BABY SURPRISE JACKET

     A new baby in the family. First time in a long time. A baby girl.

    Decided to make a Baby Surprise Jacket, as designed by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Two shades of pink. A BSJ requires a lot of counting. I have made BSJs before, but have forgotten, had to learn all over again.

    EZ designed sweaters to have buttonholes on both sides of the front (back before sonagrams which tell you the sex of the child before arrival). When you know which, boy or girl, you close up the buttonhole you do not need with sewing on the button. EZ knit sweaters for a daughter, and when the son came along, she undid the buttons and switched them to the other side.

    I had the body of the sweater completed. I stalled (for weeks) on the collar. EZ's instructions always leave a lot to the knitter. A full collar involves several rows, some with strategically placed increases. After six rows of garter stitch, I decided 'enough'. Just  little stand-up collar around the neck.

    Still unresolved the button issue. The buttonholes are not very big, will accommodate only a small button. Maybe I will experiment with popcorn buttons. Need to get hopping. Baby is growing every minute.

THE SURPRISE IS ON ME

     I've knit this pattern before. Why is it causing me so many problems this time?

    Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. I've knit two of these jackets before, one for the daughter of a Japanese woman who married the son of a friend of mine. The couple were living in the United States at the time and I wanted the mother to have something that was typically American.

    On one of the jackets I even devised a way to create a garment with longer sleeves. The BSJ is a pattern that requires a lot of counting, but the result is spectacular.

    Well, excuse me, I have something I need to do . . . one . two . .  three . . . four . . . .

ONE STITCH TOO MANY

     Where did that stitch come from?

    It was one stitch too many.

    I used to laugh at the young woman in the first of Debbie Macomber's series of books centered on The Shop on Blossom Street. Her first knitting project was a scarf -- she kept finishing every row with the wrong number of stitches.

    A Baby Surprise Jacket, from Elizabeth Zimmerman's pattern, is an exercise in counting. At least for me. I have knit Baby Surprise Jackets before, but cannot now remember the details. You knit and knit and knit and finally achieve a relatively flat, oddly shaped piece of knitting. Then you sew two sections together to make the sleeves, and abracadabra, you have a baby sweater.

    But you have to keep counting the stitches. If you do not have the correct number of stitches, you have to froggit (I think that's the word, I should research it some time), back track until you have unknit back to a place where the count is correct. I've done a lot of unknitting on this project.