Elizabeth Z’s Baby Surprise Jacket

Posted on November 22nd, 2006 by EllyMae

It’s just plain FUN to knit something that EZ designed. The Baby Surprise jacket is no exception. I bought the kit from EZ and daughter Meg Swanson’s Schoolhouse Press. It comes with 4 little skeins of Shetland wool in jumper-weight. It knits into a wonky rectangle, which then folds up into a little sweater.

I decided to finish it with an applied I-cord. In keeping with my tendency to grab what’s handy, I didn’t have a double point needle of the same size as I’d picked up stitches with, so I used a size smaller. Can’t say I really recommend doing that, as it has a tendency to pull in a little bit, but it seems to be OK.

This close up also shows another one of my blindly mushing on mistakes. I have a color change that’s one way on one side, and another way on the other side. If you knit it, and you change colors, my suggestion would be to not do the color change at the row where you increase 10 stitches in one row evenly across the back. Do it either before that or after it…or go to the Yahoo group KnitBabySurprise and join up. They’ve got some great suggestions for how to avoid this - (and fabulous pictures of finished Baby Surprise jackets), which, of course, I read AFTER I had already gotten to the point of no return on it. Oh well! As I’ve always said, sewing or knitting for dolls and babies is forgiving. They don’t notice your glaring mistakes. I’m chosing to call it a “design feature.”