From the Catalog of the Centauri Ambassadorial Museum, Geneva, Switzerland, est. 2155.
Item 4436, Untitled and Uncredited Needlework Sampler, approx. 400-450 years old. Needlecraft has been a much-neglected form of Centauri folk-art, possibly because it fell out of fashion after the first few centuries of the Republic and modern examples are scarce to nonexistent. Too, needlework seems to have been exclusively the domain of females, and as such held little status among Centauri art pieces. Nevertheless, many examples do exist from personal collections, such as this, donated to this museum by the House of Cotto. This particular example is interesting for its portrayal of the legendary meeting of the first Centauri Emperor with the so-called "Technomage." While the story frequently describes three Technomages, this sampler depicts only one, possibly for reasons of aesthetic design. The meaning of the glyph is unclear. The limited use of thread-of-gold in the border informs us that the stitcher was of a second- or third-tier House; examples from more prominent families would include much heavier use of gold and possibly other precious metals as well.
Yep, I'm the biggest nerd in the universe, I designed a B5 cross stitch sampler. The idea popped into my head and I simply couldn't resist. For design references, I used the Centauri font crated by Michael H. Lee (which you can download here), some traditional Dutch sampler motifs (hence the Giant Centauri Pants), and some wonderful free patterns available from Tantes Zolder.
Stitched with 2 strands of DMC over 14-ct tea-dyed Aida (it was what I had on hand), except the border which was 1 strand of DMC with 1 strand of Kreinik 00250M, and just as annoying as I've always been led to believe.
If you too would like to have the geekiest sampler in the world, here is the pattern as a giant jpeg, and here it is (via Megaupload; let me know if you prefer somewhere else) as the original KG-Chart file. If you're a stitcher, I strongly recommend downloading KG-Chart; it's free, and you can do awesome things like this with it.