Of Gardens, Giveaways and Samplers

On the return from my recent visit to Windsor I stopped off to visit my cousin Sheryl. She is also an avid cross stitcher and had been telling me of a family sampler on her mum's side of the family dating back to the 1800s. This sampler now resides with Sheryl's older sister and she promised to email me some pics of the sampler. This week I received the pictures and what a beauty it is!

Very little is known about the sampler other than it is a direct relative who stitched it and the first of a long line of females named Jane. The sampler appears to be in fairly good shape although it looks like some of the stitches are deteriorating on the second basket and around some of the flowers. The reds are still pretty vibrant  and I just love the border!  The verse is interesting too. I'm not sure what's responsible for the silhouettes or outlines around the lettering. It's almost as if the dark floss was carried over between letters. At some point in time the sampler was framed beneath glass. I could be wrong but I don't think that was done originally.
Did you notice my cousin's kitty Cleo admiring the sampler too?
Once again I'm struck by what lovely stitching was done by these young girls. The sampler was stitched by a relative on my cousin's maternal side and I'm related on the paternal side so this young stitcher is in no way related to me.


The mailman also brought the last of my giveaway wins. I know, I know. It takes forever for anything to get to us here in Canada! Canada Post is not known for its speed!
You will recall that a couple of weeks ago I received BBD For My Friend from Melissa. 

This was followed on Tuesday by the arrival of my DVD win from Edgar.

I can hardly wait until I get some time to myself and can sit for a spell to watch these. Besides the DVDs, Edgar threw in a package of sweets which are one of my absolute favourites -  SweetTart chews. I have always loved the original SweetTarts but have not seen this version yet here in Canada. How did you ever know Edgar that I'm hooked on these candies? Thank you so much for the wonderful giveaway. What a great idea it was!


Finally, today's mail brought the arrival of 2 new designs from By The Bay Needleart which I won from Donna upon their release.

I adore both of these new designs and don't know which one I want to stitch first! The Funky Bird is the first in a new series of Donna's and I just know I'm going to want more of them!


A big thank you to all of you for these fabulous givings!! I know I'll pass many pleasant hours as a result of all of them.


My Magic Garden Sampler continues to progress although my stitching time has been somewhat limited. I forgot just how many appointments I had scheduled this week!

I don't know if you can tell from the picture or not but I've already had a small visit from the frogs. I stitched the interior of the butterfly on the left in the wrong colour. Don't know what I was thinking! In any case, the frogging is complete and I can continue on my merry way now. I'm having a lot of fun with this stitch and haven't picked up anything else this week.


Speaking of gardens, here are some pics from mine. Due to my difficulties in gardening lately, I'm putting in more and more perennials. 
I love columbine and this one is a favourite.

My irises were a gift from a co-worker who was thinning out her own garden.

My latest addition is called Jethro Tull Tickseed, so named because of its fluted petals. I thought it only fitting since I'm a flute player myself.

I've added lots of hanging baskets to the yard to make up for my lack of annuals in the yard this year. Here is one of my favourites of the bunch. It's made up of double million bells in a gorgeous shade of red complimented with white bacopa. I love the blooms on this one!

On a final note, Happy Birthday wishes go out to my youngest son Chris who turns 24 today! We are heading to Toronto on Friday morning to move him back to Ottawa. It will be so great to have him back in the area again. Hope you had a great day Chris!

More cottage life and stitching too!

Welcome back to week number 2 at the cottage. The picture above is of our rental here in Lake Muskoka. We have a lovely boathouse cottage and I spend most mornings on the deck stitching.  The owners also have some lovely gardens on the property which I snapped a few pictures of yesterday afternoon.

Don't you just love the flower sculptures  in the background? I've posted a close up of them as well. This is truly a lovely cottage which unfortunately is up for sale as well as the main house behind it. They have already had a couple of offers and are negotiating a sale so it looks like we'll be vacationing elsewhere on the lake. We do have a lead on two other locations, one of which is just across the bay from our current location.

As I mentioned earlier, I love to stitch on the deck of the boathouse with the view of the lake in front of me. However I've been unable to do much stitching the past couple of days since the sun was just too strong and I found I had a headache for most of the day. This could also be due to dehydration. I've never been one to drink lots of water and the water here tastes awful as far as I'm concerned. So I've been filling up on ice tea and lemonade. All that extra caffeine from the tea is not helping the headache any.

However I do have stitchy photos for you! Here is the picture of my completed BBD Their Song minus the three words which I ran out of floss for. It's a bit wrinkled looking. There is an iron here in the cottage and I did try pressing it last night but I don't think this iron is as hot as my one at home plus it doesn't have steam. I'm going to give a call to one of my LNS which is on my way home and see if she has any of the WDW Havana which I'm needing to complete this with. Next I thought I'd try getting back to my Canadian version of LHN America. But once again I'm not happy with my choice of floss colour for the flag in this one. I'm trying to find just the right shade of red in the Canadian flag and am not having any luck at the moment. They either look too cherry red or too orangy red and I've ended up frogging out the flag once I get it started. I'm still undecided  on the colour of the house roof too. I guess I'm not very good at making decisions. Maybe it's heat stroke! So the only thing left to stitch on was my new start, LHN Acorn Hill. Below is a pic of my progress to date. It does't look like much but it will eventually be a cute little house. See that pretty red door? I'm stitching this one on LSL Buttercream and loving it!

At the tail end of last week I returned to the village of Rosseau to have a look in the antique shop there. We had visited this village on our first weekend here and found it very quaint. Imagine my surprise when I found this beautiful old sampler in the shop. I tried to get a good picture of it but where it was hanging the sun shone on it at the wrong angle and always gave me a reflection.

It's been stitched by Eliza Prout, aged 11 in the year 1833. It took me a little bit to decipher this but I believe that's what has been stitched. Take a look below at the other pics and see if you agree with me. The sampler is not in the very best of shape. The linen is torn in several spots, perhaps just eaten away and the colours are faded somewhat but hey, wouldn't you look a little worse for wear if you were 178 yrs old?!



Is that supposed to be a dog in the above photo? I'm not really sure but I love it as well as the deer and the butterfly in the previous pics. I would love to own a sampler like this but it's a bit out of my price range. I'm aways amazed at the stitching abilities of these young girls.

I visited other antique shops during the week but didn't find any other samplers such as this one.

Here are some other pictures we took during our visit to Rosseau. My DH loved the General Store and its collection of old bottles on the upper shelves.

The gardens are found next door to the local ice cream stop and the church is where my DH played the organ on the Sunday morning. 

On our way home from Rosseau we stopped briefly in the village of Minett. That's where we found this fantastic carving in an old tree. What a wonderful way to preserve the remains of some of these older trees. We found out from some of the villagers that many of the trees in the area were lost during a horrific storm on the lake three weeks ago. We ourselves saw evidence of this on our many boat trips on the lake. In some cases we saw where the trees had fallen on the cottage.

One of the many other things which we like to do each year on our visits to Muskoka is to take in the waterski show in Bala. This show makes the rounds of the lakes each week and has a different theme each year. Two years ago when I saw it with my son the theme was Raiders of the Lost Ark. This year the theme was James Bond. Goldfinger was also present and was responsible for taking off with all of Bonds' Girls. The shows are great fun and showcase the talents of waterskiers from the area as well as abroad.

This will be my last post from the cottage. We are heading out on Friday morning for the long trek home. I absolutely hate leaving the lake. I always feel so much at peace here but we've had a wonderful time and all good things must come to an end. I'll post some more pics of our vacation when I've returned home. Until then, happy stitching!