Sampler Sunday

This is the Sampler Sunday sampler, Christmas Village by Victoria Sampler, where I borrowed this photo. The minute I saw it last week, browsing on ABC Stitch's website, I placed an order for it. It's getting a lot of attention on the 'net on various stitching blogs, and I'm thinking it'll be a sampler "best-seller." It's designed to be stitched on 28 ct. Zweigart smoky pearl cashel linen with a variety of fibers. Obviously I'm related to a magpie in liking sparkly things; everything I've bought lately requires Kreinik, beads, pearls and silk. All this work to hang on the wall just at Christmas though? Although I have a stitchy friend who leaves her Christmas pictures up year-round. Maybe if I eliminated Santa and his sleigh? I don't think the wonderful wintery, joyful feeling of the design would suffer if he was banished.


In the meantime, I've been stitching on Whale Hunting. I had somewhat less time this week because I've been up late every night diligently cleaning/decluttering the house in order to show it to the realtor who came to assess it yesterday. He pronounced it spotless and ready to show, which would amuse anyone who's ever seen my house: I'm a clutterbug who would rather stitch or read than clean. Fortunately, he didn't open my oven to see what I had stuffed in there to get it out of view.

Yesterday was another day of house-hunting. We looked at this property which we will not purchase. It comes with a huge responsibility which I don't really want to assume: it sits on a double city lot and has a full-lot-sized garden (not shown in the photo). Because the house, built in 1919, is in the historic district, it has to be kept as is (no tearing out the garden and bricking it over for parking--not that I'd do such a thing), and frankly I'm not enough of a gardener to take that on. Because of its location, it's very much in the public eye if you fail, too. It's an interesting problem which I've read about before: there are women (and men too) who buy properties with major, serious gardens and throw themselves into the task, and the garden thrives spectacularly (I'm guessing no one writes about or photographs the ones that wither and die). What I did love about this house though is that it is the perfect "sampler" house--it looks like something that would look great stitched on a sampler, and there is ample room for hanging all of one's completed samplers on the lovely plaster walls. Also, it's just about six blocks from my LNS--clearly a dangerous location. I borrowed this photo from the multiple listing service of MRIS in the DC area, the wonderful folks who save you so much time by publishing scads of photos on the web detailing homes for sale. How did anyone manage to house-hunt before the web?