Finished! Baby Sasha's Dress

I remember reading a story in my childhood, a story about a Japanese painter who never quite finished his paintings because once they were complete, the paintings would come to life. He painted a picture of a crane but left out its eye, and when a drop of ink accidentally fell on the very spot where that eye would have been, the crane flew off his canvas and into the sky.

Sometimes I don't want to quite finish something because I'm just not ready to let it go. Like this little baby dress, for example. It was very easy to knit, and I'm eager to send it to the recipient, but when I finished all the knitting and hiding of ends and the blocking last week, I somehow couldn't bring myself to add the button and the ribbon tie, not yet. It just seemed a little too precious.

Today, I was ready. It took all of five minutes to sew on that button and thread the grosgrain ribbon through the eyelets and hold the ends to a flame so they wouldn't ravel. Then I spent the rest of Daniel's morning nap time trying to get a good picture. Damn, is fuchsia hard to photograph. Also, if my neighbors suspected I was a little off for running outside to take pictures of knitting every so often, I probably confirmed it when, in a fit of inspiration, I dashed out to the front yard in socks but no shoes, hung the dress from an empty bird-feeder pole, and walked around and around it, trying to get a good shot. Ah, well. It takes all kinds, yes?

Here's the front:



The back:



A close-up of that sweet little button and ribbon-tie:



Now that it's actually finished, I'm feeling very eager to send it off. B's baby is only a few weeks old, so I doubt she's big enough for it yet (I made the 3-6 month size, though I think baby sizes run small). I had planned to make some little beaded shoes to go with it, but now that seems a little fussy. I suppose I'll mull over it for a day or so.

Pattern: from Simple Baby Knits by Debbie Bliss
Yarn: Patons Grace in "ruby," 100% mercerized cotton, a little over 2 skeins
Gauge: 25 st and 34 rows = 4" on #5 needles
Modifications: Instead of knitting in pieces, I did the dress in the round up to the armholes. I had a teeny bit of math to do because I'm anal enough to eliminate stitches for seaming.