Mitered Blanket: January 23rd to 26th.

Four squares in four days. One hundred and forty-three squares in one hundred and forty-three days? Eek. What are these people doing to me? There are three blankets to make this year. Supposing they are all the same size as this one—and despite them not all being a square derivative pattern—that would mean four hundred and twenty-nine days of this year will be needed to make just the three rugs, let alone the other one hundred and nine projects. Why do we ever add? No good ever comes of it. Not that I am implying minusing, dividing, timesing or even square rooting ('scuse) are any better. I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the project. Other non-project projects are also trying to sneak their ways into project allocated time (japanese crane hanging, facebook creative chain-letter promises (otherwise I'll die and lose all my money to charlatans) and b-word based uniforms for bifurcating Britain, just to name a few). I'm getting burning skin sensations with no obvious causes. I think I'm stressed.

There are four yarns in this little number (two pictured so far). They are: Moda Vera Gardenia (seventy-five percent acrylic, twenty-five viscose derived from bamboo) in cream; Moda Vera Marvel (acrylic through and through) in a sagey green (if you squint it looks neutral; neutral is hard to do when there are four colours and you're trying to make an interesting balance that is not just black white and two shades of grey—yeah. I know, excuses, excuses); Moda Vera Noir (three quarters wool, one quarter polyamide) in a multicoloured brown and grey; and; Cleakheaton (phew, another brand; hundred percent wool) in mottled brown. It all sounds a bit like a weird tree, but trust me, I used to be a colour consultant. I like making these squares—they epitomise the wackyness of knitting: you start with two sides effectively cast onto your needle and then knit them pointedly into a square through the middle. That is as hard to visualise as it is to describe, but amazingly easy to do. Buy the calender, try it, become as project-obsessed as I am—I recommend it.

If however, I start to feel the prana (given an acceptance of becoming able to feel it in the first place that is) leaving my body any day soon, I may give the project up. Maybe. Osho is dropping little dung bombs this project. Prana comes into the body normally. The breath brings prana in and leaves the body empty. If at some stage you feel the reverse start to happen, it means that in six months time you will be dead. Eek. But eek is not meant to be the reaction. 'Shall I spend the last six months of my life knitting?' is not meant to be the reaction either (not that he makes that exact point). When we feel this directional change we should already not be afraid of death. This weeks technique moves us toward losing that fear because death, after all, is just a long sleep (and we all know how much I like to sleep). But it means trying to change something else I like as well: dreaming. Osho says: feel the prana at the time of going to sleep through, ideally, the third eye technique discussed last project and as you fall into sleep you will be able to control your dreams. Benefits of controlling your dreams include choosing which ones you want or don't want, creating dreams, being aware that you are dreaming, and stopping dreaming altogether because, he says, it is absurd. I subscribe to the Camus school of thought already and all 'life is absurd'. I don't know if I want to give up dreaming. It is an absurdity that doesn't have to be made into sense. I wish instead that I could accept the awakened parts with the same disregard for their not making sense. Life may be a little easier to not react badly to. But he does offer on panacea for non-dreaming which is you get a better quality of sleep. Given last nights effort, I am all for that—although technically I needed to be asleep before dreams affected my sleep, not just lying there watching extremely large pylons drive slowly past with men sitting on the back of them. (That was weird).

I am (of course) off track. If you can become the master of your dreams, Osho says, you become master of the big sleep—death. You can choose your dreams or not to have them, but when the big sleep comes, you can choose how, when, why and what you come back as afterwards. Sleep is a day-to-day death; death is a life-to-life sleep.