If you want to know even more aboutall the costumes, entertainment, and drama of the ball, cometake a look at the book in person for a little Jane Austen era party inspiration!
Myths associated with Aran sweaters (from the Aran Islands, west coast of Ireland) range from specific symbolism attached to the stitching patterns, the romantic idea that each family had their own pattern to allow to identify deceased fishermen lost at sea, and there are traditional/ancestral undertones to the sweaters. However, a quick non scientific search revealed that:
… Aran sweaters seem to be a modern creation, not a part of the Islands’ traditional dress:
The first Aran knitting pattern was published in the 1940s by Patons of England. It was supplied by O’Maille’s shop in Galway. Vogue followed in 1956. As demand grew, companies started supplying the island women with needles and wool. More and more knitters were recruited which provided them with a small but welcome income.
A German writer gavemeaning to the stitching patterns:
The meanings that are generally attributed to Aran stitches have several origins. The most famous was an article written in 1938 by a German man called Heinz Keiwe, who never visited Aran, never met anyone who knit a sweater and simply made up the meanings. His work, however, was widely accepted as truth by many people, and the sellers of Aran knitwear were not about to contradict such an ingenious marketing idea.
And he himself might have taken the idea from a play:
This misconception may have originated with J.M. Synge’s 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which the body of a dead fisherman is identified by the hand-knitted stitches on one of his garments. However, even in the play, there is no reference to any decorative or Aran-type pattern. The garment referred to is a plain stocking and it is identified by the number of stitches, the quote being “it’s the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches, and I dropped four of them”. There is no record of any such event ever having taken place, nor is there any evidence to support there being a systematic tradition of family patterns.
Please send Irish ethnographic studies, etc on the matter.
Also, since it frequently gets commented on in other posts: the choice of bgm is because Jingle Bell Rock doesn’t necessarily have the same cultural significance in China (or at least not to OP) so it’s not particularly recognized as a holiday/winter song
this man is so important to me. he is out there living his best life, loving what he does, getting screamed at by medium sized herd mammals, and educating the world about small but fun and important things.
