Simple First Sweater: January 30th to 31st.

It would be handy, in all this knitting, if I had children. Not handy in the sense that they would, of course, get seriously in the way of the whole project and project-doing would possibly be impossible, or, even, handy in the sense that you could teach them to knit and then get them to work, but rather handy in the sense that there would be recipients for all the child type items. If it wasn't for the prohibitive cost, I would adapt the childrens clothing to adult sizes—kids get to have the best clothing. I have never been able to understand why you loose this benefit as an adult and suddenly there is all the mutton and lamb stuff being bantered about. Why do we outgrow tutus, big flouncy pockets, garish colours and dressing up like adults (in a parodic way rather than the serious sense—I'm talking ball gowns with baseball shoes, outrageously seventies organza dresses with denim jackets, that sort of thing)? Maybe that explains why my favourite SITC character is Carrie—she epitomises adult-as-child dressing, and the adult version of that, which is haute couture. Now if only we could afford to dress like that (especially the last season's dresses and the ones from the lamentably bad second movie).

This item would be an enjoyable child's jumper for adults. I love a boat neck—frenchness, boats, tour de France, croissants, any French food or wine. Snails, maybe. The wool is again from my pulled apart navy-grey swingy jumper (angora meets acrylic) and gives the piece a wavy, loose softness. I was able to try a three way cast-off—ace, it's sewing up without the needle. And now I'll be picking up and knitting sleeves from the body of the piece so less sewing again! Stupendous. Loving it. I just realised as I wrote this that sewing up is not my favourite part—like casting off from a purl stitch (ugh). I learned a great technique the other day which involved sewing up like tieing a shoelace. That made sewing up temporarily exciting (although I did have to You Tube it so that I could understand the instructions).

Don't forget that if you have a child that you like to dress in child-like clothing and if that child happens to fit this jumper, it will be available for bartering, buying or begging. It's creative slant will probably involve appliqué.

Osho's gone all Freudian on me this project. Is Freud a guru or a prophet too do you think? This weeks technique for enlightenment is forked. Freudian slip? No, it just has four tines you can try: pretend you are dead; stay in the emotion you are in; stare without moving an eyelash; or; suck something and become the sucking. Ultimately they all aim to draw you out of the body and into pure consciousness—which seems to be the whole point, yes? If I could name what I would like the point to be, I think I would want to not be adversely affected by what happens around me, which I suppose gets down to being removed from it. Not removed from what happens so much as removed from the emotion. But, again, I worry that you take away the good with the bad, the babies with the bathwater. My forehead is crinkly with imagined and seemingly real anxieties (subtle difference) but maybe it's the price you pay for moments of joy. What do you say to that Osho?

The achievement of any of these four techniques, Osho believes, heralds a new man (where are the women Osho??). If you can truly feel dead, unable to move, to cry, to talk, to swat away a mozzie, then you can realise that you exist outside the shell that is your body. That makes a kind of sense. If you can truly stay in anger, sadness, anxiety, in any emotion, without moving a single thing, without the 'motion' of emotion, then it will go. If you look at the emotion and are not moved by it, you master it. This technique may get me what I think I want. It makes a certain kind of sense too. If you can truly stare without binking for ages and ages and ages (longer than the thirty seconds I think I could do it for), you attain the same effect as focusing between the eyebrows: the third eye. It's cross-eyed time again. Or, done properly, transcending-the-mind time. Osho tells of a man who stared at his ceiling for three years, and who then visited a mind reader—a reputable and always-right one. The mind reader was, basically, unable to find the other man's mind. Cynical-me steps in. Given it may take a few years to become enlightened in any life time, does that mean you walk around for the rest of your years with an empty body while your mind floats somewhere away from you. This is all meant to be about the 'now', but that doesn't make the now seem attractive to me. I am probably missing something but it doesn't make any sort of sense to me to want to do this. And lastly, and here comes Freud, big time, if you can truly become the process of sucking, you can eliminate desire. As soon as you are born, you start to want to return to the womb (Freud). There prana is delivered to you without trying. Here, in the real world, you have to get it for yourself. For a while you get it from the mother's breast. Now the way back to the womb is through the breast (Freudish). There will always be desire (very Freud). The only way to overcome that is to become the process and pass through desire to non-desire. Unfortunately, seeing as I love the whole Freudian thing, this sort of does make sense, reluctantly. Perhaps what this does is put the self back inside the shell. You can use it for any -ings: sucking, running, working, loving. If you are the process of the action, then you are no longer the separate desirer of an action inside the body of the actioner. You're whole. I am getting so confused. One of these days I will have to actually start doing these techniques instead of just reading about them.