Athena

Major info about Athena: (Will be expanded upon later, I promise)

-Greek Pantheon
-Daughter of Metis (Wisdom) and Zeus
-Born full grown, fully armored and screaming from Zeus' head
(Zeus wanted to keep Metis from producing dangerous heirs, but desired her wisdom. So, he swallowed her. Little did he know she was pregnant)
-War Goddess
-Goddess of Justice
(With a lot of pride. Just ask Arachne.)
-One of three virgin goddess in Greek mythology
(The other two are Artemis and Hestia. Artemis concerns herself with hunting and Hestia concerns herself with the hearth and home. Both are interesting and lovely goddesses, but neither are quite appropriate as crafting deities)
-Associated with the owl, the olive tree, crafty men (Odysseus), and Athens -Weaves
(With a lot of pride. Just ask Arachne.)

A warrior knitter? Surely you jest! How does the strong woman reconcile the warrior with the image of this woman serenely weaving?

The same way they reconcile having kids and a career, being a soccer mom who knows stocks, or any of those other walking contradictions that women are proud to be.

One of my favorite stories is hearing jokes about students knitting during Women's Studies courses. How could an empowered woman knit?

You may as well ask why an empowered woman would care about her appearance. Because she wants to (or doesn't, as the case may be). Yes, it does make a statement, but some of us wear clothing because it's comfortable, and we know it makes us look good.

But, back to the warrior weaver. Athena is a lovely, fierce, walking contradiction. But there is a trap in her arrogance that many of us should be aware of. In the Arachne Saga (check out for full story), there is blame on both sides of it.

"What?" you say. "Surely only humans err in the Greek pantheon."

A world of no. The gods err like humans, though on a grander scale. In this particular case, Athena's fault was arrogance. Now, in Greek deities, they give you gold stars for arrogance.

But once you start knitting, there is an assumption that whatever you knit will be better than anything else out there on the market. And while it is, in the pictures on the refrigerator sort of way, in other ways, it isn't.

What I'm really trying to say, is you are not an infalliable knitter. If you design patterns, like I'm trying to, you are most certainly NOT EVER infalliable in your design (unless you have trained minions of knitters to test it out and solve your problems). You will have to start and restart projects. Sometimes you don't want to. But would you rather have it look good and spend an extra three hours reworking something, or just have it look bad? Sometimes, you're lazy and willing to live with the flaw. More and more, I'm not.

Back to the Lovely Ladies
Enough of All the Mythology!