Not too long ago, I made my first Baby Surprise Jacket, a cunning piece of knitting engineering designed by Elizabeth Zimmermann. I don't really have any reason to knit a baby sweater at the time. I know one or two people who are expecting who might appreciate a hand knit sweater for their baby-to-be. However, I mostly wanted to knit it for the challenge.

And while the actually knitting of it wasn't that much of a challenge, I mostly wanted to make it so I could figure out how it goes together. And now that I have, I feel the need to test the limits of the design. It's designed to be knit flat in one piece, sew up two seams at the shoulders and it's a basic garter stitch cardigan. So first I started thinking about knitting it in stockinette. Which led me to think of how I could create this piece in the round since I'd rather knit stockinette in the round than flat.

So that naturally leads to attempting the BSJ in fair isle or stranded knitting. It seems crazy or perhaps foolhardy. However, I think it could be done. I did some searching and couldn't find any examples of anyone else trying it. So here's my attempt so far:



I'm using the Knit Picks Palette yarn and if you're on Ravelry, you can check out my project page. So far so good. I completed the decrease section and have started the increase section. The next big hurdle is the section where I'm supposed to go back and forth to create length. I have a vague idea of how I want to handle that, but I guess I'll see if it's successful once I try it.

Now this is the knitting pattern that has been my quest for the last year or so. It's truly inspiring. Eunny Jang is a fair isle goddess.

Yes, even more than Alice herself. I mean wow. Shaping and a fitted sleeve. How often does one see that in stranded colorwork? Not very, that's for sure.

I'm pretty confident I could design a shaped garment, but I don't think I can design the fair isle motifs well enough to be pleased with them.

So, how long do I have to wait for the pattern? *taps foot in antici...pation*

Once upon a time, I was working on a fair isle vest.*

I have finally completed the vest. And even though it was 88 degrees today, I wore it. My office is freezing anyway, might as well, right?
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Actual knitting content...what a shock!

Here's where I am on the Snowflake and Arrows Vest so far:



I'm really enjoying knitting this...I think fair isle may quickly become a passion. My only problem is that the designs that I really want to knit don't actually exist as far as I can tell. I want sweaters with waist shaping and set in sleeves. Which usually isn't a problem, but I have yet to find a fair isle pattern that fits that bill.

So back to the vest, I think I'm going to try some waist shaping during the next repeat. *crosses fingers* I don't to worry about the set in sleeves bit for this because it's a vest, of course. I really hate how I look in dropped sleeves so it's just not an option. Clearly I need to try to design my own...but I'm not sure that I have the skill set for that.

Can't hurt to try though!

I finished my Koigu socks a few weeks back and keep forgetting to post pictures of them.

I got the idea for these socks from the cover of the Vogue socks book. I started them over a year ago. But I had them on the back burner working on other projects and such. Hooray! They are finally finished and I've even worn them twice. I'm very happy with the way they tuned out and I enjoyed the fair isle technique so much that I wish I could afford to make an entire sweater out of that yarn to match my socks. Add that to the dream knitting list.

So instead, I found a lovely fair isle vest to try out. There's even a knit along blog started for it. It's the Snowflakes and Arrows Vest from KnitPicks It's a very interesting design and although the pattern doesn't go up to my size, I'm altering it as I go.

The sample is knit up with black and purple and while purple is my favorite color, I don't wear it very often. So I decided to knit the whole thing in shades of brown. Here's my swatch:



And here's my progress so far.



The second photo shows of the colors best. The first one had bit too much direct sunlight. So far, my swatch seems to be fairly accurate. Too soon to tell really how well it will fit. The photo of the original makes it look as though the garment has some waist shaping. However, there's none indicated in the pattern and upon closer examination, it looks as though the vest was arranged that way for the photo. Which is a bummer, but perhaps I'll alter it a bit to nip in at the waist. My waist is ten inches smaller than my hips and my bust so I think that would be more flattering.