Knitting Superstitions
April Fiber Book Club
Fiber Book Club! This month we read three essays in Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting (Unraveling, Casting Off a Spell, and Big Maroon Sweater)
“Knitting in a dream often symbolizes the deliberate creation of your life’s path, representing creativity, patience, and the crafting of new opportunities or relationships.”
What I’ve taken away from Knitting Pearls so far is that it is very common for people to attribute deeper meanings to their own connections to knitting and craft, whether it is the actual practice and process - ‘unraveling,’ mending, fixing past mistakes, or breaking curses - or the significance of the finished objects like gifted sweaters.
In Melissa Coleman’s essay, Casting Off a Spell, she makes a specific reference to what I consider, the most famous knitting “curse.”
“Like my college roommate used to say, never knit for a boyfriend because he’ll dump you and then he’ll have a sweater, but what will you have?”
If you don’t know, “The Sweater Curse” is a belief that if a knitter makes a sweater for a significant other (before they are married), the relationship will end. I’ve really only heard this referring to hetero relationships where the woman is making the sweater for a man, but I digress. The break up is said to happen most often before the sweater is even completed, but can also happen shortly after as referenced in the essay, begging the question of all the time spent and if it was worth it. You can go down your own rabbit hole on the sweater curse, starting here!
In this essay, Coleman is attempting to fix her cursed situation (divorce) by knitting seven sweaters for family members. Along the way she decides that only once she has done this, will she be ready to marry again.
Michael Collier, author of the essay Big Maroon Sweater, keeps his misshapen acrylic sweater made by his mother out of sentimentality, reflecting later that he felt more sadness over never having worn it as intended rather than a fond memory.
What are the most common Knitting Superstitions?
Sweater Curse or Curse of the Love Sweater
The intentional mistake, or fairy stitch: this is to prevent mischievous beings from taking your work or being trapped in perfect stitches
Friday and Sunday knitting: don’t start a project on a Friday, or you will never finish, and don’t knit on Sunday or you will just have to frog again on Monday
Do not start a project for an unborn child, especially one that you will not finish: it is bad luck for the mother
Passing knitting needles point first to someone will harm your relationship
There are so many magical beliefs surrounding knitting. We can trace a lot of them to practical reasons like not passing needles point first because it could hurt, but I think it’s more fun to live in a more magical place. Knitting is powerful. Stitches can contain literal memories and traditions that get passed on, within families or as gifts. Knitting has been used to resist war, pass on secret messages and codes within the patterns. Some say that patterns were used to identify drowned fisherman. Using specific colors can also have different meanings.
Make your own set of knitting rules. Use the colors you’re drawn to, make a sweater for a loved one, and allow your black cat to sleep on your work.
There is a supposed cure for the Sweater Curse: leave an intentional mistake in the project, or knit a strand of your own hair into the work. We are all only human after all.
What other knitting superstitions or old-wives tales have you heard? Have you experienced the Sweater Curse or maybe you successfully gifted a sweater to a significant other?
Which of the three essays resonated with you the most? Answer in the comments!
Happy Knitting,
Laila
For next month’s Fiber Book Club (May 14) we will read the next chunk of essays in Knitting Pearls: The Unravelers through The Red Vest (pg 65-108)