ELIZABETH ZIMMERMAN'S BABY SURPRISE JACKET

     EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket is no mindless knitting project. You need to be attentive to every stitch, stitch by stitch.

    I decided to make a BSJ for a new cousin, due in March. A girl. Chose a medium and a dark pink yarn. I've made BSJs before, but it is a complicated pattern. Had a hard time getting the count right in the first few rows. Had to start over multiple times. Have to count every row. Sometimes more than twice. Maybe thrice. Maybe . . . 

    Once started, blessedly, knitting went rather smoothly, even switched colors to create the stripe effect.

    Until this afternoon. Let my mind wander. Thought about something else. Forgot which row I was on. Now I will have to wait for daylight tomorrow. Do some unknitting, which always takes more than twice/thrice the time to knit the rows in the first place.

    Glad the baby not due until March. Will that give me enough time?

SPEAKING OF THIMBLES

     Speaking of fumbles thimbles, I've worn a painful callous on the tip of my middle finger, right hand. With the yarn coming in from, the left hand, sometimes I use the middle finger on my right hand to push the stitch along. The tighter the knitting the more the pressure to get the stitch from the left needle to the right.

    I experimented with using a thimble to protect my finger. That worked okay, sort of, but the thimble slipped too easily off my finger, and was hard to keep track of. Reluctant to get out of my upstairs recliner, I peered around and fixed my gaze on a small piece of elastic bandaging I had used, in vain, to get rid of a corn on a toe. I had paid a ridiculous prize for such a small piece of nothing, and I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. What would happen if I put it on my finger?

    Success! Works amazingly well. Protects my finger. Being elastic it stays on my finger. So glad this inspiration occurred to me. No more fumbling around.

COPYRIGHT? TRADEMARK?

     How to claim ownership of a pattern? I wish I knew.

    Both Ramona at Momo's in Leavenworth and Cindy -- not Mindy, as I often call her -- at The Studio in Overland Park were kind enough to talk to me, but to my great surprise, because both are very innovative knitters, neither one has sought protection for knitted pieces they created.

    I 'discovered' how to make a chameleon scarf -- one color dominates one side, the second color dominates the other side -- quite by accident. And except for the cast-on, it's incredibly easy to make because every stitch is a knit stitch. Absolutely no purl stitches.

    The pattern is on this blog somewhere, over to the right. I used to know how to post pictures on my blog. Maybe I'll take a half-day and figure out how to do it again.