Cat Thursday: Thimble Kitties

Cat Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The True Book Addict, and celebrating "the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats." You can join the fun by posting a favorite LOL cat pic, famous cat art or even pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

I've already written about my mother's thimble collection (see my last Blue Monday post: A Wonderland of Thimbles) and warned everyone that they'd be seeing more of it eventually.  Well, eventually is here, folks -- because many of her thimbles featured cats, which makes them purr-fect for Cat Thursday.

Three ceramic thimbles

The one on the right is made of wood

And these are made of various metals.
That first one has a mouse around the other side.

These are only some of the kitty thimbles in her collection -- and she always claimed she didn't even like cats!  I'm saving the rest for a later post.  (I hear you shouting "Oh, goody, goody!")

Blue Monday: A Wonderland of Thimbles

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself, please head on over to her blog.

My mother was a thimble collector -- over a period of twenty years or so, she amassed an enormous collection of the little do-dads.  I'm not a thimble collector, but after she died I inherited her collection, put them in storage, and really didn't think too much about them for the next twelve years.  But after our move back to Texas last year, we decided it was time to do something about all those crates of thimbles stacked in the garage.

Hello, eBay!

So, lately we've been doing a LOT of thimble sorting around here.  There are hundreds (quite possibly more than a thousand) of them to get through, and some I'll want to hang onto myself.  Like these Alice in Wonderland thimbles (I do collect Alice stuff) -- some of which have lovely blue elements. (Sorry about the photo quality -- I took it with my cell phone camera. You can see more detail if you enlarge it by clicking on it.)

Here's another shot of some of them spread out on the hubby's workbench.

And one more, a little closer up.  Definitely some touches of blue there.

I have a feeling you'll be seeing more thimbles, here at Joysweb in the coming weeks.

So, do you collect anything?  What?  Why?  How did you decide on what to collect?  And how big is your collection?

I definitely inherited the collecting gene from my mom -- dolls, books, bookmarks, paper dolls, coloring books, comic books, postcards, greeting cards, stamps, Teddy bears, cat figurines, decorative nutcrackers, Hallmark Christmas ornaments, blue and white Pyrex ware, vintage clothing, Enid Collins handbags -- I've collected all these things at one time or another.  My collections are vast and still growing.  Good thing we have some room to spare in the garage!

Cat Thursday

Cat Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The True Book Addict, and celebrating "the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats." You can join the fun by posting a favorite LOL cat pic, famous cat art or even pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

Snapped this photo in the local hardware store the other day, and immediately thought of Cat Thursday.  I seem to spend an annoying amazing amount of time there -- in the hardware store, that is.  It's one of the hubby's fave places these days.  And almost every time we've been there, I've seen the store kitty running around.  It's hard to get a picture of her because she's always on the move, but I finally caught her in a quiet moment peeking over a store display.

Looks like she's interested in doing a little cleaning up.

And now, in honor of the season, here's one of my favorite LOL Cats:

Our World Tuesday: Week 85

We've had quite a bit of rain in our part of the world recently.  Now when I say "quite a bit," remember that Texas, the southern part of it anyway, is going through a formidable drought (possibly historic, but we hope not) -- so two rainy days in a row is something we consider noteworthy.  And definitely justifies a few photos to commemorate it.  I took these from our front porch last week, during a rainstorm that was welcome but also just a little more violent than I'd like (well, we do everything in extremes here in the Lone Star state).

These are a couple of views of the storm's approach.  Our house is on a hill, so we get a nice panorama of the country for miles around.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

And here are another couple of shots, after the rain got started.  I didn't stay outside very long after this -- the thunder and lightning scared me indoors.  Like I said, Texas does extreme weather really well.

Unfortunately, that rainy spell, even though it dropped several inches of rain over a two-day period, wasn't enough to end the drought.  We need rain in something like Biblical proportions, I guess.  And that would bring different problems.  As my mother always said, if it's not one d--n thing, it's another.

Linking up with:

Blue Monday: Bluebonnets!

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself, please head on over to her blog.

It's that time of year again in Texas -- springtime means the bluebonnets are blooming once again.  And here in the Hill Country, you see them along just about every road.  It's been almost thirty years since we were in Texas at this time of year, so it's really exciting to see the lovely blue blossoms again.  We live just a short drive from the Bluebonnet Trail, and I've been snapping shots every time we're out and about -- these are just a few (click on images to enlarge):

Unconscious Mutterings: Week 532

This week, LunaNina thinks :: and I say...

1. Flashlight ::  Mulder and Scully
2. Criminal ::   prisoner
3. Gathering ::  together
4. Passed ::  failed
5. Medal :: award
6. Renovation ::  HGTV
7. Sweat ::  equity (obviously, I've been watching too much of #6)
8. South ::  will rise again
9. Ginger ::  snap
10. Jersey ::  Lily