Such a Rookie Mistake

 So I'm happily stitching my Newcastle Bouquet and I decide I'm going to do the outline of the border. There's some counting but I keep checking with my grid lines and all is going well. I get near the left side and something isn't quite right.

The scissors indicate the horizontal centre of the pattern. Do you see the problem?

I SOMEHOW DIDN'T START IN THE MIDDLE!!!!

I never start in the top left corner in case there's some mistake or I use too big a border around the stitching so I always start in the centre. Even my gridding was started off centre. 

This is HOURS of gridding and stitching gone to waste. I couldn't face ripping out all those threads so I went over to Kim's today and bought another piece of fabric and this time, have started in the centre.

The second thing I realized I had done differently than planned was individual cross stitches on the letters. I had planned to modify the pattern and do Algerian eyelets for the letters. I think because I didn't start with 'A', I forgot I had planned to do that so will make the correction on Newcastle Bouquet 2.0.

The letter elements are in clusters of 4 stitches so would adapt easily to Algerian eyelets.

The fabric I'm using is Wichelt Sandstone 40ct and very closely matches the called-for colour of the flower. I picked a lighter colour and it is still a pretty close match so I definitely will outline the white flowers with backstitching.

I felt like such a dope but I guess dumb mistakes happen to the best of us.

I've started gridding my new fabric - starting in the centre of the fabric this time and will start stitching tonight.

While at Kim's I stocked up on some of my favourite needles (#26 Bohin) and bought this pattern.

I have an inkling I may already have it but now I have it for sure. I have some of the called-for hand-dyed threads and will use DMC equivalents for the ones that I'm missing.

Speaking of DMC threads, I found a nifty tool online for substituting other colours of DMC threads. Basically you enter the colour you're missing in the 'Thread Code' box, ignore the next algorithm window and several other DMC colour numbers are suggested on the right.

In this screenshot, I'm looking for a substitute for 601 and 6 other DMC colours are suggested. 

This is definitely a tool I'll find to be very useful.