Enjoying some new (old) stitchery!

I haven't cross-stitched since probably the nineties, and with 58-year-old eyes, I had assumed my cross-stitching days were behind me.

But then I came across a free pattern for this gorgeous Rose Sampler on Pinterest (see it here) and decided to give it a whirl. And thanks to some of the best 3.25-magnification readers that Dollar Tree sells, I am now spending my weekends happily stitching away!

Samplers have long intrigued me since there's so much women's history woven into them, literally and figuratively, and also because they contain alphabets, and I love me some alphabets. But I always thought the vast majority of the schoolgirl samplers came from New England, so I was flabbergasted to discover that not only was there an exhibit about Georgia girls' samplers back in 2015 (how did I miss that?), there was also an exhibit catalog available on Amazon,  Georgia's Girlhood Embroidery: Crowned with Glory and Immortality by Kathleen Staples, and I couldn't order it fast enough.

This sampler from six-year-old Letitia Malvina Mills of Savannah dates to 1826. Now I don't know about you, but I was not turning out work like this when I was six! (I read that "in her seventh year" means she was actually six.)

As I'm stitching, I naturally like to have a cup of tea at hand… 

And it dawned on me that the most appropriate teacup to use while stitching would be this Royal Albert Petit Point China teacup. The design is practically a chart in itself, and if I get tired of samplers, maybe I'll stitch it one day! Are any of you fans of cross-stitch samplers?