remember the cool palomamobile (the last knitted thing i posted to this blog, and a full month ago at that -- i am knitting, it's just that none of it is showing up here yet) that i made for kathy? i mean for paloma?
as previously reported, it was created from a "pattern" in a british sewing magazine. i was certainly drawn to the triangles. today i discovered, clicking through various links, an article about turkoman embroidery that shows some pictures of doga, which are "worn by people of all ages, attached to horse's harness, tied to cradles, or hung in houses or yurts. The doga is shaped from rough cloth into a triangular form....some are empty and others are simply triangular cloth sections decorated with embroidery." they can be used to carry amulets, or as amulets themselves.
mention is made on this page of something that could entice anybody to carry an amulet: "the albasty, an evil female spirit who appears sometimes as a goat but most often as a woman with hair to her heels and an open wound on her back, through which her entrails are always spilling." holy cow, sicilian peasant that i am, even i do not have hair on my heels -- nor does my sister, who, however, having been born with spina bifida, fits the rest of the description rather well.
or did at her birth. all fixed up now of course.
actually i don't remember any mention of entrails, either.
okay, well, she's evil and she did have a wound on her back and sometimes she appears as a goat.
looking at more turkoman textiles just convinces me i should be wearing embellished robes more often. you only live once (unless you are an evil hirsute goat spirit with spina bifida, in which case you probably live forever).