There are knitters who make prayer shawls while literally praying, or knitters who consider the act of crafting to be an act of magic.
I’m not one of those. I’m an English major who thought Northrup Frye had some swell ideas, and back when I was practicing literary criticism, I called myself a Jungian critic. I like playing with archetypes and motifs in my writing, so it’s probably no surprise that I like it when I can incorporate symbolism into my knitting, spinning, or weaving. If I’m making gifts for family members, I can be most geekly thrilled if I can use the same yarn for two projects for people who are connected, or the same pattern in different yarns for people who are connected. A year or so back, I made a hat for my mom that had 4 stripes on it, one for each of her children.
That brings me to the Ice Queen cowl currently on my needles, silver yarn with red beads. (Ideally it should be white with red, but it’s a very pale silver, and I’m trying to knit down my stash.) I’ve called it a Pelican cowl, for reasons I shall geek on about here.
I don’t know how many people are familiar with Chrismon ornaments, so I’ll get PK-geeky. Chrismons are Christmas ornaments with a very very religious visual vocabulary at work. Santa Claus does not count. You will find no reindeer, stockings, or holly wreaths. Crosses, doves, crowns, roses, cups, ships … it’s all rather medieval, though the Chrismon tradition itself only dates back to 1957, starting at a Lutheran church in Virgina. Chrismons are white and gold, because those are the colors of purity and majesty. A big exception is the Pelican ornament, which features a mother pelican pecking at her breast, drawing forth drops of blood to feed her chicks.
(I did say it’s medieval, didn’t I?)
The blood symbolism is blatant, with the drops of blood always done in red, against the white and gold of the ornament. At the risk of being even more redundant, it’s very medieval: the general theme of self-sacrifice, the whole “this is My blood which I have shed for thee,” mixed with a peculiar (and erroneous) zoology. Centuries ago, it was thought that the pelican would feed her chicks blood from her own breast, an unfortunate misinterpretation of how a mother pelican will press her pouch against her breast to make sure her hungry chicks are getting everything she’s gathered for them.
Because it’s one of the few ornaments with an exception to the white and gold scheme, as a child I was fascinated by the Pelican ornament. The blood imagery probably added its own morbid fascination, because when you’re a kid, blood is sometimes scary, and sometimes it’s what shows up when you’ve skinned your knee, thus demonstrating to your family that you deserve to be fussed over.
Circling back to my knitting, the Ice Queen I’m currently working on is for my mother-in-law, because she’s become my ultimate mom-figure, and the Pelican is an ultimate mom-figure. It also helps that she likes red, so she’ll likely see it and think “Pretty red beads!”
But from my perspective, I’m paying homage to a woman who loves her children, and brought me into that circle of love even before I married her son. Sometimes the best inspiration for crafting is to make stuff for those you love and those who love you.
Rachel
I'm a writer, a knitter/spinner/weaver, a young stroke survivor, and a type 2 diabetic.
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