Monday, March 17, 2008

BSJ madness

I've become a wee bit obsessed with the Baby Surprise Jacket (BSJ) pattern. And by a wee bit I mean that I've made 3 now and am going to be starting with a 4th soon. I hardly ever make a pattern over and over (unless it is something like fingerless gloves or socks, of course) because it bores me. This pattern, however, is the perfect quick thoughtless knit.

I had 2 balls of DK baby yarn in my stash that I wanted to use up in yellow and blue. So I started on an all yellow one. I proceeded to run out of yarn on the button band and had to buy another skein of yellow. (How is this helping to deplete the stash?) While there I decided to buy a pink skein, too. In order to make sure there was enough blue, I put in a stripe of yellow and did the button band in yellow. Wouldn't you know it but there was more than enough blue in the ball to make the added yellow completely unnecessary. Bah! Both the original yellow ball and the blue ball were supposed to be the same yardage but obviously one of them was lying. The next baby sweater I made was pink with yellow stripe and button band. I now have tons of pink left over so I might get one more ball of pink and make a completely pink jacket. Two of my coworkers offered to buy one off of me, one for a new granddaughter and one for a new niece.

If I do sell the jackets, I think I will swear them to secrecy that they got them from me just so I won't have to keep making them for people. There is a possibility that Thalia will be having the BSJ as a class at the Needling Yarn in the summer so I could also point people to that. I just don't want to be stuck making stuff for people. That sounds harsh but is true. After a while the newness and charm of the BSJ will surely wear off and I won't be interested in making another one for a very long while. But that would be the only thing that coworkers would ask for. So, yes, I think swearing them to secrecy is a very good idea.

3 comments:

Janelle said...

Photos, please!
And did you try making a BSJ with sock yarn? :)
I wonder if double-stranding would do the trick...

Anne said...

So funny story about the pictures. I accidentally put the memory card of my camera into the wrong slot on my computer. It fell down and now I have to take off the tower's cover in order to get it out. I'll take pictures on another memory card, I promise!

Haven't gotten to the double stranded sock yarn yet but I hope to soon. :)

Anonymous said...

Anne,
I'm trying to get gauge with some dk weight sock yarn for the BSJ, because I had just decided today to try one as a gift for a coworker. Now I see you have been successful. What needle size have you been using? How long has it been taking you to knit them? Any advice as I get started this weekend?
Thanks,
Kristi-from-college :-)