A leap of faith

I am far from the first, or one hundred and first, or even possibly the one hundred thousand and first knitter to have ever made this observation, but Elizabeth Zimmerman was some kind of genius. How else can you explain how something that looks like this,

becomes this adorable little number.

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman, Knitting Workshop version
Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Superwash in Natural (dyed yellow, orange and green) and coral (overdyed red). I'm not sure of the exact yardage, but probably somewhere around 350 yds.
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm
Comments: I intended this for approximately a 6 month size, so I used worsted weight yarn. Loved the construction and the knitting - mindless garter stitch and spinning are just about the only things my brain can tolerate these days, so this was perfect for the evenings. Total knitting time was approximately a week.

Buttons are small wood ones from my stash.

I ran out of the requested colorway, and had to dye another skein to finish it off, but I think the red fits pretty well with the handpainted stuff. I was worried I was going to get pooling, but somehow I managed to avoid the worst of that.

I love the miters and how they look with this yarn. Very cool.

So when I blocked this thing, it grew. Quite a bit. Now it looks more like a one year old size. But so be it - the niece will live in Boston, so hopefully she'll get some use out of it next winter and spring.

FF: BSJ production, Part 1

Note: apparently Fiber Friday is not limited to spinning, since today's post is about dyeing. Consider yourselves warned.

Last weekend we had a lovely visit from the siblings-in-law* who came down to make off with some of our baby stuff in anticipation of their firstborn's arrival in July. And while Mom-to-be is a knitter, she hasn't been feeling the motivation to do much baby knitting these days. So I, as Auntie-to-be, have taken up the gauntlet. I had some undyed Swish superwash leftover from my Fabulous Intarsia Experiment, so I handed SIL my Acid Dye Quick Reference and told her to pick some colors.

This is an example of how it's a good idea to get input from the intended recipients of a knitted item, because I would never have put these colors together.

The yarn soaked overnight, and I squeezed it out and laid it on some plastic wrap while I go the dyes ready. It was a bit windy, so quite a bit of VM ended up in the dye package, but it did no harm to the yarn, so far as I can tell. I used highly technological means to apply the dye (plastic water bottles with holes punched in the lids so I could squeeze the dye out). The parents picked Sun Yellow, Golden Yellow and Emerald, but I used artistic license to add just a squirt of Fuschia to the mix.

I wrapped up the yarn, put it in the roaster, and then took it back out again to spray it with citric acid (oops!). Then back in the roaster on a rack above about 1.5 inches of water at 225 degrees for about 2 hours. I rinsed out the yarn and hung it to dry.

Reskeined,

And balled up ready to go.

This will become a Baby Surprise Jacket (BSJ) - I'm just hoping I have enough yarn for it! According to Ravelry's fabulous BSJ Wiki, it will be a near thing, but I've got some other colors in the stash that can be used or overdyed to be more appropriate. So I'm off on another Zimmerman adventure.

* What do you call your sibling-in-law's spouse anyway? Sibling-in-law once removed? These are the things that keep me up at night.