Annual "Sign of the Cat" Sale at The Cat Lady Antiques.com

Annual "Sign of the Cat" Sale Hello Everyone, I just wanted to let you know that The Cat Lady Antiques is having a sale to promote "my summer gardening project" cash flow. One can never have enough benches, herbs, flowers and stone...we all need places to linger and dream! Many things are marked down to cost or well below, including some beloved cloth dolls, homespuns and hooked rugs. Do check every "cat"egory. Just look for the kitty and click on the item to see the sale price. I invite you to visit www.TheCatLadyAntiques.com. Who knows...I just may have marked down that piece you've been watching for a while! Meow! Anne As always, thanks for visiting.

Happy Valentine's Day from "The Goode Ladyes" of Ackermanville......

(From left)

Miss Magnolia Mae Murray, Arabella, Precious and Phoebe, Miss Eliza Baldwin and last, but never least, Pru Goodchurch and Flora

would like to wish you all a "Very Happy Valentine's Day!"

The verb "I love" I learnt in school,

"Thou lovest" follows next in rule,

"We love" let us say together,

Proving thus we love each other.

(found written on a scrap of paper with a ribbon adorned lock of hair, dated 1878)

May you have the good fortune to find love wherever you roam, today and every day!

Some of the things I'd like to talk about

As I mentioned previously, I'd like to be talking about the things that I both collect and sell, that tug at my heartstrings as well as my desire for knowledge of the past. Early Cloth dolls and animals are among my great loves. Cloth dolls are an adventure into the whimsical nature of their makers. Choosing them is purely a subjective matter- either they immediately win you, or they don't. I have had the privilege to own many in my lifetime, and am ever on the hunt for the next one. Criteria for choice is limitless. Facial features: inked, water-colored, hand-stitched, applied or none at all. Clothing: original or redressed. Body construction: homespun linen, cotton, striped ticking, calico...whatever mom had. They are as varied and original as snowflakes with no two ever being exactly alike. What matters most when collecting them is that you love them.

Over time I will post photos of various and sundry examples from my collection as well as those that I have sold. They are like old friends that one can never forget!

I'm trying to do several posting here tonight as a way to give you a sense of my ideas for this forum. I hope you will enjoy it.

The Thing About Early Textiles.......

The thing about early textiles is that they provide us (those of us who love them)with a visceral link to the past. Whenever I lay my hand on cloth or sampler, cloth poppet or animal I feel as if I've connected with the maker via an impulse a century or more old that has been sent by the maker straight to my head, heart and soul. It can sometimes make the hair stand up straight on the back of my neck and make my heart jump. I can sometimes sense the depth of the maker's joy or sorrow, fatigue or energy and try to imagine what life must have been like for her all those years ago when life was much harder and sometimes the only creative outlet a woman had was her needlework. By needlework I am referring to "the toil of the needle", not that done for refinement and pleasure but that borne out of necessity - like the need for a new dress for a child, or a new pin cushion, or a new doll for a present when there was little money to buy one. I am not trying to connote a negative meaning with my use of the phrase, just trying to distinguish the type of needlework I so love as opposed to the more refined needlework of women who occupied a much higher station in life than the farmer's wife, the seamstress, the less coddled woman of her day.
It is to her and her work that I would like to devote this blog. To learn more about both the maker and the object. I hope to use this forum to explore that which I do know and that which do not, but hope to learn. Knowledge is power!