She claimed that she would choose a husband as soon as the shroud was completed. By day, the queen, a renowned weaver, worked on a great loom in the royal halls. At night, she secretly unraveled what she had done, amazingly deceiving the young suitors. Her ploy failed only when one of her servants eventually betrayed her and told the suitors what was happening.
The contest of the bow and axes is another example of Penelope's guile; it also illustrates her wry sense of destiny. After Odysseus returns to Ithaca, the queen announces first to the visiting beggar, whom she suspects to be Odysseus, that she will hold a contest in which the suitors will be asked to string the great bow of Odysseus and shoot an arrow through a dozen axes, an old trick of her husband's, and that she will be the wife of the man who can perform the feat. The choice of this particular contest is no coincidence; Penelope knows exactly what she is doing. If the old beggar really is Odysseus in disguise, he alone has any realistic chance of winning the contest.
Penelope said that before she married, she had to weave a burial shroud for Lord Laertes. At night, she would in weave what she had done during the day to hold off the suitors. After three years they discover her trick, and she is forced to finish the shroud.
