Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 366
The Cottingley Fairies
Hello Everyone
Do you believe in fairies? Some people do and some people don’t.
Most six-year-old girls l have met, definitely do.
There was a very famous story of two girls who once said that they had made friends with some fairies that lived by the stream at the bottom of their garden and to prove it they took some photographs.
The two girls were cousins and lived in Cottingley, near Bradford.
Their names were Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths.
The first photograph taken in 1917 is pictured above.
lt was taken when Elsie was 16 and Frances was 9.
There were five photographs of fairies taken altogether by the two girls.
Elsie’s father, Arthur, was a keen amateur photographer. He had a camera and set up his own darkroom in which he could develop photographs.
The girls borrowed the camera and went off with it to gather proof that they had met some fairies near the stream.
When Elsie’s father saw the photographs the girls showed him, he did not believe them to be real because he knew his daughter was good at artwork, but her mother did and started showing them to other people.
News spread.
There was much debate as to whether the photographs were genuine or not for quite a long time.
Some people believed that the girls were telling the truth about the ‘Cottingley Fairies’.
Some people said that the photographs were fakes.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for writing the Sherlock Holmes stories, truly believed the photographs showed real fairies.
He had a huge belief in the supernatural.
Photography was in its infancy at the time, but photo manipulation was around from the earliest days of photography.
Experts at Kodak and llford would not declare the photographs genuine even though they could not prove they were faked either.
This did not help to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The girls stuck to their story and would not deny it under questioning.
The girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a while and interest in the photographs waned, until in 1966, a reporter from the Daily Express traced Elsie, who by this time was back living in England.
She didn’t give much information away.
The BBC investigated the subject again in 1971. Elsie told them that the photographs were from their thoughts.
Later that decade, more experts studied the photographs and declared them to be fakes.
The girls both died in the mid-1980s.
But they had, at the beginning of that decade, for the first time, admitted that the photographs were faked and the figures were actually cardboard cut-outs of fairies.
The figures were copied from a children’s book of the time. The pictures in the book were of dancers. They copied the figures and then added wings.
Nobody else who owned the same book ever seemed to have noticed the pictures were so similar!
You can see in the photographs how flat the figures of the fairies look when compared with the girls. They are very well-drawn though.
The girls had not wanted to admit to not telling the truth once the photographs had become famous because they were too embarrassed at the fuss they had caused.
But Frances always insisted that they had really seen fairies, and that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.
Do you believe her?
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: Why do toadstools grow so close together?
Bob: l don’t know. Why do toadstools grow so close together?
Bill: Because they don’t need mushroom!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
The first picture
The second picture showing Elsie with a winged gnome
The third picture
The final photograph
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
Do you remember last year Auntie Alice was helping to organize a team of people in Rocky Bay who packed up a lot of shoe boxes full of presents for orphans and other needy children abroad?
Well, as Auntie Alice was sitting in her armchair the other evening, watching the firelight dancing around the room, she started thinking about the last-minute panic that the team had had getting their lorry packed up and ready to go; and she decided that an earlier start this year might be a good idea.
There wasn’t much to do in the garden at this time of year, and to do some knitting in the long winter evenings might be a good way to spend her time.
She started thinking about what she could make the children.
Some of them are so poor, they have to scour rubbish dumps and sift through all the smelly rubbish all day to make a living.
One of the most important things for these children to do, is to succeed in school so that they can improve their lives in the future.
Education is the quickest way out of poverty.
In order to do this, the children must have equipment.
This can be as simple as exercise books, pens, pencils, sharpeners, rulers, erasers and mathematics equipment.
She made up a knitting design for a bag to carry a few exercise books and keep them together and another smaller one to carry a few pencils and pens and a small ruler.
She knew that one of the things the girls also liked to have as presents were hair ties so she set about designing her own.
This hair scrunchie can be made in 4ply yarn to make it less chunky. You will of course use different sizes needles from those in the pattern and cast on maybe about four more stitches.
Scrunchies can be made in textured yarn, rainbow-coloured yarn, shaggy yarn or sparkly yarn to make them look more interesting.
NEWSDESK MINIMAKE
KNITTED HAIR SCRUNCHIE
SCRUNCHIE (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and pink dk yarn cast on 10 stitches
Knit 160 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Using over-sew stitching and with wrong sides together
Sew the two pieces together along the long sides
Thread 25cm of ½cm wide elastic through the tube you have made and tie the ends securely into a double knot
Sew the ends of the knitted pieces together using over-sew stitching to encase the elastic
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Quick Quiz
Do you know who these fairy-folk characters are?
- G _ _ _ e
- G _ _ _ _ n
- P _ _ _ e
- N _ _ _ h
- S _ _ _ _ e
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE AN EXERClSE BOOK BAG AND PENClL BAG
This bag will hold two or three exercise books so that they don’t drop in a puddle on the way to school.
The pencil case will also tuck inside it.
Of course you could make the bags in just one colour or you could make them striped
BOOK BAG (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and blue dk yarn cast on 45 stitches
K1 p1 (k2, p1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 4 stitches remain, k2 p2
K1 k1 (p2, k1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 1 stitch remains k1
S1 p1 (k2, p1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 4 stitches remain, k2 p2
S1 k1 (p2, k1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 1 stitch remains k1
Repeat the last 2 rows until you have knitted 70 rows of rib
Change to black dk yarn
Knit 20 rows of stocking stitch
Purl 1 row
Purl 1 row
Knit 1 row
Knit 1 row
Knit 4 rows of stocking stitch
Change back to blue dk yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Use over-sew stitching to stitch the bag together
- Sew along bottom edge right sides together
- Sew along sides of blue ribbing wrong sides together
- Sew along the sides of the black stocking stitch and blue garter stitch top right sides together
- Turn the bag the right way out
- Crochet 120 chains into a length of blue yarn and thread the cord through the channel you have made in the black stocking stitch knitting
- Tie the ends of the cord together
PENCIL CASE (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and blue dk yarn cast on 15 stitches
Knit 1 row
Knit 1 row
K1 p1 (k2, p1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 4 stitches remain, k2 p2
K1 k1 (p2, k1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 1 stitch remains k1
S1 p1 (k2, p1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 4 stitches remain, k2 p2
S1 k1 (p2, k1) repeat the last 3 stitches until 1 stitch remains k1
Repeat the last 2 rows until you have knitted 60 rows of rib
Purl 1 row
Purl 1 row
Change to black dk yarn
Knit 10 rows of stocking stitch
Purl 1 row
Purl 1 row
Knit 1 row
Knit 1 row
Knit 2 rows of stocking stitch
Change back to blue dk yarn
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Use over-sew stitching to stitch the bag together
- Sew along bottom edge wrong sides together
- Sew along sides of blue ribbing wrong sides together
- Sew along the sides of the black stocking stitch and blue garter stitch top right sides together
- Turn the bag the right way out
- Crochet 50 chains into a length of blue yarn and thread the cord through the channel you have made in the black stocking stitch knitting
- Tie the ends of the cord together
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- Gnome
- Goblin
- Pixie
- Nymph
- Sprite
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