My New Year's good luck is holding so far...or maybe after decades of stitching reproduction samplers, I have actually learned to look for compensations and other oddities, especially in borders. As I worked my way across the top border…and unworked my way
back a way… I discovered that each repeat of the border motif moves up one stitch
all the way across the top. Now I can hear you asking why I think my luck is holding given that I had to frog a little. Well, normally, I would make it all the way around the border (and it's a big one) before I thought to look for those aberrations. And now that I think about it, what probably made me take a second look is one little backstitched tendril extended above the graph and I thought, 'hmmm, wonder what that means'. So I probably haven't really learned much in all those years, I'm just lucky. And, it’s a good
thing I left a decent sized margin at the top because I thought the top left was the high
point in the design.
What's the lesson? Never make assumptions when stitching a reproduction. And it just occurred to me that I'm probably going to go nuts when I frame it! Do I square up the large border or the truly square inner red backstitch border? Aaaargh, I'm going to obsess about that until the piece is done. I hate it when I starting thinking too much.
Another interesting thing I've found is that the vine in the first band is in two different shades of green. They are so close that it is difficult to tell that they are different unless you look very closely. It seems to be planned, as opposed to not having enough of either color, but I wonder what Jean was thinking.
I'm also wondering if the two dogs (one is on the far left side of the first band) are pets, since they are both pictured in two colors. That green blob will be a bird once I add the legs, beak and eye. 
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