Baby Surprise Jacket

I'm currently teaching a class at Riverside Yarns on how to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket. (And before anyone asks, I'm not pregnant. I'm just teaching the class. But thanks for asking.) This week is the final week of the class. I've been knitting along with my students to have a sweater at various points of construction (Colleen also has a finished sample at the store). I forgot to do the sleeve puff the first time around and ended up ripping back and doing slightly different stripes. It seems to be the season for Baby Surprise Jackets... I know of two others that are also knitting one. Was it the SpinOff article that prompted the rash of people knitting this sweater?

First attempt

Current sweater

Yes, the lighting is very different. (And within about 25 minutes of taking this photo the sky was black and the house was being pelted with hail. Weird weather today...) The darkest stripe of red on the new sweater is the same red that was used to cast on the first version of the sweater (the gray yarn is also the same). The button band will start out in gray, but probably switch to the light pink as I'm not sure I have enough yarn to do the whole band. Although I'd love to finish it today, I have to leave it for class to show what the sweater should look like at this stage.

This sweater has been a lot of fun to knit so far. Even though I don't have a need for baby sweaters, I could see myself knitting another to use up more scraps of yarn that are plaguing the stash.