Friday 8 June 2012

I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue!

No not this one [hilarious though the programme is]…

I do miss Humph!

…but rather something fascinating I learned the other week. I’d been asked to do some Greek Myths with the children at school – and with 5 year olds you do have to pick and choose carefully [and I admit to some Bowdlerization here and there] I decided to tell them about Theseus and the Minotaur.

I checked out the details about King Minos, and the labyrinth – and Ariadne and her thread [Niccolò Bambini painted this about 300 years ago – many of the versions say she gave him a ball of red yarn]

ariadnes thread by bambini

And that is when I found out that when she gave him a solution to his problem – a ball of yarn – she was giving him a clue. The old English word for a ball of yarn is a clew  [later on the spelling changed to clue] The children at school were just as fascinated by the word as I was.

My Great Stash is full of random clews. I am currently working on various projects to use them up! Will post pictures when they are completed.

5 comments:

  1. Do you know that myths and legends are Mattman's favourite things! We'll be reading this together later! I am looking at a weekly crochet project on a blog which I thought would be good for using up bits of wool- I think it's blairpeter.typepad? A sort of Aghan sampler which obviously looks gorgeous in the photos!!

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  2. I've been sorting out some of my stash today actually so I found this fascinating. Euro 12 is starting today so I have plenty of knitting hours coming my way
    x x x

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  3. Congrats on winning Finding Fun x x x

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  4. That was interesting.....now I have to casually drop it into conversation!
    Jane x

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  5. That was really interesting to learn. Having spent the last five years teaching two of my children at home, I would what I have liked best about it is learning loads of stuff along with them.

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