May 6th, 2022

Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children

Number 377

Ariadne’s Thread

 

Hello Everyone

 

 

Last Saturday night, Emily’s parents went to a party and they weren’t going to be home until really late, so it was decided that the best thing to do was for Emily to spend the night at Auntie Alice’s cottage.

 

Late Saturday afternoon, the two of them settled down in the living room to do a job that Auntie Alice needed help with.

 

Auntie Alice had bought some skeins of yarn and needed Emily’s help to wind them into balls.  This would make knitting from them easier.

 

Emily would hold the skeins taught on her hands whilst Auntie Alice would wind the yarn.

 

Well, while Auntie Alice was cooking supper, Emily thought she would be helpful and try and finish the job by herself.

 

Bad idea!

 

What a tangle she got into. 

 

Auntie Alice had to forgive her because she was so apologetic; and after all, she had had good intentions.

 

Once they had eaten supper, they went back to the job and had to undo the terrible mess before they could start back at where they should have started from in the first place.

 

lf you see what l mean.

 

Auntie Alice said that the big tangle they were trying to sort out reminded her of the famous story of Ariadne’s thread.

 

Emily said that she didn’t know the story, so Auntie Alice told her the story whilst they were working.

 

Here is the story she told…

 

Once upon a time, all good stories start like that don’t they?

 

Once upon a time, there was a king who lived on the island of Crete. 

 

This island is at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. 

 

The king’s name was Minos.  He was the son of the god Zeus.

 

Minos had become king of the island when Poseidon, the king of all the oceans, had sent a great white bull out of the sea as a sign that Minos should become ruler of his island home.

 

ln return for this gift, Minos had promised to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon. 

 

But when Minos saw how beautiful the bull was, he couldn’t bring himself to kill it, not even to show his great reverence and gratitude to Poseidon.

 

Minos sacrificed a lesser animal instead.  This did not please Poseidon one little bit.

 

ln his rage, Poseidon decided to punish Minos by making his wife, the queen, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull.

 

The queen then gave birth to a creature which was named a Minotaur.

 

Now you can imagine that Minos was none too happy at this turn of events.

 

He instructed a great architect and engineer to design and over-see the building of a great labyrinth in which the Minotaur would be housed.  The architect’s name was Daedalus.

 

(A labyrinth, in case you don’t know, is a maze; possibly encased inside a building or underground space.)

 

The maze that Daedalus designed was so complicated and confusing that anyone who entered it was sure to get lost, and then would eventually be eaten by the Minotaur.

 

Minos had recently attacked and conquered the Greek city of Athens. 

 

He did this because his son had been killed there.

 

As victor over the people of Athens, Minos demanded that every few years he should be sent seven young women and seven young men from their population for the Minotaur to eat.  This was in revenge for losing his son.

 

Theseus, who was the son of King Aegeus of Athens, volunteered to be one of the sacrifices to the Minotaur.

 

King Minos had a daughter called Ariadne.  She was put in charge of the labyrinth.

 

As soon as she saw Theseus when he arrived in Crete, Adriane fell in love with him and resolved to save him from the Minotaur.

 

But there was a condition.  lf she helped him survive the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur, he would marry her and take her away from Crete as his wife.

 

Theseus agreed to her terms.

 

So Ariadne told Theseus about her clever plan.

 

She gave him a large ball of thread and told him to unravel it as he walked through the passageways of the labyrinth.  Wherever he went, he would be able to find his way out again just by following the way marked by the thread. 

 

She also gave him a sword so that he might be armed against the Minotaur.

 

So when it was time, Theseus made his way deep into the labyrinth with the heroic intention of ridding the world of the Minotaur once and for all.

 

When Theseus eventually found the Minotaur, he killed it with his sword. 

 

Then all he had to do was follow the thread to find his way back to the entrance.

 

Then he found Ariande and sailed away with her from Crete.

 

But he did not have any intention of marrying her. 

 

When they reached the island of Naxos, he crept off and abandoned her whilst she was asleep on the beach.

 

Adriande woke up to find herself abandoned and she was terrified. 

 

She thought that she was going to die. 

 

She had managed to escape from Crete but now she had a new problem to solve.  How would she escape from Naxos?

 

But then her luck changed, a god called Dionysus found her. 

 

He fell in love with her.  He made her his wife and became a faithful husband.

 

Emily thought it was the strangest story she had ever heard.

 

By that time the yarn was all sorted out and it was time for bed.

 

 

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:  Did you hear that Dad bought a new tie but had to take it back to the shop?

 

Bob:  No?  Why?

 

Bill:  He said it was the wrong size; it was too tight!

 

 

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

 

A mosaic of the Minotaur

 

 

     THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK

 

 

This week, Bill and Bob were very keen for me to show you the code they had developed one evening last week.

 

 

You basically need to just draw a noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) grid and place the alphabet into it.

The last box will only have two letters in it.

Then the letters in your message will be represented by the part of the box they have been placed in, and one, two or three lines to tell you what position the letter is in inside their part of the box. 

You could draw a dot but a little line will be quicker to draw than a dot.

You will leave a gap between words just like you do in normal writing.

Look at this message and see if you can work out what it says.

 

 

 

*********************

TO ADVERTISE ON THIS BLOG

PLEASE CONTACT:

christina.sinclair.ads@aol.co.uk

*********************

Quick Quiz

 

What do these idioms mean?

 

1. to run the gauntlet
2. to be in someone’s pocket
3. to give someone the shirt off your back
4. to skirt around the issue
5. the shoe is on the other foot
6. to talk off the cuff
7. to wear many hats
8. to collar someone
9. to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes
10. to wear the trousers
11. to be down at heel
12. belt and braces

 

 

 

 

lt’s the Weekend!

 

 

HOW TO MAKE A THREAD SACK

Do you ever sit down to do some sewing and your reels of thread keep rolling about all over the place?

Tuck them into this little sack and they will be well under control.

 

THREAD SACK BASE (KNIT ONE)

Using 4mm knitting needles and cream dk yarn cast on 20 stitches

Knit 26 rows of stocking stitch

Cast off

 

THREAD SACK SIDES (KNIT FOUR)

Using 4mm knitting needles and cream dk yarn cast on 20 stitches

Knit 4 rows of 1×1 rib

Knit 16 rows of stocking stitch

Cast off

 

TO MAKE UP

Using over-sew stitching and with right sides together sew the bottom of the sides to the base of the sack (so that the ribbing is at the top)

Then sew up the corners of the sack

 

 

Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms 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

 

 

Answers to the News Desk Quiz

 

HELLO

 

WE HOPE YOU LIKE OUR NEW CODE

 

 

 

 

Quick Quiz Answers

 

1. to run the gauntlet – a lot of people are attacking you or criticizing you
2. to be in someone’s pocket – they control you, you do everything they tell you to
3. willing to give someone the shirt off your back – to be very generous to someone even if it is to your detriment or you don’t have much left to give
4. to skirt around the issue – to not come to the point when you are talking, to avoid talking about something specific
5. the shoe is on the other foot – when someone experiences something someone else had just experienced, and now they know what it feels like and it will usually be a bad or uncomfortable experience
6. to talk off the cuff – to speak without notes to refer to or any other preparation
7. to wear many hats – to have many roles to perform or many jobs to do – also a jack of all trades
8. to collar someone – to arrest someone
9. Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes – don’t criticize someone, because you don’t know what it feels like to be them, you have to experience someone else’s life before you know what it feels like
10. to wear the trousers – to be in charge in a relationship or family – this phrase is typically used to talk about a woman who usually makes decisions in a household (when it is men traditionally through history who have worn trousers)
11. to be down at heel – to be poor
12. belt and braces – to do two things (or more) to make sure something will be successful – there is no need to wear braces to stop your trousers from falling down if you are already wearing a belt

 

A gauntlet