Prior Lake woman searching for prized family possession accidentally sold at estate sale
This counted cross creation was accidentally sold at an estate sale and now a Prior Lake family is looking to get it back in the family.
PRIOR LAKE, Minn. (FOX 9) - A Prior Lake woman is searching for a prized family possession that was accidentally sold.
"[It’s] embroidery called counted cross and it’s difficult to do," Mary Lou Dosland said. "It’s so detailed there are 10 colors in one square inch. It’s kind of a complicated thing, but I love doing it."
"You make tiny little Xs, tiny little crosses, over each one of these little threads that’s in this," Dosland continued. She’s spent her life working a thread and needle, freezing a moment in time between four frames hung up on the wall.
"She starts with a blank slate, a blank piece of cloth and there’s no drawings or anything to follow," her husband Al explained.
"If you stick with it long enough you end up with the total picture," Mary Lou added. The 90-year-old picked up the pastime at a young age and stuck with it.
"I rarely when I was younger would sit down without having some handwork of some kind in my hands," Mary Lou said. "I’ve always liked to work with my hands."
When the Dosland family’s children were younger, Mary Lou would work at the hobby while the kids took a nap, spending more than two years on one piece.
"I wanted it to stay in the family and people in my family wanted it," Dosland said.
But now the piece is gone.
"I was upset, and I kept thinking we must find it, because it’s a family heirloom, it’s about 50 years old," Dosland said.
They thought it’d been stashed away safe and sound, but only recently discovered it was sold by mistake at an estate sale, after her son lost his wife to brain cancer.
"My son contacted the company and they can’t trace it because it was a cash sale," Mary Lou said.
So now they’ve posted ads in the paper, "Thinking maybe somebody would be willing to give it [back]. And that’s how it got all blown out of proportion." There’ve been many phone calls since, even as far as Denver, but still no luck.
"I’m willing to offer a reward to get the picture back," Mary Lou told FOX 9. "There’s always hope, of course I’m hoping."