It was a gorgeous, cool weekend and I finally felt like picking up my needlework again. (This is where I left off in the spring). I did a little shifting about of my stash bins and happened to pull out a new project, but first here's a little update on my Prairie Schooler "February" sampler. I'm getting close to finishing, though the section below the houses will need to be filled with white floss (snow) as soon as I complete the motifs. Filling in can be tedious work and I don't especially like working with white floss, but I am excited to finally be nearing the end.
I mostly worked on completing things in this middle section. I'll need to do a little backstitching at the end as well, but there isn't an inordinate amount so it should work up quickly if I can keep stitching now on weekends.
This is the new sampler I am now working on. The design comes from Better Homes and Garden: A Cross Stitch Christmas, a book published in 2001. I'm not entirely sure who the designer is, but I've always thought it was a beautiful sampler. The colors in the book are not quite true to reality--the colors are a bit paler and the linen is Antique White, which is also hard to tell from the photo. I am using overdyed floss, which means the colors are hand dyed and variegated.
The words are slightly adapted from a German Christmas carol, which is quite beautiful to listen to. The sampler reads:
Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming
From Tender Stem Hath Sprung
It Came a Flower Bright
Amid the Cold of Winter
When Half Spent Was the Night
It would be very nice to be able to stitch and complete it (maybe even have it framed?) by the Christmas holiday. We'll see...famous last words.
Here is my teeny tiny start--a flower from the middle of the sampler. I think this one is going to be a pleasure to stitch.
One side note--I had to turn on comment moderation as I am being spammed incessantly and it is driving me mad. A filter catches most of it, but it was getting so bad that the nasty spam comments were starting to appear on older posts. I hope this is not causing problems--do let me know. I may eventually turn it off again, but for a while I think I'd like to put a stop to someone's bad behavior.