Wednesday, May 16, 2012

We All Make Mistakes, and It's Okay!

Only one picture today, and it's not of my own work. It's the picture of the Beauty and the Beast cross stitch that is on the front of the kit. Here it is:


I have been referring to the cover of the kit over and over and over and over while I work, as I'm sure everyone does when they work on a piece. "Are they sure this is the color that should go there? Are those two little stitches going to stand out or disappear?" etc. etc. etc. Anyway, in going over this picture meticulously as I have been working, I have found mistakes! Most of them just a stitch here or there, but some of them I was a little surprised about. For instance, where the river curves in the background by the town, there is a green bush on the right side of the river. There should be french knot flowers there! Now, the symbols for those french knots would be very easy to miss, so I can understand it. 

Then one or two of the red roofs on the castle aren't the right height. No biggie :)

And the cuff on the Beast's sleeve should have some scrolly designs on it in the yellow thread used to backstitch his coattails. 

I have also noticed some difference in colors from the picture to what I stitch. Most of the differences are that a color is just a tad too light or too dark so it makes some of the shading not as obvious, but one in particular bothered me for a long time. Do you see the grey color around the sunset? It is also used at the base of the rainbow, and in the kit it is definitely not grey. It's more of a dark grey-pink color. At first I was really frustrated that it was so off, and I thought maybe I didn't have the right color. I wrote to the manufacturer and asked for more of that color of thread to double check, and they sent me the same color again. I decided to go ahead and go with it. You know what? It looks fine.

And I also noticed that even though there are mistakes in the cover picture, it still is beautiful. I never would have noticed the mistakes if I wasn't obsessively poring over it all the time, matching it to my work to make sure I did it right. It might sound nit-picky to point out the mistakes, but I think it's encouraging. It helps me to remember that it's okay to make mistakes. Obviously we try not to, but it's not the end of the world if you realize that it's not perfect. Even though we follow a pattern, the chances of two kits being done 100% exactly alike isn't very likely. It's neat to know that you have your own one-of-a-kind piece. 

Well, I had better get back to it. I've got laundry to do today and practice for a wedding I'm playing in soon, so if I'm going to get all that done and stitch as well, I had better get off the computer :)

2 comments:

  1. So, just out of curiosity... what are you doing with your mistakes? Unpicking them? Leaving them? Somehow disguising them? Or haven't you noticed any yet?

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    1. I definitely have a few mistakes in there, but none of them have been very big. It may be one or two stitches maybe one or two squares off, and usually it has been in an area that it really doesn't matter - the water, or the sky, or a huge section of greens. I have left them in so far, but I think if I made a big mistake that would change a big focal point, I might have to take it out and try again. The way I stitch though, I don't venture out too far from where I have already stitched, so I don't have to count very much and therefore don't get a lot of counting errors. I hope that doesn't sound hoity-toity, I just know that if I stitched cross-country I would make SO MANY MISTAKES, so I do what I can to minimize them as much as possible. But yes, I do have several in my piece :)

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