bloodteethandflame

The same logic can be used for other elements of the late Loki traditions: In

Iceland and the southernmost Danish islands, Loki is associated with tangles that

appear when sewing or spinning, but in such differing forms that the one can

hardly have been borrowed from the other. This tangle-Loki can easily be explained

from the Vatten (see § 4.1.2).

Today, I decided that I would work on some embroidery on the altar cloth that I’d been using on my Loki-altar. 

  Previously, I’d had all sorts of ideas for these complex designs that I was going to embroider onto the fabric.

 But then, I couldn’t find my finer needles.  Anywhere.

 So, with the one needle that I did locate, I decided to stitch something simple…like maybe ‘Loki’ spelled out in runes on one corner.

That’s just 4 runes, I thought.  How hard can that be? 

I’d figured that the whole process would take me maybe twenty minutes, a half-hour, tops. 

Evidently…not.

Four runes, each about 1/2” in height/width, took nearly an hour to complete.

The thread kept tangling.  Or downright knotting up.

I had trouble trying to make a simple chain-stitch.

Several times, I had to double-back on the previous stitches just to get them to show…that is, when I didn’t find that a previous stitch didn’t catch, only to see the last two stitches unravelling or pulling out altogether when I pulled things tight.

It was silly.

I’ve never had so much trouble with an embroidery project before.

My goodness.

I know that it might be my perfectionism, but really…

So I was not surprised to have found that quote about a particular Icelandic/Danish folk belief (see above) in Eldar Heide’s Loki, the Vatten, and the Ash Lad while I was reading this afternoon.

😉