Future knitting project(s)

Last month I had made a post about wanting to knit up Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket but couldn't find the pattern anywhere. A few weeks ago a fellow Bitchy Bee knit night goer offered me the use of her copy of the pattern!! I was soooo excited and now can't wait to start the jacket. I'm hoping that some time this week I'll be able to get some yarn so I can start pronto. I'll admit that I'm a little nervous and hesitant to start this jacket as the pattern doesn't have straight up set sizes, but rather an idea of sizing based on your guage/yarn thickness/needles. I would love to knit this so that it will fit my little one when he's a little over a year old. But knowing my luck, the jacket will end up fitting a chihuahua or something to that extent.

I was going to start knitting this:
But decided not to, even before acquiring the BSJ pattern. I just don't feel confident enough in my intarsia knitting skills to give it a go yet. Now that I've gained an idea of how to accomplish a neater and cleaner appearance/finish of the intarsia, thanks to the Rollergirl knee pad project, I still want to practice the technique some more before moving on to the main knitting event. I was contemplating knitting up the pants first, since the aforementioned knee pad project really helped me in nailing down the color/yarn changes for stripes and how to carry the yarn over when not in use. I decided against this idea, since it's the sweater that I really want and the pants would be a bonus if I had enough yarn left over. I'm thinking maybe I should find more small projects that include intarsia in the pattern to build my confidence. In the meantime, who knows how long it will take for me to knit up the BSJ!