A lesson in chosing stitch patterns

Well after a bit of uncertainty about what extra colour I should use I have finished the second leaf on the Autumn panel:

I chose a slightly purple toned red rather than a bright colour because although it was counter intuitive to pick something that on its own looked unnatural the combination actually looked more natural that way. I really need to develop my understanding of colour! Anyway, I don't think the final result required any more unpicking after the last picture I put up, but overall this one was difficult. I think the problem lay in the stitch pattern I was using. As you can see it is a very heavy pattern with stitches going in a lot of directions. On the one hand multiple directions is good for shading as the complexity helps prevent the kind of stripes that appear when simple patterns are broken up regularly. On the other hand, the complexity and density means that there has to be a lot of overlap between colours to create gradual shading or the colours are too dense (in the areas of transition each repetition of the pattern had to contain at least three different colours of thread). This makes it very difficult to judge how the shading will work out as you go along. Which in turn leads to a lot of unpicking. So the lesson learnt is that this stitch pattern is not good for shading - but it has forced me to practise my stitch counting in broken patterns which is probably good for me.