I made a BSJ (that’s Baby Surprise Jacket if you haven’t made one yet) for my little niece.

It was definitely a surprise, mostly because of how odd it looked. Here, let me show you.

See? Giant blob o yarn.

Well, once I finished I decided to take pictures of the folding process.

First, the primordial blob.

Now, at the top you’ll see button holes. That’s one side of the front. You can see a sleeve trying to form there, too, pointing up and to the left slightly.

And there, down at the bottom of this next pic you can see the same.

Okay, overview pic. You can see button holes right and left edges, but see how nicely turned the upper right and left corners are? That’s because those are actually the bottom of the button bands–actually the bottom of the sweater. Remember, for me, it was a blob. This is me figuring out what the heck I’m looking at, so I didn’t rotate any pix. Yours may look equally odd.

So, since the sleeves were trying to assert themselves at the top of the button hole edges and had to be opposite the nicely rounded bottom edges (I did an attached I-cord all the way around)

Now I put my hands at the top middle and the bottom middle (between the nicely rounded edges and between the burgeoning sleeves) and I lifted the sweater to fold it in half. Top of this picture you can again see button holes and now you can clearly see a sleeve pointing north.

I rotated the whole thing, opened it, adjusted those button hole areas to overlap and VOILA! SURPRISE!!!

Now, HOW La Zimmerman figured that out is a mystery. And for me, having that I-cord band to hide the seaming of the shoulders was just spectacular. Howevvah. I’m not a real fan of the garter stitch thing. I like flat. I like sleek. I’m not so much into the bumpy thing.

I mentioned this on the podcast and IMMEDIATELY got these words of warning from Lee:

Heather:
The stockinette BSJ does not work.   I made one and it comes out slightly deformed.   Remember, garter stitch is square but stockinette stitch is not.
Attached are 3 photos.   1 Stockinette BSJ and 2 regular BSJ’s.   You’ll see what I mean.

I’m including her pix below (you can see more of her handiwork at sereneknitter.blogspot.com. See how perfect the first two are? And the third, in stockinette…not so much.

Lesson learned.