EZ Baby Surprise Jacket

I've spent the past week working on an Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise Jacket, for a cousin's baby shower. I knit like a maniac for days because I couldn't wait to see how this ingenious design was going to work. The sweater is knit entirely in garter stitch, in one flat piece. The finished knitting looks like this:


A little bit of folding, and it starts to look like a garment:



Fold a bit more, sew up the shoulder seams, and you get this adorable sweater:



I'll definitely be making more of these.

Pattern: Babies Garter-Stitch Surprise Jacket, from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop.
Yarn: Socks that Rock heavyweight superwash merino in the Barney Rubble colorway, 7 oz/350 yds. The sweater used all but a few yards of the skein. This yarn was a great choice for a baby garment -- beautiful colors, very soft, and machine washable.
Gauge: 5 sts per inch on size 6 needles.
Modifications: My only variation was using a slightly heavier yarn than the pattern called for, 5 sts per inch instead of 6. This first time around, I couldn't envision the finished product enough to even think about changing it. Next time, though, I think I'll put the buttonholes one ridge closer to the edge of the jacket.

Shetland Triangle Shawl

Well, here it is -- my first post on my new blog! A couple of people on the Knitty Coffeeshop responded to my posts about this shawl by asking to see photos, and this seemed like as good a way as any to make them available. I'll post more later as I figure out how to use Blogger, but for now, here's the shawl:




Shetland Triangle Shawl, from Wrap Style.
Knitted in Alchemy Synchronicity yarn, Foxglove colorway, on size 7 Addi Turbos.

I followed the example of another blogger by using a heavier yarn than the pattern called for, and by eliminating rows 13 and 14 of the edge pattern to make the scalloped edge less pointy.

I really enjoyed making this shawl. The yarn is the softest I've ever used -- 50% merino and 50% silk. These photos don't do justice to the color, which is a rich, purple-red that reminds me of the color of red onions. The curving leaf-shaped design looks complicated, but the pattern was simpler to memorize than I expected. I finished the shawl in under a week. And while I was excited to see the finished product, I was a bit sorry to be finished with it. I may make another, maybe larger, in a different yarn. Maybe just a different color of the same luscious yarn.