Carillon—Rainbow Cloche: February 29th to March 4th.

Oh dear! No, I am not lamenting the banal sounds of Big Brother playing behind me in the tea room as I write. Instead, I am looking at what this hat was before it went silly. I took it to the UK. The brown wool is upcycled from a lovely men's jumper I bought at the Red Cross Op-Shop in South Melbourne; the rainbow is tapestry wools in extremely muted versions of the spectrum. I wore it in the lovely cold British summer. Their summer, regardless of the number of Brits recently heard complaining about how hot their summer was, requires a lot of wool hat wearing. After a few days, I started to notice that the hat was slowly getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Needless to say, I have since googled 'getting the kinks out of upcycled wool', and so now have squared wire hangers wrapped in wool hanging and dripping from my shower head in an attempt to stop the kinks coming out of things as you wear them, ending up with items several sizes larger than desired. Eventually, after finding myself in a too-breezy hat on top of a mountain in a snow storm (yes, still in my British summer), I bought a new hat and op-shopped this one with the hope that an enormously large headed person would go in a seemingly futile search for a very big hat, and find one!

Money where my mouth is time. I promised you news of the extra project filling my spare time. I also complained about yarn bombers being unambitiously small. Fate threw me an antidote to my rambling mouth: First Train to Allwood. Knitters and crocheters from the vicinity of Hurstbridge are yarnbombing a train onto two blocks worth of fencing along the main street, and they are looking for volunteers. So with the derisive laughing of my closest and (supposedly) most loving friends ringing in my ears (they did not for one minute think that I would make an eight a.m. tram on my day off), I made the one hour fifty-four minute commute to Hurstbridge. It turned out to be a little longer as they were doing railworks and I had to change to replacement buses. Tram, train, bus. A public transport kaleidoscope! In my mind I thought I would spend a day sitting in a cafe, drinking coffees and knitting bits of train, but instead I ate breakfast, drank coffee, listened, talked, claimed two pattern pieces, rolled out copious amounts of venetian cord (the yarn of choice for this project which makes it durable and hose-down-able down by the local CFA), ate cake, drank more coffee and left with my patterns, a promise of speedy completion and a bigger commitment than I had bargained for. Not complaining. Don't get me wrong. But how much time do I think I have. I wish work would stop getting in the way of things I like to do. Having said that, I did finish most of my (relatively small) pieces at work! When you make it out there to have a look, mine are the left and right lower wooden panels on the sheep carriage.

As usual, Osho manages to weave himself, post-fact, into the happenings of my life. This week he is arguably talking about the zen of public transport. The technique is described thus: in a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles. Yep, that's right. I got car sick. I don't normally get sick in vehicles, but I was concentrating so completely on the knitting project I was working on (and continuously mucking up) as the bus curved its way back through the hills from Hurstbridge, down to a working railway station that instead of becoming centred by my otherwise unconscious 'rhythmical swaying', I became nauseous and had to spend the rest of the trip really trying not to throw up my cake. But I have been sitting here now on a couch in a rental property in Robe, South Australia (white! what! how are we supposed to ever get our bond back with a white couch, but it does have a chaise which I am finding very hard not to make my second favourite relaxation point—after the hammock) trying to swing in imperceptible circles. I can see that this would work. Maybe, because I have trouble being still (even though sitting around seems like laziness, there is a lot happening (knitting)), a meditation technique that involves movement works better than one where I have to go against my nature and totally still the ceaseless ticking over of my mind. It actually feels good to try and make yourself make the smallest possible circles with your body that you can, all else does, for a minute, stop butting in like an inquisitive three year old. My fellow white-couch-rider says he can still see me moving, but there was a moment when I felt gone, and it was quite refreshing. Well that is enoough of meditating, now let's go see if we can find a shark while boogie boarding. Eek!

Heart Vines Hat: February 8th to 9th.

A cotton based yarn combined with a circular needle means this project keeps slippery-sliding straight out of my hands.

When I moved to Australia, and after I got over the odd nasal memories of vomited Prima orange juice and incinerators that reminded me of burning chocolate (hard to explain), my memories became associated with hills. Our first house was in hilly Templestowe. We navigated our sloping driveway on roller skates. There would be the slow start through the sidewalk area, the rapid escalation, and then either the sudden wrist-wrenching stop if you chose the turn into the garage followed by the 'applying the brakes' technique more commonly known as hitting the back wall at high speed, or, the shin-bending brake application inherent with skates leaving a smooth surface and running onto the traction of grass.

Our other hill experience involved the cotton-like slipperiness (see, hills do relate to slippery knitting) of the Slip-'n'-Slide. Do children of the Stage Three Water Restriction era know this muddy joy? Or are you only permitted to do it on even numbered days and using a bucket of bore water? Even my dad would send himself careening towards the end of the plastic corridor and into the rapidly developing bog at the end. It' a shame we get so precious (sorry to talk for all of us, you may not be precious at all) that we start to not like being in the mud at the end. I'd feel the need for some type of water shoe. I'd feel that it was making a mess of the grass, disrupting some sort of a cosmic order. I'd feel it would be better to do this sort of thing at a theme park on the Gold Coast. Or maybe I wouldn't—it's hard to compare with a backyard that is flat, made of concrete and not actually long enough to accommodate a slip-and-slide. Perhaps it's just envy talking because I can't slip and slide anymore. I was, after all, fully prepared (except in a physically fit way) to throw myself into numerous gluggy pools of muck at Tough Mudder.

Turns out the only slimy mud I'm getting now is the slippery mud coloured knitting experience that is this project. The wool is Bella Baby 'Layette', eighty percent bamboo and twenty wool, in a beautiful mud colour that you would find, similarily textured, in only the finest of day spas on islands between Tropics Cancer and Capricorn. This won't, however, and hopefully, be all cracked and peeling like a facial treatment by the time it is eventually completed. It is, as so many are, a work-in-progress.

I dislike that Osho makes sense. Grrr! I want to be independent. It took me twenty-seven years* to get onto Social Media. (I lie, I joined the other one, MySpace, when it first came out because that way I didn't have to talk to anyone—yes, it does make an illogical kind of sense, and, no, I love talking to you now, I just have a residual fear of social interaction). Osho's prattling on about the centre again. The true centre is the naval. You are born with it (a centre, not a naval, although we mostly have one of those too). Babies and children breathe and their tummies go up and down: they're breathing through their centre. As we grow up we displace to this centre to one or two 'false' centres: the heart and the head. This last is the one that is often deemed the most important. It can be the only fully developed one—we don't really love in its truest and purest form. The head specialises in knowing, the heart in feeling and the naval in being. Okay, well and good, I can see the attraction of 'being', of the experiential life lived instead of the theoretical, thinking life, but the issue is that 'being', for Osho, means being one with something, part of the Universe. The Universe is a way lot bigger than my Facebook page. I am not sure I am ready for being at one with everything and everyone in the whole Universe. That said, this project's technique is focused on focusing on your centre.

Is this a fallacy? Osho says that only one in one hundred people dream in colour. Do you dream in colour? I dream in colour. I don't think that I am one in a hundred. Although, it is funny how often that clause is bandied about. Whenever I get a job they tell us that we are one in a 'blah' to be lucky enough to be chosen to do this special work. Me thinks—CON! You're just going to work better if you think you are unique. Am I cycnical? But to the point in play: the meditation this project works only for those one-in-a-hundred who can imagine colour. Except, of course, there is a way to do it if you aren't unique. See what you think.

Imagine the world is made up of five colours and the five colours are your senses. They meet at a point (imagine it as your naval for the sake of close access to your centre). If you keep imagining and concentrating on this spot it will disappear because your concentration dissolves the imaginary. Imagining the world as colour means when the imagination goes, the world goes. You will then be at your centre because everything between it and you has disappeared. If you are not a colour-sensitive then you can concentrate instead on a point outside the body, a point on the wall or something similar. You do have to concentrate on it without ever blinking** as blinking kicks the mind into action and the aim of this is to stop the mind. Stopping the mind provides the same break between the world and the centre. The centre is in you, in every single one of you, without exception, allegedly. You need to just find your way back to it. And when you get there it will be bliss eternal. You will be so blissful you won't even know you're blissful—you will be bliss. I'll give Osho some credit for playing with language. I like it when verbs become nouns and nouns become adjectives, and on it plays. Hey, I'm having trouble being non-cynical, let me get a compliment in once in a while!

*Librans are known to exaggerate. Quoted figures may be smaller than they appear.

** Images that follow may disturb some readers; rated fifeteen plus and not for the queasy. Osho inserts a wacky story here regarding Bodhi's eyelids—the Bodhi of mythology, not the Bodhi of 4 P—— St. Bodhi ripped his eyelids off to stop himself blinking. He threw them to the ground and they grew into a plant: tea. Tea now is a drink that (if you don't build an immunity to it by drinking too much) keeps your eyelids open. I'm going to make myself a cup of Bodhi's eyelids.

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.

Isabella Hat Teacosy: January 18th to 22nd.

What is a teacosy but a very small hat with slits for spout and handle. My work colleague (the same one who has dubious Scrabble adding skills—its happened twice, this is probably libelous (sorry)) wondered if the hat on the recipe could perhaps be adapted to a tea pot. I thought, why not? The tea pot is 'so' big [hand gesture of guestimated proportions]. Turned out it fitted not too badly. I used an angora acrylic blend that I unraveled from a jumper I had. It's beautifully soft. I have great plans of how to 'personalise' it but just have to find the where-with-all to do it. It's that old chestnut of shopping for an idea rather than shopping to find an idea—I'm chasing a cloud. I'll catch it, but in the meantime there is a naked teapot in the suburbs. I won't keep you long teapot!

Discovered over the duration of this project what a good place to knit the long-distance drive is. We went down to Point Roadknight for a boogie-board. The waves were about as big as the amount of knitting I was able to do on the trip: in knitting speak it was lots, in wave speak it was not even enough to get you to shore if you couldn't just stand up and walk out. But so beautiful. The little-over-an-hour drive is worth it for the sparkling blue clearness of the waves and the amazing light effect of the sunshine of the grains of sand caught in the (tiny) surf. The more I venture there, the harder it is to walk into the oily, murky, bits-of-icky waters of Port Melbourne (ah, the lamentations of the privileged).

If I am a capitalist swine with access to a vehicle (even if I don't, in any way, own the mean of production), it is because that is a role I play given the live I life and the place and time I live it in. But it isn't me. I am playing out a script I have been given in this drama of 'life' Osho says. Remember a couple of techniques back how there was the gap between the two breaths and it touched down to your very center, the center that is the true you? This is effectively the same technique, but done in activity. If you can be aware of the gap and the center through every waking minute, while you go about the minutiae of daily living, you feel what is center and what is periphery; you feel the difference between doing and being, between center and script.

Osho says that the reason to do this is that by practicing this technique you are able to see your life as if it is happening not to you, but to someone else. I'm not sure I like that idea: it displaces. Why 'do' the life of someone else? Why do anything? It's not practical for everyone to be a guru—live in cave, meditate all day. What is probably more take-away from this idea is that if the doing part is all an act, then your center is not affected by what happens in the act (and to not take anything away from Osho, he does touch on this). If something bad happens to you, if you make a mistake, it is just a part of the drama, not a part of you. You can't feel guilt or anger or hate in your very essence if it is caused by an actor in a play. Conversely, and maybe I'll understand this more later, how do we then feel love?

This item has been bartered in exchange for the year long use of a large box of knitting needles. Thank you to its recipient (when they eventually get it that is)—saved me a pile in needle purchasing!