For a while now I’ve been intending to get the pattern for Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Baby Surprise Jacket.  For a Very Famous Pattern in the online knitting world it’s a surprising thing that the pattern itself isn’t available to buy as a download: for $10 + p&p you can get your very own TOME mailed to your house. You get the original pattern, which is more recipe than pattern (knitting designer after my own heart, clearly), a modern more conventionally laid out pattern, collar variations and instructions for larger child & adult sizes. You can see why they haven’t made it available as a download. The printed pattern is pretty good VFM, although if I’m honest I can’t see me embarking on an adult version.

The surprise is that the jacket is all knitted in one piece and the shaping is achieved with strategically places increases and decreases. The only seaming is across the top of the arms, then sew on the buttons and hey presto.

When my new step-brother Tim announced he was pregnant (so to speak)(Mrs Tim is called Julie) I saw an ideal opportunity.

Mark at knit-wise did his very best to help me pick out gender unspecific colours, but despite our best efforts and combined brains I have to say that it was a dismal failure.

Without going for a beige/cream combo – which isn’t really me – it’s really hard to go for a genuinely indeterminate set of colours. Step-mother said something neutral would be good, but I chose to ignore that advice.

So, we chose a green-with-colours-in, a yellow & navy which were 2 of the colours which were in the green.

Yarn quantities are a bit hit & miss because I bought roughly what the pattern said and have (er – spoiler alert) made 2 jackets so far and still have enough left for at least 1 more…

I made the first one and it knitted up very very quickly. It was finished within the week, from a knitting perspective. Note the caveat there.

This was early August, and it was around this time that one of my work colleagues Ciaran (‘s wife) had a baby boy. So, given the speed at which jacket #1 was knit, and the large quantity of yarn left over, I thought I’d whip up a quick one for Gabe.

Again, knitting was done very quickly. I changed the stripe combo a bit, just to shake things up a bit.

Looking at them, I really wasn’t that happy with the unisex nature of the colour scheme. It didn’t feel unisex at all, not even a little bit.

Given that Lily lives here and has demanded plenty of pink stuff over the years, the stash is not short of pink yarn. I found some which will hopefully be soft enough for Very Small Girls and whipped up a third.

It’s fair to say that by this point I was very nearly done with the marvel that is BSJ for now.

It took me at least 3 weeks to get around to buying appropriate buttons for each of the jackets.

And until this Monday (the day when Julie was induced due to baby-non-appearance) to sew the damn things on.

Ciaran seemed very pleased with Gabe’s new jacket & seemed to think that he was still small enough to fit it. He remarked on how seasonally appropriate it is. And I don’t think he was just being kind because (frankly) he’s not like that.

It turns out that the baby I knitted a boy’s jacket for is a girl. So it’s just as well I made a girl’s one as well.

welcome to the world, Sophie Alice, hope you like your new jacket. Love from step-aunty-jude

PS. Does anyone know a baby boy who’s feeling a bit chilly? I’ve got a spare jacket here…