Introducing Harriet Hodges

Hello world!  I will have to make this a quick one, as the winter weather is throwing a major wrench into our Nashville preparations.  Here is the last pattern that I will have available this month, Miss Harriet Hodges:

I feel a bit like this photo doesn't do her justice, but it's the best I can do.  Harriet stitched her sampler on a very fine linen using silk threads.  I have used 40 count Beige linen from Weeks Dye Works for my reproduction, and it is stitched using NPI silks.  It was quite a challenge to chart and stitch, because Harriet's cross stitches weren't always two threads high and two threads wide... not something easy to show on a chart in so many colors!  I have done my best to be faithful to the appearance of the original sampler though.

There's just a little more time left to enter my giveaway, which can be found here.  There are not a lot of people entered, so you have a fabulous chance of winning!

The original plan was for three of us, Mom, me, and our friend Chris, to leave bright and early Thursday morning for Nashville.  We would arrive just after 5 that evening, giving us plenty of time to set up our room and even do a little sightseeing on Friday before the market gets going.  Our first bump in the road came when poor Chris came down with the flu.  She will be greatly missed on this trip!  Then there's the weather.  Not only do we have to make it over a mountain range to get into Tennessee, but now they are predicting that this could be a major ice event here in middle North Carolina.  So what do you do?  Do you wait and hope that you could travel safely a day later?  Do you leave early?  How early?  And that's where we are right now.  I think we're going to live before the sun comes up tomorrow and hope that we can get through the mountains before it even begins to snow.  But we're watching the weather closely all evening, as we scramble to pack and get all those last minute details ironed out.  Hopefully, I will be updating early next week with a happy little report of safe travels and lots of sales.  Hopefully.

Stay out there my friends!