Consensus is the flowers look better without the backstitch. But one of the things I like about the design is the beads on the leaves. To do that, I'd need to backstitch the leaves. And if I do the leaves, I'll have to do all the rest as Lee and Barbara have pointed out. Who'd have thunk there was so much thinking involved in this? So I am putting it aside for now. I'm bringing a baby sampler on the bus.
I am just swimming along, however, on Alpine Garden (pictured). If I keep up this rate, I may have it finished before my parents leave and they can take it with them, whoohoo! Anything to avoid putting my stitching in the mail.
You may have noticed that I modified Alpine Garden a bit. I am not a fan of backstitched letters--really not a fan, so I have converted all the writing to over one. In the original version, I was going to replace columbine with my marrying friends' names and their wedding date. Now I will have to chart columbine, for courage. Isn't that a bit ironic that columbine in the language of flowers stands for courage? Okay, you know I can't leave well enough alone. So I checked on the columbine thing. Few of the sources include columbine. (Not this one or this one or this one.) Most others suggest that columbine means folly. (Also here, here, and here.) The closest we get to "courage" is the suggestion that purple columbine means "resolved to win." Resolution is not like courage. Fortitude, maybe. But I think courage is a stretch. On the other hand, if the pattern came out after 1999, you'd see why one wouldn't want to put "folly" on the design. The word is so closely associated with the high school shootings (Think Bowling for Columbine.) that to use "folly" would be, indeed, folly. Even without that association, folly just doesn't follow the rest of the pattern: strength, hope, faith, loyalty, compassion. So courage it is. Besides, it beats the hell out of "anxiety."