Life Lessons in Needlepoint

One of my favorite bloggers, Ali of Something This Foggy Day writes about needlework samplers and the lessons they taught their young stitchers. I know about such lessons, having spent long hours with needle in hand. Patience is a virtue worked in cross-stitch!

The sampler above hangs in the novelist Thomas Hardy's cottage in Dorset. We're left to wonder who the young Esther Ann Turner, Aged 11, was who put the finishing stitches in the piece on October 16th, 1839. The message on forgiveness is one I always need to be reminded of, and this sampler had my name right on it. The house featured in the design is none other than "Newton Cottage"!

On a Forgiving Spirit

True wisdom speaks aloud and yet-Pride hardly will resign

Though to forgive and to forget- Is yet Godlike and divine

Fain would I imitate my Lord - And bear each cross event

Humility is its own reward - But pride has punishment