Welcome

1 Apr 2021

My name is Christy Knockleby. I am a homeschooling mother, author, and obsessive bookworm. I’m the type of person who gets interested in something and then spends multiple years reading everything I can get my hands on about the topic, sharing random details about the topic with everyone I meet. You can follow my Facebook page to share in the fun.

I teach online classes through Outschool. I have a variety of short courses on history, mythology and looking at the Bible from a secular academic perspective. I have published two books, available online through various bookstores including my own little bookstore here:

A Secular Bible Study is a guide for homeschoolers who want to look at the Bible as a work of literature from an ancient time. Also available through Bookshop.org.
The Edge of the Circle is a novel about homeschooling teenagers in Alberta, exploring Shakespeare, forgiveness and Wicca. Also available through Bookshop.org.

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Christy's Houseful of Chaos

10 hours ago

“So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind” says Helena in Mid-Summer's Night Dream.In Samuel Richardson's Pamela in her Exalted State, Pamela says: "Then have I been ready to quarrel with these writers for another reason; and that is, the dangerous notion which they hardly ever fail to propagate, of a first-sight love. For there is such a susceptibility supposed on both sides (which, however, it may pass in a man, very little becomes the female delicacy) that they are smitten with a glance: the fictitious blind god is made a real divinity: and too often prudence and discretion are the first offerings at his shrine." Pamela's speech is continued a few paragraphs later with: "It looks to me, as if a lady's heart were too much in the power of her eye, and that she permitted her fancy to be much more busy than her judgment." I find the contrast between the two interesting. Helena's blind god allows her to transform a person she recognizes as imperfect into someone good. The eye, as referenced to by Helena, sees the true imperfections. Love and the mind override concerns for those imperfections, making someone choose poorly.Pamela sees the eye as taking a shallow view, overlooking the imperfections that prudence, discretion and judgment would demand the woman acknowledge. Despite his blindness, and the blind god is is associated with that shallow, looks-oriented way of seeing. First-sight love, at least, is deemed an idol.(Isn't it funny to read about "first-sight love" from a time before "love at first sight" became standard?) Helena's mind is seeing good what she knows is bad. For Helena the eyes speak true. For Pamela it is the other way around. But do we not want love to overlook imperfections? Pamela would say not for unmarried women who should not join themselves with vice-filled men. She would say choose wisely. Helena would probably say it isn't an option.... love captures who it will, and humans have little control. Perhaps those differences reflect partly the differing understandings of marriage, with medieval marriage being focused on providing a safe way of dealing with love and lust, while 18th and 19th century British understandings of marriage focused on the idea that people need to choose wisely someone who could be a good companion for the rest of their life. In medieval times marriages had to be easy to arrange, so that anyone who sleeps together could be bound together permanently. In the 18th and 19th century marriage laws in Britain were focused on making marriage harder to arrange so as to avoid youth marrying hastily without family approval. Picture is from Wikimedia Commons. Venus and Juno provoke Dido's love for Aeneas. Painted Limoges enamel plaque, ca. 1530. I wanted to find a picture of a blind Cupid from before Shakespeare's time. In a way the picture provides yet another interpretation of that interaction between love and judgment with Cupid being guided by Juno and Venus. ... See MoreSee Less

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Christy's Houseful of Chaos

20 hours ago

I was digging through some old photos and I found this one from last year. This is a spot located somewhat behind a playground and near a walking path. See the huge piles of ugly stuff? Those are garden clippings and yard waste that people dump there - despite the no dumping sign - with the idea that since it is biodegradable it is all okay. They are wrong. See the people in the picture? That is my husband and one of my sons. We were there weeding up invasive species that have started to grow there because people throw their clippings there. The good news is that now in our third year of weeding there, we can see a huge reduction in the spread of Himalayan Balsam. We are making a difference.There are two morals to this story:1) Don't throw garden clippings into wild areas. Compose them properly in your own yard or use municipal compost facilities.2) Never doubt you can make a difference. My family took on this task of cleaning that patch and we are succeeding at it, and that makes me wonderfully happy. ... See MoreSee Less

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Christy's Houseful of Chaos

1 day ago

One of my current projects is sorting out tangled embroidery threads. I actually find the process of untangling them fun to do, as long as I'm not trying to do it while working on an embroidery project. It is a project on its own, best done while visiting or watching television. I choose a colour and follow it the thread as it winds and twists in the great mass of other threads, slowly loosening it all until I can gather that one colour on my lap and wind it up properly. It feels reflective of how I follow academic topics, chasing down a theme through different texts and sources. ... See MoreSee Less

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Christy's Houseful of Chaos

2 days ago

Have your teens taken any classes with Darby Kennedy, Teacher? She teaches on Outschool and elsewhere. I enjoyed this blog post of hers about teaching history thematically.www.historyconnect.net/post/seeing-it-all-come-together ... See MoreSee Less

Seeing it all come together...

www.historyconnect.net

Back in March of 2021, I wrote a blog post about creating a Thematic World History class. I'm now on the other side of that class. I created it, I taught it, and we are done. I was lucky to get to experience it as both an online class via Outschool, and with my in-person students at Logic Creative L...

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Christy's Houseful of Chaos

2 days ago

"It behoves a prudent woman to guard against first impressions of favour she will think herself obliged, in compliment to her own judgement, to find reasons, if possible, to confirm them." Thus are young ladies warned by the character Pamela in Samuel Richardson's book Pamela in her Exalted State.I find myself thinking about how Jane Austen's book Pride and Prejudice was first titled First Impressions, and I understand that title better now, thinking of how Elizabeth sought reasons to confirm her first impressions. ... See MoreSee Less

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