Saturday, April 17, 2010

FO - Adult Surprise Jacket

When my mom first taught me how to knit, she was your typical knitter of her generation. She didn't have many patterns but she had knitted for some time so had reached the point where she didn't need a pattern to make the basics. She had two books, Mary Thomas' Knitting Book and the Reader's Digest Book of Needlework. But she never did any knitting patterns from Elizabeth Zimmermann. I don't know if she ever watched her Knitting Workshop or other TV programs.

When I took up knitting later, I discovered Elizabeth's books and methods. Her writing encouraged me. My first lace shawl was her Pi Shawl. I tried the Baby Surprise and after a couple of attempts was able to complete it. I've looked at the Adult Surprise Jacket and wondered what I could do with it. The possibilities were endless.

When the February Lady sweater was popular last year, a number of my buddies knitted it. I tried it on but I didn't like how it looked on me. But as the months went by I wanted to make a sweater. Other projects were on the needles and wheel that required my attention. During the secret project time I revisited the Adult Surprise Jacket and looked through my stash to see what I could do with it. It naturally lent itself to being striped but the examples I had seen didn't appeal to me that much. However, the construction intrigued me so I went hunting in my stash to see what I could come up with. Several colors were in my Cascade 220 stash to do the job, so I gathered them up to hold until I could start the sweater.

The sweater took 2 skeins of 6 colors and one skein of ivory. It was knitted on size 7 needles and took me less than a month to complete. A friend of mine had said she had done it in one color and found herself growing bored. The color striping made my sweater fun to knit like self striping socks so in no time I had it completed.

6 comments:

Linda said...

Amazing. Good for you. It looks intriguing. I need to check that out, it is very pretty.

ZarahPDX said...

The pictures don't do it justice - it was great to watch the process!

RenateS. said...

What a great job! I love it. Renate

Fudge said...

Nice work! those are good colors for you. I have Elizabeth Zimmerman's book but haven't tried it yet-- still hooked up with patterns.--Fudge

Entre Nous said...

Oh I adore your blog! Just surfed in from Gaud-Knows-Where and was instantly intrigued by your new sweater. I didn't learn of Zimmerman until I was forced to take up knitting very long scarves while the hypochondriac I WAS married to spent most of his free time in the hospital trying to be diagnosed with some incurable, yet non-fatal, disease.
Suddenly my mother's knitting lessons all came back to me and I started hangin out at the coolest LYS.

Now, alas, the socks I am working on sit next to me screaming "HELLOOOOOOO?????" whie I surf cool knitting blogs! Had to add you to my blog roll.

More pics of FO's please!

kayT said...

I keep being drawn back to this sweater; the colors are amazing and using ivory to separate them is brilliant; makes the colors really pop and looks so professional. Fit is perfect too. I have had the pattern for this for a while and I guess it's time. Thanks for the inspiration.