Pandemic BSJ

I'm six weeks into working from home and tired of labeling projects with the tag "pandemic"!

I mentioned a couple posts back that my favorite baby down the street is about to grow out of his newborn-sized BSJ, and that I had cast on for another. I made the exact same pattern, but I used sport weight yarn rather than fingering. The result is a little bit bigger baby sweater. I used Felici Sport for this one (a sadly discontinued yarn which is perfect for baby wear). At 164 yards per 50-gram skein, two skeins is just enough to eke out one of these lovelies. I've had this colorway in stash since 2012 (!!!) and I was saving two skeins for a BSJ. Its time had come!

I think the mitered parts of this sweater look especially good in a self-striping yarn, and since this one is machine-washable and very soft, it's perfect for baby garments.

If you haven't knit a BSJ, you really should - for pure entertainment value. Plus, over 28,000 other Ravelers have knit it - get on the bus! This sweater is knit flat in garter stitch, with strategic increases and decreases, plus a little bit of short-row action that is a lot like a heel flap. This is what it looks like when it comes off the needles:

Then you do a bit of origami-like folding, and voila! It's a surprise jacket! For a baby!

While I had yarn in stash, I did not have any appropriate buttons. The last time I knit a sport weight BSJ, my buttons were .75" - so I went online to look for something similar. Luckily, my local JoAnn had curbside pickup service AND they had buttons that looked like they would work. I zoomed over to the store and got my buttons so I could finish, pandemic be damned. That baby isn't going to stop growing and he deserves to be ensconced in soft, warm wool.

Felici is usually released in limited edition colorways. Sometimes they have worsted Felici - I'll keep an eye out and get some if it appears again (because that would result in a sweater that's another size bigger than the sport sweater). But I really hope they bring back Felici Sport sometime.

I'm already plotting my next BSJ for a baby due in October. The mother's favorite color is yellow, which gives me a great place to start. More pandemic garter stitch is forthcoming...