Tag Archives: art

Irish Knitting Superstition

Text

“Irish people culturally believe that when you knit something, you knit a piece of your soul into your project. And so Irish knitters purposely knit one mistake into their project so that their soul can escape. Otherwise you’re breaking off little pieces of yourself every time you give someone something that you knit.

“So I’m like, ‘Oh, I haven’t been giving my soul away to anyone because I always make a mistake or two.’ Still, there’s certainly some pieces that people have that are a tiny little expression of me.”

Once having heard of this belief, GR began to express it as her own. “It actually makes a lot of sense to me because knitting is just such a labor of love,” she said, adding that she could never sell the pieces that she knits. “No price could quantify the work that I’ve done. It’s so deeply personal. When I’m knitting, I feel like I’m tapping into something cosmic.”

She added that part of this feeling comes from the labor of making something entirely by hand. “There’s no machine that can ever replicate it. Using a knitting machine doesn’t feel as personal. It feels like cheating, honestly.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

GR knits a lot in her free time, mainly making beanies for herself and her friends.

GR originally read about this belief online, but her Irish roots in addition to her love of knitting made it easy for her to identify with this belief and adopt it as her own.

Analysis

This belief captures the deeply emotional experience of creating something and gives words to the profound connection an artist feels to their work as an expression of their soul. It also provides a rationalization for any flaws in one’s project, which reduces the pressure on the creator to attain perfection. Such an understanding of the value of mistakes is especially relevant in the art of knitting, a very precise and meticulous craft in which one mistake might make you want to unravel the whole piece until it’s perfect. This belief helps calm the unforgiving pursuit of perfection, which is the enemy of creativity.

This folk belief contains two elements: first, the magical belief that the act of knitting places a piece of one’s soul into their work. This is an example of the law of contagion, in which a non-material bond is established between a person and object. In this belief, the ritual that breaks this bond is the act of knitting a mistake into a piece, allowing the soul to escape. This second element of the belief is an example of conversion magic, a form of performative magic that offsets another magical thing.

Fancy S

Date: April 21, 2022 

Source and Relationship: Will, friend

Type: Symbol

Folklore/Text: “Fancy S”

Explanation/Context: I first learned how to do this symbol in second grade art class, when my art teacher showed me that I could make the letter S out of six parallel lines. I was never very good at art, so this made me feel like the coolest kid in school. My older sister, four years older than I, started writing her name (Jasmine) with that fancy S in the middle as her signature, which inspired me to start writing my name (Kenzie) with this fancy S instead of a Z. My informant, Will, described this symbol as the “trademark of middle school,” a representation of youth in the mid 2000s. Will went to a large public school in Chicago, while I went to a small private school in Portland, Oregon – despite coming from very different backgrounds, this cultural icon of adolescence means the same thing everywhere. 

Engineering vs. Arts Degree Joke

Performance Date: 03/19/2020

The graduate with a Science degree asks, “Why does it work?” The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, “How does it work?” The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, “How much will it cost?” The graduate with an Arts degree asks, “Do you want fries with that?”
Context
In a group discussion including college freshmen and high school seniors over what major the students were studying or thinking about studying, one high school senior said they were trying to decide between being an engineering major versus an art major. One of the college freshmen then shared the joke. The group was comprised of students and alumni of the robotics program, so all were at least thinking about pursuing STEM majors.
My Thoughts
This is a commentary on the massive pay difference between the average engineering (most STEM) majors and arts majors. It is a way for the rivalry in high school between those who are more STEM minded versus the arts-minded to poke fun at one another. The joke can mean a couple of different things. One, it can be a reminder to students who have interests in both fields that a job in the arts is less stable and guaranteed paycheck wise than a career in engineering. The second is to feed the ego and feelings of superiority that many want-to-be-engineers have in the pre and early college years (and beyond for some).

The Boys

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 38
Occupation: Registered Nurse
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/20/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece: The Boys

The following was an interview of a Participant/interviewee about a folk art, which is a tattoo that has been passed down in her family. She is marked as NM, and I am marked as DM.

NM: Well this tattoo first started as just a regular tattoo um that of course his mother didn’t want him to get and I took him to get it so shame on me but um I took him. He got it. He came home showed it to his mom and his mom kind of like smacked him a little bit but then she was okay with it. A couple of maybe after that maybe be about a month or two months passed and he actually was uh uh murdered shot in front of his house and uh for everybody that was around him including family friend they um they uh the way they decided to show their love was to uh use this piece of art or tattoo um everybody tattooed themselves and right underneath they put rest in peace they put his name. I would say like most of the family and a couple of close friends of him has it.

DM: Now did some of them get variations of them like did they add certain things to it or have it in different parts of their body?

NM: Well some of them actually uh the original tattoo was it’s a looks like two ink men playing basketball. I did see that some of them took out the basketball and then they added their name um it wasn’t uh most of them have it on their arm but yeah

Background/Context:

The participant is thirty-eight years old. She is a Mexican American registered nurse with the Los Angeles County. She told me about how her family has been passing down the same tattoo after the first person to get it passed away.    

DM: Why do you like knowing that your family has this one piece of art that kind of bring them together?

NM: Uh well our family is very very close and uh we have a lot of love for each other that is kind of uh significance that uh we are paying tribute to him.

DM: And where or who did he get this tattoo idea?

NM: We actually went to the tattoo artist which he is one of my friends and he was looking through some books and he saw that and since they are very they are all they always they love playing sports and he saw that the little ink men were not like normal and they were holding a basketball so that’s what he liked about it  

DM: Why is this tradition important to you?

NM: I truly believe that everybody getting this tattoo was just a tribute. If I were to ever get this tattoo, it would be for him.

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

This tattoo was done by the same artist every time, but everyone did not get the same exact design as the original. Some of them added their names and the tattoo was not always in the same place. These few changes make something into folklore, which is exactly what happened with this piece of art/tattoo. In this specific tattoo below, there is no basketball and his name was added.

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Creative Karma

Nationality: African American
Age: 23
Occupation: Marketing, Artist
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: April 18, 2018
Primary Language: English

The interviewer’s initials are denoted through the initials BD, while the informant’s responses are marked as WC.

WC: This other theory that my father received from my grandfather, and it’s very simple, I think many people share this same perspective. He believes—because my father is a creative, and my grandfather was a creative and a professor—that when he gets a new or innovative idea, and they speak it into the universe but they do not act on it, it opens the door and someone within a very short time span will act on that idea and receive all the credit for it. Like my dad wrote music. He would write a song and sing it for people and let them hear it, but never actually record the song and put it out there. The he’d hear a song eerily similar on the radio. This theory basically teaches you to act on your ideas and instincts that you have. And honestly I can’t say they’re wrong!

BD: So you would say you believe this theory too?

WC: Yeah, I have evidence in the universe that I’ve thought about things that didn’t in fact begin to manifest, and then it manifested without me.

Analysis:
While this is a bit of a downer belief, it does push those who believe it to execute their ideas. It is interesting how it runs through a family with creative vocations and modes of thought. It is likely they would not have held onto this belief if they had not been in the arts.