Halloween Sampler II

The follow-up to Halloween Sampler I from Cottage Garden Samplings — same idea as the original, a word for every letter of the alphabet, but an entirely different set of words: Apple · Boo · Cauldron · Demon · Evil · Fear · Ghost · Haunt · Ink · Jelly · Kooky · Labyrinth · Moon · Nocturnal · Owl · Potion · Quiver · Rats · Spirit · Tomb · Ugly · Vampire · Wizard · Xorcist · Yowl · Zap.

The lettering is the same long-legged, slightly crooked Halloween script as the first sampler, and the same trick of tucking small motifs into the gaps between words:

• A fat spider hanging over the B of Boo, and a white ghost drifting beside Fear.
• A candy corn wedged into Ghost, a tiny skull and crossbones under Haunt, and a pair of disembodied googly eyes staring out past Jelly.
• Orange oak leaves falling through Nocturnal, a black cat stalking a branch, and a witch on her broomstick cutting across the middle of the sampler trailed by bats.
• Along the bottom: a leaning gravestone, a big-bodied crow, a lit candle, a grinning jack-o’-lantern, and a tall haunted house with lit windows and a yellow moon rising behind it.

Stitched on 40ct Picture This Plus Murky Newcastle linen — the same fabric as Sampler I, which was the whole point. The chart actually calls for Murky this time (the first sampler recommended Copper Penny and I substituted), so the pair now hang together on identical ground: a smoky grey-green mottle that does the fog without a single stitch.

Threads are The Gentle Art Sampler Threads and DMC, with two deliberate swaps from the called-for palette:

• Capitals in GAST Wrought Iron instead of GAST Carriage Black.
• Lower case in GAST Raven instead of Weeks Dye Works Kohl — which keeps the whole piece in Gentle Art and skips the one WDW skein the chart asks for.

This one took its time. Started June 25, 2023, then stitched in scattered bursts — a handful of sessions in early 2024, two in late 2025, a prep session in June 2026 before a Frogwarts stitching weekend — before a proper two-week push from late September 2026 that carried it over the line. Finished October 8, 2026, roughly 7,942 stitches logged across 21 sessions and three and a half years.

FFO’d October 12, 2026, four days after the last stitch, in a second copy of the heavy sculpted frame from ArtInspirate that the first sampler lives in: ghosts, bats, skulls, jack-o’-lanterns, spiders and gravestones running around all four sides in oil-rubbed bronze.

Same designer, same alphabet conceit, same 40ct Murky ground, same frame. The two now hang as a matched set.