Surprise!

I love Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Sweater. It's fairly mindless knitting, nice to alternate with a more complex project or two, and when you're done, you take a piece of knitting that looks like this:














Then you make a couple of folds, sew a couple of seams and add some buttons, and you end up with this:















This one was made with TLC Baby, which is a 100% acrylic, sport weight yarn. I made another one of these earlier this fall, in a blue-yellow-green colorway that better shows the mitered sides of the sweater. I thought this one, in "bunny print," would do the same, but instead it made smaller areas of color. It's pretty anyway.

I started a pair of socks today. I wrote a pattern that I am very pleased with so far, and I'm really enjoying working with the Trekking XXL. It's the softest sock yarn I've ever used, and the subtle color changes look great.

I also began a Tomten Sweater in cranberry Woolease. It's coming along well, though I put it aside while finishing up the surprise sweater. I love garter stitch, especially on baby things, but I need a little break. After finishing my black and red ribby cardi, I swore I would never again make something that would need to have a zipper installed, but I couldn't resist the lure of another charming EZ baby sweater. Sigh. I looked at the cardi again today, and the zipper isn't as bad as I remembered, other than not quite reaching the collar of the sweater. I don't think anyone will notice but me.

It's cloudy and a little windy today, but this morning we raked leaves anyhow, and now you can hardly tell. It seems like there are a lot more of them this year, but I don't suppose that's possible.