Baby Surprise Jacket

I first heard of Elizabeth Zimmerman when a friend handed me a book with a picture of a women in  a dated looking Icelandic sweater.  "You'll never need another pattern if you read this," she said.  Really, I thought.  I was hoping for some advice on what was wrong with my sleeve in progress.  I leafed through the book and it appeared to be filled with full pages of words with the occasional squiggly hand drawn picture of the garment being discussed.  This was no ordinary pattern book.  I didn't have the patience at the time to read it.  My friend Karen saw the Baby Surprise sweater in the store and is a woman of incredible patience.  She read the book with the instructions, knit the sweater in a day and declared Elizabeth a genius.  Rae recently knit up the EZ Pi shawl in both a sock and worsted weight yarn and I think I am finally ready to try my hand at the Elizabeth Zimmerman approach to knitting.  So many famous knitting people swear by it.  Including Jennifer who had the second of her two-part Baby Surprise workshop this past Saturday. Participants happily learned how to turn an oddly shaped swatch of garter stitch into an incredible baby sweater.  - Liz