I haven't forgotten

I haven’t forgotten you. I just haven’t wanted to bore you with the mundane details of my life recently. Basically, I have been knitting, reading, nesting, baking a baby, going to classes and working. I know it’s dull, but try to stay awake. I finished this:

and have been knitting up the Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I’m going to say it, although you may not want to hear it, I don’t like it at all. It’s a tedious and boring pattern, the only thing that is keeping me from ripping the whole thing out and calling it a day is that at the end it folds up like origami and you sew two seams on either sleeve and you’re done. I do love me some paper foldin’, and that is what pushes me forward, the faux origami at the end. Other than that I’d have set fire to the pattern by now and donated the nearly finished blob of knitting that it currently is to good will. I feel guilty just saying it, just mentioning that I do not like the BSJ. I know that if anyone form the knitting world reads it, I’ll be black-listed, banned from Ravelry and avoided like a plague. Even with all of that looming, I could not keep it to myself any longer, never again will I knit this pattern. (Unless someone specifically asks for it, and I love them enough to acquiesce, but only then.) What’s currently calming me and keeping me knitting is the fact that, once I realized that I did not like the pattern, I prevented my self from working on anything else until it is done. It’s very difficult considering I have several more baby sweaters in the wings and a baby hat, as well as a shawl and some socks…you see? I am self motivating to finish it, so that I can do something better. It’s like eating all the brussel sprouts on your plate first so you can get to the good stuff. Yep, the BSJ is my equivalent of brussel sprouts, not deadly, not hated, just a bit yucky and something to get over with.
The only monkey wrench in the whole deal is that I got distracted by a book. So instead of knitting the darn thing for the past few nights, I've been hungrily reading The Commoner it's written by John Burnham Scwartz, the same gentleman who wrote Reservation Road, which is now a movie with Jennifer Connelly and Joaquin Phoenix. In any event it is a beautifully written story, set in Japan. The book is quietly complex, like the country and culture it depicts. It is simple and engaging yet full of depth in the way that he expresses the main characters voice. Thoroughly satisfying and well worth the read, even if I didn't finish the BSJ.