Review on Happiness Needlepoint by DIMENSIONS Needlecrafts by Hannah Curi

I first bought this kit many, many years ago because at the time I thought it was cross stitch, beautiful and interesting. This is not a cross stitch but a variation where you do a half cross instead of a full cross and use 6 layers instead of the fairly standard 2 layers to fill the same space. The kit includes the necessary colored threads, a needle, a "pattern" and a stiff mesh with wide holes (not even fabric or Aida fabric like cross-stitch) with a color pattern applied directly to it. The "pattern" included in this set is a strange organic combination of different patterns reminiscent of camouflage, showing which color goes where. It is not printed in a raster format or in any way that could even be transferred from paper to canvas. The instructions say to follow the colors printed on the grid and refer to the "template" on the instruction sheet if needed. None of them have worked to instruct you in any way. As a general rule, I don't generally trust patterns printed on the material you're working on, as they'll never print exactly; They are almost always crooked or offset by a millimeter or so. This was no exception. It was perfectly straight at the left and right ends of the printed pattern, while it was crooked at the top and bottom ends. Somehow the square pattern was printed as a trapezoid, which is very frustrating! It was also printed too small and didn't fully match the image of the completed project on the front of the box. In fact, it was 3 rows less than top to bottom. But since the "template" on the instruction sheet was almost illegible to USE as a template, I basically had 5 hours left and wasn't hoping to finish it. I have a red and dark red border on the bottom. right corner to the top right corner and on to the top left corner when I realized my red border at the top was too close to the center Chinese character. The finished image of the project shows 5 rows between the Chinese character and the red border, but according to the printed pattern on the canvas, I only have 2 rows in between, which if you notice the picture means the "border" of gold. then the part will be flush with the Chinese character. I also did some math to make sure I had enough space under the western style letters and over the red border at the bottom. The finished product image shows 4 rows and I had 4 rows of blanks, so the template printed too small on the canvas. The Chinese character and the western letters underneath turned out to be the best and easiest part of this whole kit. The instructions say to find the center of the printed pattern by measuring from the corners and then following the actual grid based pattern in the instructions to make the black part. This part was perfect, went smoothly and gave me no problems. It was the only enjoyable part of what I did. If the rest of the project had a proper grid based pattern like the Chinese character, I would have no problems with this kit. In fact, I liked the idea of making cross stitches twice as fast because I only did half a cross stitch (aka continental or basket weave) for the entire project. However, when I noticed the keystone print and later (after about 6 hours of work) a color swatch printed too small, I just stopped and threw it in the trash knowing it would be too annoying and wouldn't help. Doesn't look as good as in the picture. Put simply, this kit is a nightmare. He did a terrible paper drawing, even worse printed on canvas. The only way to make this kit is to ignore the paint on the canvas, ignore the paper pattern and just try to create it using the finished project image as a guide. but I'm not sure if it's worth it.