Antonia Shrug: January 1st to 3rd.

I cast on just after watching the Arts Centre Spire catch fire in the gold-themed fireworks. As midnight on the third approaches, I am about one third of the way through. Knitting is just the sort of thing I am keenest to do during these heat waves. (Melbourne, for those of you who didn't know, has spent the last four days sweltering—35, 33, 40 and 30 degrees respectively. Summer makes me thermometer watch—I dislike it intensely.) Luckily, and you wont hear me say this often, I was on night shift in an air conditioned building and got quite a bit done (you're wondering what kind of a job makes you work nights, but then entails sitting around knitting—if I told you I would have to hypnotise you to make you forget again so I won't say). I'm told its looking lovely. This is what it looks like so far:

My wool is Moda Vera 8 ply pure Australian wool, dark grey. After midnight I will move onto the next project and so this remains a work in progress. I have some ideas of how I will make it unique and I will direct you back here in posts to come so that you can see the outcome when it comes out.

Thank you to a beautiful sponsor who today donated a Spotlight gift card to the project. It is greatly relished!

This blog will be about knitting, about a year of knitting and creating, and about the things that keep me from knitting (like a two hour kayak to the St Kilda marina this morning—lovely—followed by spicy eggs for breakfast). Coincidentally there are one hundred and twelve patterns in my calendar and one hundred and twelve meditation techniques prescribed by the Tantric guru and philosopher Osho in his The Book of Secrets, so I will leave you today with the first:

To know the truth means to know that which is neither born nor dies, to know that eternal element which is always. You can know the breath going out, you can know the breath coming in, but you can never know the gap between the two ... Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing you are not in the world.

            Book of Secrets, pg. 34.