I’m not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier blog, but I decided to go along with Lindsay (the Frugal Crafter) and try to use pastels.  I’m starting with the oil pastels because I’m not crazy about how dusty and dirty I get with “normal” pastels.  Let’s just call them chalk.  I also don’t really want to worry about it smearing or smudging or having to put a fixative on it.  So long story short, I decided to try my hand at oil pastels.  The set Lindsay uses is really inexpensive on Amazon Prime, so I got mine there.  Her first tutorial was of an artichoke, so I drew it.  I showed it to Rich and he actually knew what it was.  (This is all sounding familiar, so I apologize if I’ve already told you this.)  Now I’m getting to the point of the story.  Today I found another tutorial from a different YouTuber, that was of an evening sunset or the night sky, I’m not sure.  I watched the video three times and then paused it and attempted to recreate it.  I’m not sure what I did wrong, but mine looks like a blue/black abstract of I’m not sure what.  I was really encouraged when I made the artichoke but I might be destined to stamping.  I’ve never been very artistic and today I remembered the feeling I get when I try to draw, and I’ll put it into words.  “Geez, what is that?”  Or maybe it’s, “This looks like crap.”

I guess I’ll wait for Lindsay’s next tutorial and try that before I throw in the towel.  You know it’s another saying that I have no idea where it originated.  Here’s the scoop.

Origin

This little expression of course derives from boxing. When a boxer is suffering a beating and his corner want to stop the fight they literally throw in the towel to indicate their conceding of the fight. This earliest citation that I have found of this is in the American newspaper The F ort Wayne Journal-Gazette, January 1913:

Murphy went after him, landing right and left undefended face. The crowd importuned referee Griffin to stop the fight and a towel was thrown from Burns’ corner as a token of defeat.

It was very soon after that that the phrase began to be used in a figurative sense, to indicate giving up in non-boxing contexts; for example, in the Australian author Clarence James Dennis’s WWI patriotic novel, The Moods of Ginger Mick, 1916:

No matter wot ‘e done. It’s jist a thing
I knoo ‘e’d do if once ‘e got the show.
An’ it would never please ‘im fer to sling
Tall tork at ‘im jist cos ‘e acted so.
“Don’t make a song uv it!” I ‘ear ‘im growl,
“I’ve done me limit, an’ tossed in the tow’l.”

Throwing in the towel was preceded by throwing in the sponge. Sponges were a common ringside accessory as early as the 18th century. Throwing in the sponge was then the preferred method of conceding defeat. This is recorded in the mid-19th century, in The Slang Dictionary, 1860:

‘To throw up the sponge,’ to submit, give over the struggle, – from the practice of throwing up the sponge used to cleanse the combatants’ faces, at a prize-fight, as a signal that the ‘mill’ is concluded.

So I guess I think I’ve been beaten, the towel is poised for flight, we’ll just have to wait and see if I actually throw it.

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