Winter Sampler

Do you remember the Autumn Samplers my daughter and I stitched a few months ago? Here's my finished one.

It's part of a four part series of seasonal samplers from Little Dove Designs and we plan to stitch them all. The idea is that we work on each one during the appropriate season so that we're ready to frame and hang them all by next autumn.

The first one went well but then circumstances conspired against us with the Winter one. For a start, Christmas was looming and we both had lots of other crafting that needed to be done first. I had a Christmas box to stitch for Rose's stocking ...

... and she had Kipper felt ornaments to make for me and her brother ...

This is a new Christmas tradition. Each year Rose designs and makes us a felt ornament of a character from Children's Literature. Last year we got two - well, you can't really separate Oliver and Amanda Pig, can you?

Anyway, back to the cross stitch. There was also the problem of choosing the fabric for our Winter Samplers. There's quite a lot of white on them and this wouldn't show up on lots of colours. After an encounter with some unpleasant Spearmint Aida, I settled on a pale grey but Rose tried all sorts before finally deciding to use the same colour she used for her Autumn Sampler.

So, better late than never, we have started our new samplers. Rose is winning so far. I know, it's not a competition ...

I may not have done as much but I've put my pretty thread tin in the picture to make up for it.

As before, Rose is using Anchor threads and 32 count linen while I'm stitching with DMC threads and 16 count Aida. I really enjoyed working on this yesterday afternoon, even if I did have to lie down afterwards to recover from all that concentration. I am a feeble creature.

You can see the current sampler at Little Dove Designs. Winter is my favourite season so this one is going to be lovely to stitch.