A Thank You Gift

A few weeks ago we acquired a hand-me-down grill from the guy I share a cubicle with at work. It's very nice and quite large and only needed a little bit of cleaning up. It was very generous of him to give it to us, but honestly, I've been feeling a little guilty that he wouldn't let us give him any money for it. So, in order to assuage my guilt and also for an excuse to knit for a little girl, I decided to make something for his 8 month old daughter.

I've had my eye on this pattern on knitty.com for quite some time now. My old roommate made it once, and I think the baby in the picture is just adorable. Also, I happened to have most of the yarn in my stash already.



I used a variation of the pattern that I found on Ravelry. It was worked in the round to make a dress instead of a pinafore. I still kept the adorable pockets though!



I thought the bodice was looking a little bare, so I made this rose to go along with it. I barely had enough purple. I even had to leave out a few rows.



This button was the first one I saw when I got to the button section of the craft store and the colors were PERFECT!



The dress keeps rolling up at the bottom. I tried steam blocking it after I read a couple of blog posts that said acrylic yarn actually CAN be steam blocked. It helped a little, and it smoothed out the dress nicely, but it still keeps rolling at the bottom. I guess I just need to grow up and start using big girl yarn (i.e. NOT acrylic).



I'm still undecided about these pants. I like them on their own, but I don't love the brown with the dress. I think the brown and orange together look too much like a Girl Scout uniform. I went to four different stores trying to find the right shirt and leggings, and this is the closest I could come. I found the perfect purple leggings at Old Navy, but the only size they had was 3T and I don't feel like ordering them online and waiting for them to come. Also, as a side rant, what's with all the baby clothes having things printed on them? It was SO HARD to find solid colors with no ironic screen printed images or sayings about how much the baby loves < insert family member here >. Seriously, is a plain white onesie with a nice collar so much to ask for?