Chevron Cowl: January 16th to 17th.

This is so lovely. White, beautiful pattern, creamy and soft. I have visions of lining it with a lovely light silken fabric or even a soft fur. I wish it was winter. On the other hand, because knitting always has two hands (for the most part), I have started it about four times (two! I'm exaggerating) because I tried to mathematically adjust it to fit the reassessed analysis of the gauge (the wool's too thin for the pattern—in lay-speak). Maths wasn't my strong suit that day. But it was all happening during a game of Scrabble on the balcony (tea and jam rolls included) and so I am going to say the maths side had been disengaged by the word side. Maybe that is why my work colleague (you know who you are) often 'miscalculates' her Scrabble score—the word side has just 'taken over'. Puts a new perspective on the amazing ability of the Words and Numbers contestants, who are freakishly clever already without having to switch brain functions as well. In the end I stuck to the pattern and hoped for the best—or for a skinny-necked, small headed recipient of this particular item. Is it possible make your head smaller? Maybe I will start with my hair and shave it all off. No, I say that just because I want to shave it all off anyway—it's so much easier.

This item is knitted in, you guessed it you pattern-finder you, Moda Vera (they should sponsor me)(they might if they new I existed) hundred per cent Merino wool, cream. I am learning how the little things you do in knitting change the shape of things radically and chevroning is a fine example. A couple of stitches knitted together and a couple slipped over, two stitches knitted from one and suddenly a straight line becomes a zigzag. Like soaking olives for three months in a changing briny solution and playing a ball game where you can't ever touch the ball with your hands but you head, knee, foot, or even your bottom probably, is okay, who thought of that!! Speaking of little things changing things radically, it time to see what's in Osho's window this week:

My prana is often sucked away from me. That is not the vital point of this weeks technique, but it explains what I feel when I spend lots of time with people. Most of my prana actually gets sucked out through my ears at work. Prana is vitality: the essence of the breath. It is one part of what happens in the technique Osho speaks about this knitting pattern—attentiveness to the third eye. If you close your eyes and focus your mind's eye to the right place between your eyebrows, you feel your eyes become fixed—that point is your third eye. Fixing your attention there makes you a witness to your thoughts; you are removed from them and able to see them objectively. Through this technique, instead of being, for example, angry, you are simply surrounded by it and unaffected by it—it will come and go and you will stay centered. Part two involves prana: when you are focused on the third eye, you can experience breath and the magic prana that it is the container for. You can fill your head with the vitality. This is where it all starts to go a little strange. With a shower-of-light, prana-filled head you can make things happen. You must be pure though—otherwise bad things happen. You can think about a long-lost friend and they will knock on your door, you can wish someone was (eek) deceased (if you are impure) and they will die, you can wish you didn't exist and you won't. I am wishing, when I close my eyes for a few moments and find the little sucker, that I never want to eat biscuits again (except on special occasions) and that I will find carrots much more appetising.