February Bonus Pattern: Sweethearts Doll Sweater.

The year is nearly over (bit extreme I know, it is only August), but how good was February twenty-ninth! I am on dangerous ground talking dates because it highlights how far behind in projects this blog actually is. Oops. But maybe I am just reminiscing because the Olympics are were on, and the Olympics happen every leap year. This year, this leap year, I appreciated the twenty-ninth more than I ever have before. I can't understand how I let the other eleven pass by without realising how special they are—I do forgive myself the one I had when I was in the womb (right-way-up). Twenty-four, whole, bonus, hours! There was a part of me that wanted to stay up all day and night and get every single little minute out of it. The fact that I am eleven leap years old means that I don't do the all-nighter so well any more. I spent this day doing this project (contrary to what I said I would do with it at the beginning of the year—see "Why", the Blog asked itself, "am I here?"). Was that its best use? Maybe not. Maybe. Twenty-four hours of me-time ultimately. (Sixteen, if you don't count sleep. I count it a lot.) Cannot wait for two thousand and sixteen.

But to get to what you most want to hear—the (lack of) progress report that is a monthly feature of the Bonus Pattern blog (this one being the second such makes it a pattern). Best word to describe it: slow. But that's the point of being a craftitian isn't it—the slow lane, the idling promenade through wool and other crafty bits. A number of items are now complete (my mother will not believe me). Here they are in their complete glory:

The Antonia shrug is finished. Here's a close up of the sleeve.

It's reversable—so expandable in its repertoire.

And just kinda cute. To my model—Thank you.

The slippers are all done. They have also been sold! My first sale. Very exciting. I popped them into the mess of items I am (foolishly, insanely, madly, irrationally) trying to sell on eBay in an effort to clear my floor, cupboard, drawers and spare room of excess items. In approximately a month, I have managed to sell seven things. I have also managed to go shopping at Savers and buy about thirteen things, and order a pair of shoes online for B——, and two for me, and so the net amount of stuff I have in said spaces has actually increased by eight. Spring cleaning via eBay is not working out to be the most effective method!

And lastly, but most leastly, these baby slippers are also complete. I put them on eBay too but as yet no bites for these.

Oh, forgot, this little jumper (above) is also finished. Does that make four whole, complete items from a hundred and twelve patterns, four surprises and a project that I thought I could just slip in in my spare time (explanations to follow in the next blog)? I think it does. And at a percentage completion rate of three, that is just about enough to take all the joy off my Februray the twenty-ninth. Sad face.

This little jumper (above) is made for a doll apparently, but in the same way that my baby slippers could possibly fit an eight year old child (exaggeration occurred just then), this could possibly fit a small baby. It is, if I can be so bold as to take credit, quite cute. Made from mostly pure wool with acrylic-wool blends for the blues; embroidered with a pink cotton heart.

Rapid change of subject and excessive use of thesaurus approaching: You have insensitive buttocks. They are cold hearted and aloof, hard-boiled; they are tactless, unkind and myopic—callous and lazy even. Like your feet though, as Osho points out, they have to be—otherwise sitting in a frustrating, sedentary job where you talk to less-than-pleasant people all day long, even in the company of great work colleagues, would be unbearable. Or your job. But, if you can make your buttock sensitive (keen, wired, acute, umbrageous, emotional, ticklish, hung-up, turned-on), then you can find your centre. It's very easy. All buddhists do it, but they have the advantage of turned-on buttocks. So, how, you ask, do I get ticklish buttocks myself. It is a little six-week project. Start with your hand—left or right, whatever you prefer. Your hand is far more umbrageous so it helps to know you can make it even more so before you turn to trying this on your hard-boiled buttocks. Feel your hand. With your mind, not with your other hand. Imagine your hand is all you are. First your hand will feel heavy. Then you can start to feel everything it does, every move or jerk or spasm. Do this whenever you can, for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, for three weeks. Then you can move onto doing this with your myopic buttocks.

Once you have that all under control, sit on those newly emotional buttocks of yours and close your eyes. You can use any of the buddha like sitting poses—just make sure your keen buttocks are what is mostly in contact with your surface. Your acute buttocks will feel that your body leans more on one cheek than the other. Adjust. In small moves, you will switch weight from one hung-up buttock to the other until—whoo hoo—you centre yourself. Physically, metaphorically. Easy. I don't, however, know how to advise you about the fact that your sedentary job is now going to be a lot more taxing on your bottom. Maybe advise your employer that you have need for an adjustable stand-up desk because, through your spiritual quest, you now have a wired backside. I am sure they will understand. Employers are like that.

January Bonus Pattern: Modern Millie Vintage-Style Cloche.

I forgot about the 'Bonus pattern'. There is one for every month! That's what brings the total to one hundred and twelve, but there is no time allotment for them. Suddenly, in the last day or two, I am feeling overwhelmed (dramatic?) by the project. I had a January catch-up day. I spent half an hour on each incomplete project. Half an hour is only a few lines or a few stiches long, but here is a snapshot on how all January's projects are progressing:

Antonia Shrug: Body finished and started on the sleeves; lining fabric chosen, still the main article being worked on above and beyond the project of the day.

Slippers: Knitting finished; lining cut out and started sewing up, will be cute-as in my opinion.

Tiny Teddy Jumper: all done!

Cell phone or iPod pouch: lining being sewn, carabiner purchased (even if it is about as large as the actual item), close to done.

Chevron Cowl: Few more lines done, still a ways to go, but this is one worth waiting for.

Isabella Teacosy: knitting all done but I have made the fatal mistake of desiring (what would Osho say) a particular fabric to line it and now having difficulty finding said item; owner waiting for this item to be completed.

Mitered Blanket: I had four days to do this blanket of squares. I have made four squares. May take a little bit to finish this. It's an enjoyable knit though so I am looking forward to spending more time on it. I'm making it my 'just a few lines while the coffee pot boils' project.

Elegant Baby shoes: Knitted, sewn up and laces in, so just have lace knobbles (?) to make and the 'final details' to add.

Simple first sweater: It's a boatneck tabard type item at the moment; awaiting some sleeves, some sewing and some decoration.

So ultimately, of all the nine items of January, one is bartered, one is available for you to buy, and 7 are still works in progress!!! Eek. And on rolls February. (And now, March!)

The actual January Bonus Pattern is for a cloche. There are lots of cloches and cowls in this calender. Otherwise known as hats-that-warm-your-ears and scarves-with-no-ends. It is made with the bountiful supply of wool from my blue-grey swingey jacket (teacosy, boat-necked sweater). I have lined it with a mint green lining to make it snugger and it has a mint green pom-pom with quilted pink highlights. And, seeing as it has no time (allocated), it is finished. Available, if you like it and have a smallish kind of head.

Interestingly Osho is also talking about time this project. Time is quite a fascinating thing, is it not? Like how it is arbitrary. I've made up a new type of time all by my little self: the unit of time called a 'project'. It's as valid a length of percieved time as a minute or a second or an hour. It's just more uneven. And when the Large Hadron Collider, the other project (hee hee, how long ago is that—day, week?), allegedly made an atom go faster than the speed of light, opening up the possible possibility of being able to go backwards in time, did you do like me and think 'which way is back?' Osho believes time is the realm of the past and the future. Those two operate on a horizontal line (not sure which direction), but the present does not belong to time. It is outside of time and operates on a vertical plane—it is eternity. If you can move from the past and the future and exist only in the now, the now has no time limit at all. Three things help most to be in that column of now-ness more than anything else: meditation, death and love. This project's mission, should you choose to accept it, is to, when loving, be the loving. It's like being the sucking we talked about last time. Being in love can for a moment stop your mind. Here you are with your desired one, and everything is perfect—you no longer desire anything. Disaster, of course, strikes when you then say to yourself 'I want this to last forever'. That moment of perfection is a moment when desire stops, the mind stops and you are in the vertical eternity of the now. To want that to last forever is to start desire again—with it's implied future. To stay in the now, you need to, as I understand it, be love, give everything over to love, meditate love: 'forget yourself completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only love flowing—then ... everlasting life is yours.'

My thoughts: I am not sure if we Westerners can understand this kind of love very well. We have mucked love up quite a bit with movies and popular culture and expectations and marriage and Valentine's Day. It is reminiscent of how Osho described our 'selves' a few projects ago. An act, a charade, a facade. To do this technique I think you need to first let go of the expectations of love. That is not so easy to do.

Don't forget: this hat-that-warms-your-ears is available if you fancy it.

Elegant Snowballs Baby Shoes: January 27th to 29th.

Elegant snowballs were made on my holiday in Apollo Bay. It was apt. While the rest of the state was sweltering, Apollo Bay was in a little ball of coldness. Terribly weird. The sky was grey and cloudy, almost foggy. Clouds were sitting on the hills, and at night, in the amazing blackness, cars coming up the road were like invading spaceships as their lights triangled for hundreds of meters into the sky. If you drove ten or fifteen minutes in any direction the temperature went up six degrees and the sun came out. I like swimming, but in Apollo Bay I got shin-deep and decided reading my book under a towel was a much better option. I didn't get to read as a frozen boy followed me out shortly after and we ended up driving to the Twelve Apostles instead. Ironically the only swim we did manage to get for the weekend was at Fairhaven Beach (in the vicinity of where we would normally go) and so the only beneficiary of driving the extra hours in each direction to Apollo Bay was the shoes—they got done! (Except—there is always an except—for one little feature and the Charlieficationing process.)

The cute little booties are made of Moda Vera's Faith, a forty-thirty-thirty combination of acrylic, mohair and wool. Again I cheated somewhat on the neutral stakes. The wool is a pinky-grey. One slight idiosyncrasy, if you are thinking of making an offer when they're done, is that because the wool is variegated there was just enough of one colour to make a single boot and so the second boot is ever so slightly a different colour.

I like to think that means you are get the baby-equivalent of my very much coveted Vivienne Westwood two-tone brogues (pictured). I love these shoes so much—if you ever do see a size seven pair at the op-shop, grab them for me and I promise to pay you back (I can't seem to find them any other way; I am seriously contemplating doing a shoe-making course in order to make my own pair—and then go on to an illustrious career in the shoe industry).

Like I have revisited shoes here (second pair made in four weeks or so—see the slippers from project two), Osho was revisiting awareness on the turning points of the breath. His theory about his techniques is that—like the one hundred and twelve knitting projects—there must be one for you. (Shameless sales pitch enclosed). The first time he brought this up he apparently was talking about them in a scientific, factual way, but if the scientific and the factual aren't your cup of tea, if you are just not that into the periodic table, he suggests doing the same thing with devotion, utmost devotion. With love, faith and trust. This works for those who do, or who can start to, think of their bodies as temples (are there many in this self-depreciating society of ours who do still? probably, possibly). If your body is a temple, inside is the divine. Imagine that it is the divine in you that breathes and feels the turning of the breath. Imagine it is the divine in you that does any of the mundane or special things you do on a daily basis. I kind of like it. We could all probably make our lives feel a whole lot better if we could spare a little love for ourselves. Believing there is a divineness inside of you is a step in that direction. It is late, evangelists are on TV, I'm sugar deprived—all of these things are making me a little sentimental so just ignore me and believe whatever you like! I'm going to make my divine-me a cup of tea with three sugars.

Cardigan for Tiny Teddy: January 9th to 12th.

I am not sure if anyone in the universe owns a tiny teddy this tiny or whether I was having some sort of a tension issue. This is the worlds smallest cardigan. Just so you can see its smallness, I have arranged for this crime scene shoot. Teddy earned his varsity letter, from Teddy University, Port Melbourne Campus, in maths. He particularly likes simultaneous equations but won't remind me how to do them (I need to know to solve a puzzle in a book I have, and I can't do any more puzzles because I am anal and have to do this one before I can carry on (otherwise it messes up my figures (how many right, how many wrong))).

Someone told me this week that I waffle on—very upsetting—but I blame punctuation; semi-colons, em dashes and double/triple/quadruple bracketing opportunities allow for diversion and don't keep me on track. Other diversions from the knitting project this week have included gold class tickets to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. American version. I did enjoy it and much preferred seeing Daniel Craig's naked bottom, but I think the portrayal of Lisbeth is better in the Swedish movie (the American one, I believe, takes away her power).

I think that I should have not been shy and should have done my knitting in Gold Class while I was watching—it works at home.

I made one of my passwords something to do with knitting this week—and spelled it wrong. Anyone want to play scrabble with me this week?

Knitting is meditative. So I have been thinking about this Osho thing. I am not sure I really buy 'transcendence'. I wanted the short version of why one would do these one hundred and twelve meditations, and so I asked V—— for the answer. He told me that it is so that we can realise that we are all one—a wave on the ocean is not separate from the ocean. He also told me that it means not coming back and having to do this all again. Okay, so I have two issues with those theories. One: I don't know if I really want to be one with all the people that I talk to (over the phone), even though I do understand that an acceptance of them may work better for me in the long run (where clashing doesn't). And, two: I won't know if I do or don't come back in the next life so why does it matter. All in all though, knitting certainly is giving me room for thinking. This weeks technique (and I'm paraphrasing from now on) is all about breathing again—to 'watch the fusion point of two breaths'. This is similar to the first meditation in that it speaks about the gap between the in and out breaths, but it is more about place. 'Civilization, education and morality' Osho says, have caused us to breath shallowly and in our chests; if we breath deeply instead, like children, into our abdomens, then that point of change in breaths touches our 'center' and in this way we know where our center is. It seems an egg and a chicken thing where not touching our center means we are not total (total in all our emotions, anger, love, whatever, and so completely open and completely vulnerable) and so we are in control. We don't want to do this because we are afraid—afraid to be so vulnerable and afraid because society doesn't allow for the way of life such vulnerability allows. If we can become aware of the breaths' fusion, we become aware of our center and access the cosmic energy. Simple. It's the path to enlightenment.

Teddy's cardigan is Bella Baby 'Sugar' pure wool in a creamy colour with pink, lilac and hot pink splotches. Teddy has no issues wearing pink.

This item is available for buying, bartering or if you can just convince me undoubtedly that you need to have it.

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.