Nooo... it can't be the..

baby surprise jacket, can it? I have not read Ms EZ's books, and neither have I watched her DVD/tape. I did not even know of the existence of such a pattern - rolling your eyes, are you? It so happened that at Stitches, as I went about studying the knitting techniques showcased by the knitwear on display, I found every now and again, a curious baby jacket with a perfect T shape.

The jackets were knit in garter and had some curious shaping - like the kind where you use the 'dec2' stitch every alternate row to form a right-angle in your knit fabric.

Once I returned, I parked the observation and went about with life as usual. Ie, until I read Ms YH's recent post 'Garter is good' where she linked to this previous post. Ah, so the pattern I'd seen at Stitches was copyright Ms EZ and had a name to it!

The knitting community is remarkably polite (save for hints of racist attitudes I run into every now and again). I googled and found that noone was rude enough to squeel the pattern to the online knitting community. Now feeling warm and fuzzy and also equipped with lotsa pictures (google image search) of the jacket, I did what anyone in my position would've: try a hand at architecting the pattern myself.

So out came some graph paper and tape. I cut 2 T shapes, cut one of them in the center (front of jacket) and notched out the square neck as well. I taped the lower edge of the sleeves leaving the upper edges free. I also taped the sides together.

Before I started though, I had 2 options for cast on:
1) lower edge of the baby cardi and knit upwards (seemed more intuitive)
2) upper edge (though I hadn't yet understood this bit)

I left all upper edges free so I could analyze the options using the paper template.

Paper mock-up

I pondered over my 'sculpting' options. There are 3:
1) inc symmetrically
2) dec symmetrically
3) short rows

Thus equipped, I figured out one method (of many, I'm certain) for achieving the end product.

And launched:

So far so good. Number of stitches CO: 20+9+9 = 38

The completed piece looks somewhat like a flying magic carpet, no? :)
all knit up and cast off

And there it was, the curious jacket, the tricky recipe uncovered:
The back.
Observe the change of stitch-orientation on the sleeves

Scale of the miniscule jacket