The latest goings-on at Ravelry have really pleased me.  Mostly, it was their rejection of hate. There was a lot of blowback, but they just said “no” to all of it. Steadfast rejection of hate is the only way.  That’s mostly why I love Ravelry.

I Love Ravelry Even Though They Failed Me!

Or so I thought.  So here are the things I love about Ravelry (other than their stance against hate):

1. I store my entire library of knitting books and magazines on Ravelry
2. Their yarn database is amazingly useful linking directly to places to buy if you want it
3. The search function on their patterns is fantastic and incredibly complete
4. Selling my own patterns has never been easier
5. I can track projects on the site (which I haven’t done all that much in the last few years)
6. Their forums are one more place I can communicate with the guys who go to the Men’s Knitting Retreats

So here’s where I thought they failed me.  And I apologize, but I will be using acronyms today – BSJ = Baby Surprise Jacket and EZ = Elizabeth Zimmermann.

I bought some yarn and decided to use it to make a BSJ.  I own two Elizabeth Zimmermann books (Knitters Almanac and The Opinionated Knitter) and a bunch of magazines.  So I did a search of the Pattern database for the BSJ pattern, filtering on “In My Library” as a search criteria.

You’ll note that the Adult Surprise Jacket is in one of my Knitter’s Magazines, but no BSJ.  I was bummed to have to buy a pattern that I really should have in my vast library.

I’m looking for the cheapest way to obtain the pattern, and realize that someone thinks that the BSJ pattern is in The Opinionated Knitter.  Which I own! So I look and sure enough, it’s on page 102.  Good news is that I own the pattern.  Yay!  Bad news is the Ravelry database has let me down for the first time ever.

So I decide to try and see if I can have their database updated to include this pattern as available in The Opinionated Knitter, and I realize it already is!  I check my library and shamefacedly realize I never added this book to my library!

After adding the book, I check the search again, and lo and behold, the BSJ is a pattern I now officially own!

So Ravelry didn’t really let me down after all.  It was my error.

I’m back to “I Love Ravelry” again!

Current Knitting

I ended up finishing knitting my first BSJ.

It’s tradition to show this blob of knitting and then the origamic transformation to a proper baby jacket.

I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Her pattern is amazingly good for being typed on a manual typewriter and having so many changes in number of stitches.

Lisa G commented about the BSJ in my last blog entry:

The history piece to remember is that this little garment was published around 1972. No ravelry, no craft council pattern standards just a lovely lady with needles, wool and a need.

She is so right.  I would note that this pattern requires some ability to figure things out by yourself.  But there are tons of video tutorials on the garment that help.

One final bonus is that I found a set of 12 vintage buttons that are perfect for finishing this jacket.

I did some additional work on the two other WIPs, but I’ll show you that in my next blog entry.

Readers’ Comments/Questions

Donna Finnell writes about the BSJ as well:

I’ve seen the surprise baby jacket on several blogs and love the look. I just wish there was a crochet version. Knitting is not my thing, but I love to see the work of others, especially yours!

Here’s where Ravelry comes to the rescue again!

You can filter patterns on “Craft” to get crochet-only patterns.  It looks like there are a couple of BSJ-like patterns in crochet!