A BSJ for Baby G

I am all done making the big scarves, mittens and hats for the Seafarers (using big fat yarn and big fat needles).  It was fun and felt rewarding, but after that I felt ready for a smaller project with smaller needles and yarn.

And what better than a baby sweater? This sweater is for Baby G, the daughter of a family friend.  I used the "Baby Surprise Jacket" pattern, by the famous and clever knitting designer Elizabeth Zimmermann.  I have made several of these and it's a pattern I always enjoy coming back to.  The sweaters are fun to make and the finished products are cute.

The "surprise" referred to in the title of this pattern is the fact that the pattern works even though it seems to make no sense at all while you're knitting it.  It's an exercise in faith.  You knit back and forth for 96 rows, making increases and decreases as directed, and it looks like a bunchy old rag.  Then you follow the directions and make a few folds and add a couple of little seams and -- surprise! -- you have a a baby sweater.  It never ceases to amaze me.

Since Baby G's mother is a physicist, I thought she would enjoy an illustration of how this sweater came together.  I have knitted this sweater with variegated yarn many times, but I thought this time I'd make it with four colors of yarn in stripes to make the construction a little clearer.  I like the way it came out.  (Thanks to my husband for taking me yarn shopping and helping me pick out the colors.  I would have gravitated towards bright colors and I think the result would have been a bit garish.  He has a better color sense than I do.  So much for gender stereotypes....)

I changed colors every 8 rows, which means that those 96 rows produced 12 stripes.  I told myself I would take a picture after finishing every stripe and I managed to remember 11 out of 12 times, which is pretty good.   The pictures were taken on a pair of regular-sized placemats, to give you an idea of the scale.


Stripe 1:

Stripe 2:

Stripe 3:

Stripe 4:

Stripe 5:

Stripe 6:

Stripe 7:

Stripe 8: (multiple increases in this stripe are are making a little ruffle at the top so the work no longer sits flat)

Stripe 9: (the ruffles are more noticeable now that there is more fabric on top of the increases)

(forgot to take a picture after stripe 10...)

Stripe 11: (Stripe 10 involved some back-and-forth knitting on the back of the sweater to provide extra space for the diaper bulge.  And you can see that at this point it's really impossible to lay the work out flat.)

Stripe 12 (This is the finished sweater before seaming.)

At this point, my husband suggested that I had knitted a "thnead".  (If you don't know what a thnead is, you need to review your Doctor Seuss.)

But now comes the magical folding step, which needs a video to do it justice:

 

After that, all I had to do was sew up the shoulder seams and add the buttons and it was done!:

 And a view from the back:

Then there was leftover yarn and I couldn't just let that go to waste.  I thought a garter stitch hat with some of the same colors would be a good choice to go with the garter stitch sweater:

I like how it came out, but when it was done I wasn't sure how well it would fit.  Since I had plenty of yarn left, I added a good old stretchy ribbed hat, which is a pretty safe bet.  And I learned a new skill for that: how to change colors in ribbing without those ugly "purl bumps".  Here is a link to the web page where I found this clever trick.  Here's how it looks:

A little odd looking without a head in it, but it will stretch to fit a range of head sizes.

With the little bit  of yarn I still had left over I made striped tube socks, using the same rib+stripe trick: 

And then I added a second pair of tube socks with fingering-weight yarn as well:

I made some DK-weight tube socks for Baby G earlier (in between fingering and worsted weight) and her mom said they worked very well and requested more.  So now she will have a pair in each of three weights of yarn and she can tell me which weight she likes best and I can make a few more in that weight. 

Credit for the tube sock idea: "Genevieve's Tube Socks" from Ravelry, created by one of my favorite knitting podcasters.  The idea is that for a baby who is growing rapidly and not walking yet there's no real reason for shaping a heel into a sock and a simple tube is good enough.  They are also knit in ribbing, so they're really stretchy and won't fall off so easily and will fit the baby through a few growth spurts.  I wish I had heard about these when my kids were small!  They could kick off socks in the blink of an eye.  The design made the socks 11" long and I couldn't quite picture shoving a baby's foot into a sock that long, so I made them a bit shorter (7-8"). 

Finally, here is a picture of everything together:

I hope Baby G and her family enjoy these.  I certainly enjoyed knitting them.

For fellow knitters, I will soon have notes about these projects on Ravelry (marglamb).