At the beginning of the jacket I had no idea what went where until I did a row of increases to create a cuff. At that phase it was hard to imagine that I was knitting sleeves. A little while later, I was binding off a few stitches for the collar. It started making sense in my mind.

There are diagonal increases and decreases that work well with variegated yarn and makefor some interesting stripes. I went with some variegated yarn from stash. I would have liked to add some stripes, but I don't have anything that works with the yarn I found.

I'm using Baby Bee Sweet Delight from Hobby Lobby. I bought it ages ago for because I liked the bright colorway. So far, I'm happy with it. It's a nice for a machine washable synthetic yarn.

There's a point where the increases and decreases meet in the picture above. That's the armpit. If you fold what I have so far, you get this:.


This pattern, like most Elizabeth Zimmerman patterns, is more like a recipe than a set of instructions. Specific row numbers aren't listed. So I want to leave some notes about row numbers, increases and decreases for myself and anyone else who's interested. If you follow her original instructions exactly, you'll probably have the same row numbers.

The original pattern suggests a gauge of five or six stitches per inch. I'm knitting five stitches per inch, mostly because that's what I got with this particular yarn and the first needle I could find. Five stitches per inch makes a size for a baby around one year old. Six stitches per inch will get you a newborn size jacket.

I think row ten was where I did the increases for the cuff. I spaced them out so that there was no M1 next to the marker.

At row 43 I found myself with 91 stitches, not 90 as the pattern says. I looked carefully at all my decreases. I think I decreased by two stitches instead of three in the first row. So on row 44, the first of the "work three rows even" I knit two together at the corner where I made the mistake. I think it'll be fine.

Row 47 started the increases, and I think row 60 was where I added the increases to add fullness in the back. I don't think I did a very good job of spacing them out. I miscalculated and one M1 was too far off to the side.

On rows 72 and 73 I did the neck shaping. As of right now I've finished row 79, and on row 80 I'll be doing some more mind bending shaping.

If you're new to the Baby Surprise Jacket you're probably still confused, I'll leave you with "Baby Surprise Jacket - The Movie." It's a short (14 second) video that I posted for the first time in 2008. I tmade it when we found an unfinished Baby Surprise Jacket that Mom had started years ago.


* - We recently found out that our display will be up another week. Now you have until March 25 to see the the installation.

Putting the surprise in the Baby Surprise Jacket

While cleaning Mom found an old Baby Surprise Jacket that she knit but never seamed. I knew the construction for the jacket was unusual, but I'd never seen it folded into place. I decided this was a good time to try out my camera's ability to take 15 second videos (with no sound.)

(I'd also heard about the controversy over Flickr's new video capabilities and wanted to try it out myself. Personally, I don't think it's a problem.)

Either way, I present to you "Baby Surprise Jacket - The Movie," a 14-second thrill ride starring my Mom's hands.