Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
VIKING LORE HELD THAT BOTH WEAVING AND SORCERY WERE WOMEN’S WORK, DITTO THE ORDERING OF THE HOUSE ACCOUNTS. MANY CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY LEFT ACCOUNTANCY TO WOMEN! MANY SOCIETIES HAVE ALSO LEFT FIBERCRAFT TO WOMEN BECAUSE IT IS TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE BUT ALSO VERY NECESSARY. SEE ALSO: COOKING, CLEANING, BUDGETING, EMOTIONAL LABOR.
ANYWAY FIBERCRAFT, AS I HAVE DISCOVERED VIA LEARNING TO DO A WHOLE LOT OF IT, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY APPLIED MATHEMATICS EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT’S ENGINEERING (WHICH IS ALSO MATHEMATICS). ONCE YOU LEARN EVEN THE BASICS OF KNITTING, SEWING, AND WEAVING, IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE TO REALIZE MEN THINK WOMEN ARE BY VIRTUE OF THEIR SEX (these are of course sexist gender-essentialist men who are not cool with trans people) ILL-EQUIPPED TO DO MATH SOMEHOW. HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN HEIRLOOM KNITTING PATTERNS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FORETHOUGHT THAT GOES INTO WORKING A HARNESS LOOM? OH MY GOD.
THIS IS, THEN, WHERE PROGRAMMING (AND SORCERY) COMES IN. A PROGRAM IS “CODED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTOMATIC PERFORMANCE OF A PARTICULAR TASK”. WEAVING IS OFTEN A BINARY PATTERN: OVER/UNDER. PUNCH CARDS ON ADVANCED LOOMS CAN SET WHETHER THREADS GO OVER OR UNDER, AND SWITCHING THE CARDS AROUND YIELDS DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CLOTH. A DUDE NAMED JAQUARD DEVELOPED EXTREMELY COMPLEX PUNCH CARDS THAT STARTED TO ENCODE HIGH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FOR INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED LOOMS. A HUNDRED YEARS LATER WOMEN ARE USED AGAIN FOR THE ‘TEDIOUS BUT NECESSARY’ BUSINESS OF USING BINARY ON/OFF CARDS TO WRITE PROGRAMS FOR EARLY COMPUTERS.
WHERE SORCERY FITS INTO ALL THIS IS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WOMAN USE A CARD LOOM REALLY FAST? IT’S THE MOST INTIMIDATING SKILLSET OUTSIDE OF A RODEO. SHE 100% LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD MAKE YOUR BUTT FALL OFF IF YOU CROSSED HER. APPLIED MATHEMATICS / ENGINEERING IS BAFFLING TO WATCH FROM THE OUTSIDE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FIBERCRAFT. YOU CAN MANIFEST WITH YOUR MIND AND HANDS THIS HIGHER AND TRUER ARCANE PLANE OF EXISTENCE INTO A NICE SCARF AND KEEP YOUR HUSBAND ALIVE FOR THE WINTER. MAYBE IF HE CROSSES YOU YOU CAN ALSO MAKE HIS BUTT FALL OFF.
I TOTALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MEN DO FIBERCRAFT TOO BUT THIS WAS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN, MATH, FIBERCRAFT, AND MAGIC, SO THERE YOU GO.
You may have known this already, but the Apollo guidance computer’s core memory was literally woven strands of copper, and it was all done by hand, by a bunch of women. Because who else knows how to weave things?
*SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE* WOMEN’S WORK SENT MEN TO THE FUCKING MOON HOW IS THAT NOT MAGIC AS HELL
Oh oh oh oh this is my subject on Viking reenactment gigs, I’m the group’s Vala and I also fill in for the weavers and spinners because IT’S THE SAME SHIT let me tell you about it :D :D :D
SPINNING with a drop spindle, none of your fancy high-tech spinning wheels here my friend, SPINNING OMG is literally taking undifferentiated fluff and turning it into the most useful and life-essential item in your whole civilisation with little more than a click of your fingers–without thread you have no sails, no clothes, no blankets, it’s literally power of life-or-death shit here, it is magic AS FUCK. That’s without doubt why the Norns were spinners and weavers.
There was laws about not saying people’s names or talking about people when you’re spinning, because you’re basically bringing something into being out of nothing, and with that kind of power you could just as easily bring events into being. So folks probably look the other way when you’re spinning thread for your son’s shirt and you want him to be victorious and honourable, but if you’re spinning away and bitching out about that ho Ingvar (see below) and how she stole your man and deserves the same to happen to her, that’s a crime. You’d be in better legal standing if you just punched her, because enchantment against a person was seen as sneaky and underhanded, with all connotations of forethought and antisocial intention, while punching someone could be an understandable lapse of self-control.
It was also forbidden to spin “against the sun” (ie: counterclockwise) because ok we also know there’s a mechanical aspect to that as well, it’s very useful to have the twist going in the same direction at all times so it doesn’t cancel itself out, but it was believed that an item made from backwards-spun thread could literally kill a person, there’s an account of a Vala spinning a shirt to murder a priest and it’s inferred that it was spun backwards. Because like, the sun is the source of all life, and to go against the sun goes against life, and much as the anti-twist cancels out the twist, it cancels out life. Brutal.
And you couldn’t talk about people when weaving, either, because weaving is an extension of the whole something-from-nothing power, but presumably people did anyway because there’s an actual find of a weaving tablet with a curse carved on it “Sigvor’s Ingvar shall have
my misfortune” so basically every time the card was turned, it would strengthen the curse, and literally spin and weave it into being. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT. There’s also a find of a weaving sword with a “love poem” carved on it, note the quotemarks because this “poem” goes “Think of me, I think of you; Love me, I love you” THAT AIN’T NO POEM FAM THAT A SPELL. She probably making him (or her) a shirt.
And that’s three times I’ve mentioned shirts, so I should tell you that making a shirt for someone was a Big Deal, in a way it was sort of the period equivalent of the boyfriend sweater, with the sheer amount of labour that goes into making a shirt you have to really give a whole lot of shits about that person. There’s an account of a woman making a shirt for her brother-in-law while her husband was away, and it’s OMG DRAMA BOMB. The Vala I mentioned above really gave a lot of shits about murdering that priest. Hence, the most-likely-a-woman who owned the inscribed weaving sword could very well have been making a shirt for her crush, who may OR MAY NOT have been her husband. You know, she could’ve been like “hope my nice hubby thinks about me while he’s away” or she could’ve been like “damn, brother-in-law too hot” or she could’ve been like “damn, Ingvar too hot” (wlw aren’t attested at all but you gotta assume it happened because humans) but in any event she knew what was up. And making a shirt for someone wasn’t thought of as *overtly* magical, mostly, but there’s kind of a subtext to it that presupposes any shirt could be enchanted and probably was to some extent.
And this is just scratching the surface of the academically well established stuff, with none of my own hypotheses and observations. I can go on for hours.
I have talked about knitting and fiber arts with many different women of all sorts of religion and non religion, and the vast majority of them say that when they make special items, they put some kind of intentions into the garment.
Today I was walking behind a mother and a small child who couldn’t have been older than five. The child was walking in that syncopated gait that is instantly recognizable as a small child avoiding sidewalk cracks, which was completely adorable.
And then this adorable golden-haired child looked up at her mother and said in a completely even voice “Someday, I’ll step on it.”
That child is going places. Maybe jail. But places.
And I saw something on their front page that I assumed was the result of someone screwing around that hadn’t been cleaned up yet
So I followed the link, thinking it would lead me to Angelina Jolie’s page with some amusing changes made to it, but instead I found this:
There is actually a trapdoor spider named after Angelina Jolie. And one named after Bono. And Stephen Colbert. Apparently the same scientist discovered all of these and really like naming spiders after celebrities.
Entomologists are just. They do this. Other biologists too, but especially entomologists There’s ants named after Douglas Adams (Tetramorium adamsi), two genera of wasps named after Dante, (Aligheria and Aligherinia), ELEVEN species named after David Attenborough (including a beetle, shrimp, echidna, fish, grasshopper, dragonfly, three plants, two spiders, and a plesiosaur), Two worms named after the Beatles (and no beetles that I’m aware of), two David Bowie spiders (Heteropoda davidbowie and Spintharus davidbowiei).
There’s wasps for both
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt (the aforementioned angelinajolieae and Conobregma bradpitti), and Stephen Colbert not only has a spider named after him, but he also then set off a competition between other researchers to name a “way cooler” animal after him, which due to, again, entomologists, ended him up with two beetles, a stonefly, and a wasp (Agaporomorphus, Sonoma, Diamphipnoa and Aleiodes colberti). A fly with a golden butt is named for Beyoncé. There’s an HP Lovecraft wasp named Nanocthulhu lovecrafti. Terry Pratchett got a turtle (
Psephophorus terrypratchetti) and I could not possibly be more happy about that.
And if you wander away from people and into bands, there’s a Radiohead ant (
Sericomyrmex radioheadi), a Green Day plant (Macrocarpaea dies-viridis), a Muse wasp (Goniozus musae), Pink Floyd gets a
shrimp, spider genus, and wasp (
Synalpheus pinkfloydi,
Pinkfloydia,Cephalonomia pinkfloydi) . Some maniac individually named four different trilobites after each of the Ramones (
Mackenziurus ceejayi, deedeei,joeyi,andjohnnyi.)
I’d complain about how unsystematic this is but how can I get mad when there’s a Terry Pratchett turtle.
