From the Strawberry Patch...: Winter Wonders

I finished this cross-stitch pinkeep over this past snowy/icy weekend; I hope and pray that you were spared any dangerous conditions and/or power outage. We are experiencing severe cold today; but thankfully, we only received several inches of sleet which didn't accumulate on the trees or powerlines. I've begun another cross stitch piece, this one is a sampler~ Sarah Barker.

If you've been a reader here for a while you may recall a post that I did many years back regarding a thimble that my grandmother gave to me. I am including the link here, for context. A friend discovered this sampler pattern and alerted me to it a few years back. I have done some research through my hometown document center to see if this sampler could possibly be one made by the original owner of my thimble. The dates align. There were six nine year old girls named Sarah Elizabeth Barker living in the United States in 1840. Considering the fact that this child had her own gold, monogrammed, thimble; and the high quality of needlework skills exhibited in this piece of work, chances are high that this sampler was made by the same person as the one buried in my hometown. I am going with that. And so, my version of Sarah's sampler has begun, I am switching out the colors of mine from the original, though. Here is the pattern as printed:

This magnificent Amaryllis continues to bloom forth and be a bright spot on the kitchen table against the frozen landscape beyond.

Patience has received a border! This particular black-on-black print has been in my stash since the late 1990's. I was glad to put it to good use at long last! I hope to add another, wider, border beyond this one but I have stalled out on the decision making process for now; and so, Patience is hanging neatly in the closet while I ponder what's next. There was supposed to be a quilt retreat this past weekend, it was postponed and rescheduled due to the weather. It's just as well, I have pulled out a mostly completed BOM from a few years ago and am using the time between now and the upcoming retreat weekend to cut pieces for the blocks to finish up this one. All the blanks will soon be filled in with smaller pieced blocks.