Honey Cowl/Headband: February 22nd to 23rd.

On the train between Fort William and Malliag, in Scotland, a man boarded with the largest Alsatian I have seen in a long time. Before anything else is said, how wonderful is it that dogs ride trains in the UK—and go to pubs and take ferries and go shopping and walk on long-distance footpaths in stunning scenery. The two of them took a pair of un-reserved, backward facing seats at the end of the carriage; the man had the window, the dog the aisle. The dog sat on the seat awasn't view was of the man and the dog's heads rising above the seats in front of them, both admiring the same view. Ultimately, they were like any other pair of passengers except one had a hairy face with a pronounced muzzle. On my return the pair again boarded my carriage. The man, at least, appeared to have imbibed a few bevies and was in need of company so he sat at one of the tabled seats opposite a woman and adjacent to a French couple. The French woman looked fascinated, her face full of awe. She seemed unable to speak. Her partner then asked the man to move: her awe, it turned out, was fear. Man and dog moved, but derived of his sort-after company he was soon asleep. And the dog, as dogs do, migrated to where he could cause most mischief. He sat himself in the seats directly behind the frightened women, whose surplus of emotion had sent her to sleep. Her partner tried, silently, to fend the not-doing-anything-anyway dog off with an umbrella. Eventually he called over the guard who suggested they move—'I can't stop dogs travelling' he said, as if the dog had bought it's own ticket.


What struck me as odd with the whole encounter was the French woman's face. It seemed so much more a countenance of admiration than terror. It seems noble to admire what we fear. It is somehow more empowering to look at what we fear as an adversary. Then there is hope of beating it. But how do you get to the point where you can look at what you fear this way. If I was afraid of dogs, I thought, would I have been squealing and gathering myself in a corner? Osho talks this week about unminding the mind, keeping in the middle. Emotions are scales with two (or more) extremities: love is the extreme of hate, envy of blitheness or contentedness, fear of bravado. He likens being in any one state to being on one swing of a pendulum—not a state in itself but a preparing for its opposite. What he wants us to do is to try to get the mind in the middle, where the pendulum no longer swings. If we are able to do this then mind dies, and Osho is a fan of the mind being non-existent. In the middle there is a calmness. It does not, I think, mean that emotion dies too. It changes to emotion with no opposite—a centred emotion. Pure energy. The French woman's fear appeared centred and pure. I am not sure if it actually helps her in her everyday relations with pooches.

Setting priorities, my first goal is to centre my eating-dieting emotion pendulum. What do you mean eating isn't an emotion? You cannot tell me the stuff that goes through your brain in the big decision-making, execution and regret of any cake-eating session is not emotion in it's most swinging extremes. 'I need cake.' 'I like cake.' 'I am fat; why can't I stop eating cake?' This is not healthy. I need to unmind my mind and keep in the middle—which in this case, luckily, just happens to be 'I like cake'. Oddly, this makes sense. If I just like cake without needing it or regretting it, the liking of cake is enough, the idea of cake is enough. I have the centred savouring emotion of cake without the calories of cake. Mmm, cake. The theory here is sound(ish). Theory, smeory—who am I kidding. Give me the goddam cake. Now!

Knitting, you ask? This toasty cowl is made from Moda Vera's Husky, a hundred per cent pure baby alpaca. It is delightfully soft and slightly fluffy. If you wear it as a headband it may stick a little up from the top of your head as it is quite wide, but if warmth to your neck is your desire, this is your baby. The knitting is all done and the final touches are almost finalised so this may even make it out into the world before the end of winter. Stay tuned, it will be cute and you will want to make an offer.

 

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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.