World, I gotta tell you, there’s a new baby boom headed your way and it’s originating in this middle-sized city at the bottom of the world, namely, Melbourne, Australia.

When the boom arrives on your shores you’ll know the babies by their outfits. If I have anything to do with it, they’ll be wearing one of the knitting world’s most covetable patterns, a knitting pattern so famous it has its own acronym.

The BSJ, or Baby Surprise Jacket to the uninitiated, was created in 1968 by the very droll Elizabeth Zimmerman. There are thousands of sites on the internet dedicated to the knitting of this garment. Holding the pattern in one’s hand is akin to handling a recently unearthed ikon, coming as it does via only one route: snail mail from deep somewhere in the American prairie.

And it’s unlike any other pattern I’ve read. Here’s Elizabeth at about row 10:

Work will start to look very odd indeed, but trust me and press on.

Here she is a little later:

Hope you are still with me.

And when you get to the end, there’s this:

Funny-looking object, isn’t it?

By which she means an object looking a bit like my first 20 rows above, only bigger and curlier and even less baby-jacket-like. Still, after 44 years of cult status, I’m prepared to believe the object does somehow turn into a baby-jacket. By which time, she says,

The baby will probably be unmoved by this offering, but the parents may well be charmed and your friends will be amazed.

***

Yarn is Sirdar’s Sublime, Baby Cashmere Merino Silk in Shade 0124 which is a lot more aqua than it appears in the photo.