Baby Surprise Blob

I've finally done it! I knit Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket. Actually, I knit two of them.

I've wanted to try this pattern for a long time. I love Elizabeth Zimmermann's stories and her attitude. I want to knit lots of her patterns. But they require thinking...and thinking, sometimes, is not my strong suit. At least not thinking that involves numbers.

I made up my mind when I found out my friend Sara was having twins that these were the babies who needed Baby Surprise Jackets. Iowa winters, love their mom, etc, etc. All kinds of reasons these babies deserve these jackets.

Sara makes small babies, if her first baby is any indication. And twins tend to be small babies, because while God has a sense of humor, he is also kind and just. So I wanted to make preemie sizes. And I wanted to make the jackets using EZ's own lovely and terse instructions. (Dictionary.com says terse means "neatly or effectively concise; brief and pithy". That's EZ.) I did NOT want to stoop to using the newly released, newly written out step by mysterious step, pattern.

Ha. Remember God's sense of humor? And Elizabeth Zimmermann's pith? I used the new instructions, line by line. And even then, unpithed, I could not make preemie BSJ's. So Sara better cook a couple big twins or Iowa better have an extended winter this year..

Here's what I ended up with after all the knitting and row-following:

Joe and I marvelled at it. We folded it and unfolded it, in awe of the genius who once thought to herself, "Hey. I could knit this shapeless thing, and then stitch it up in two places. And it will be a sweater." I wondered how on earth that could happen to a person. Joe decided she must have taken a made sweater and deconstructed it, then worked backwards. To test his theory, he cut up a t-shirt.

Sort of looked like my blob. Here's what the blobs turned in to....

And won't these babies look great in those sweaters?