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Old Miss Elderby's
Thimble Collection
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No tour of Bigby would be complete without a stop at Old Miss Elderby's to see her marvellous collection of sewing thimbles. Begun in 1921 with the first thimble
she ever bought, her collection has grown to a phenomenal 60... one for each year of her sewing career.
Old Miss Elderby keeps her thimble collection in a hand-painted orange crate she had salvaged from the local dump while she had been searching for a Rudy Valley 78 rpm album which
Archibald Cracker had thrown out. It seems that Archie had become upset at his wife's obsession with the crooner and had tossed out the vinyl after Polly Wanda tossed a pair of her
bloomers onto the stage while attending Rudy's concert in Toronto. More disturbing was the fact that she had been in them at the time!
Each thimble is carefully centred on an upside-down tuna can which has been draped with a hand-crocheted doily.
Except for individual dents, each thimble is identical. However, it is the stories behind them that makes them such an interesting collection. Of course, due to space constraints, it isn't
possible to show all of them here, so I will display only the highlights:
 1921 - The first thimble purchased by Old Miss Elderby on her 18th birthday. With the quarter she had received as a gift from
her father, she had run straight to the General Store & Blacksmith Shop and bought a bag of licorice sticks, a genuine imitation silk scarf that matched her eyes, a bottle of perfume, a tube of
lipstick, and, with 2 cents remaining, her first sewing thimble. Today, that same thimble is worth almost 17 cents! |
| 1922 - Old Miss Elderby had no intention of starting a collection until she lost her first thimble and had to buy a new one. As luck
would have it, she found the other one in her sewing basket which she had forgotten her father had made for her as a Christmas gift. Tossing the old thimble into the beautifully hand-painted orange crate, it sat there, forgotten, until her
mother commented, "Most people collect butterflies, but if you want to collect thimbles, you're going to have a hard time pinning them to the cork board." |
| 1930 - This is actually a replacement thimble which Old Miss Elderby had been forced to purchase after a rather extraordinary event.
Her best friend, Lucille, had a baby, and, while Old Miss Elderby was visiting, the 7-month-old grabbed up her thimble and popped it into his mouth. Not one person was willing to go through all the
crap they would have to go through to get it back, so she just bought another one. |
| 1934 - Commemorating her first 'date'. (When she says 'date', she crooks her index fingers in a quotation marks gesture.) She bought
this thimble to use while sewing her new dress for the occasion. However, what she had expected to be a picnic for two atop Bigby Hill turned out to be an afternoon of loading hay onto a wagon and
milking 2 dozen cows by hand. "I spent all morning dressing up," she explains, "and the only one I impressed was the bull in the end stall when I tried to milk him!" |
| 1941 - An uneventful year for most people, it was a most exciting one for Old Miss Elderby. In honour of her first trip to Toronto,
she bought this thimble for an unheard-of price of 22¢! She had been warned of the decadence of the city, but nothing had prepared her for that! But the memories of her journey more
than made up for the expense. It's just too bad that she can't remember any of it. "All I can remember now is wishing I hadn't wasted 22¢ on that damned thimble!!!" |
| 1951 - In honour of learning about the end of World War II, this thimble also honours the installment of a new newspaper editor after
Orville Winslow admitted that he hadn't bothered to print the announcement years earlier because he hadn't even printed the announcement of the start of the war a decade earlier. "It just didn't
seem important enough at the time," he claimed. "Besides. Hasn't been nobody buy a Bigby Chronicle in nigh unto 47 years, so what's the big deal?" |
| 1967 - The year Bigby discovered it was part of Canada, and only then because Mayor Ed had received a personal letter from the Canadian
government inviting him to join in the festivities celebrating Canada's 100th birthday. "Imagine our surprise," Old Miss Elderby states, "to find out that we were living in a country run by a soda
pop company! Never cared much for Canada Dry before that, but it's all I drink now. And here we were, laughing at the United States all these years for being run by an airline company!" |
| 1978 - Never used, this special thimble was bought to honour Old Miss Elderby's 75th birthday. She ordered it specially through a mail-order
catalogue and had it sent to her good friend, Essie Mae, who wrapped it nicely and presented it to Old Miss Elderby on her big day. After a ceremonial birthday toast, the thimble filled with prune juice,
she placed it on a pedestal of honour: a Campbells Cream of Mushroom Soup can to remember her first bowel movement in 8 days. |
1981 - This just happened to be the year that Bigby 'struck it rich' and Old Miss Elderby decided it was time to put a halt to her passion
for collecting sewing thimbles and to turn her attentions to her childhood dream of getting her name listed in the Guinness Book of Records. Her plan is to play the entire 1812 Overture using
only her hand cupped in her armpit. "I've got the cannons down pat," she says, "but I'll be jiggered if I can figure out how to do a bassoon!"
Personally, I can't wait to see how she does the fireworks! |
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