Japanese Hiragana Sampler - start & finish

Here's a small sampler that I started and finished so quickly I didn't bother taking any progress pictures for the blog! This is Japanese Hiragana Sampler by Modern Folk Embroidery. It's stitched on Daybreak Belfast from Crafty Kitten with Hydrangea silk thread from Missus Sedas.

Honestly I'm not too happy with this project but I pushed through to finish it over the course of a week because it was small and I liked the novelty of seeing actual Japanese in a cross stitch pattern. I've been studying and using Japanese since I was a teen, and my wife and I do amateur game translation for fun (and aggravation haha) in our free time.

This is basically the Japanese "alphabet" (syllabary, really) written in hiragana, the basic writing system used for native Japanese words and word endings, etc. It goes from right to left, top to bottom, so the order is あいうえおかきくけこ and so on. I would explain how they're organized but it's probably better to let Wikipedia do it for me. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Some of the characters in the sampler were oddly shaped or sized, so I fixed them up on the fly. Most were quite nicely charted, though, especially considering that each has been fit into an 8x8 space! There are also some issues with uneven spacing between columns that I adjusted the best I could. I would have liked a more interesting border as well.

I was worried about the look of the thread while stitching, too. I don't know if it's intended to be this way, but the color change isn't smooth and even. Instead, it's kind of mottled. The weirdest thing is that if I cut a length of six strands and separate it, each one is spotted in a slightly different way. It creates a tweeded effect when stitching instead of a smooth transition from one color to another.

I tried to take a close up picture, but I think it's hard to see. It's fairly apparent in person, but I wouldn't say it's bad. It's just not what I expected, so I'm a little disappointed.

Overall I'm still happy that I stitched this project because it's so unique and connected to something that's been an interest of mine for many years. There don't seem to be many Japanese cross stitch designers (Maruoka Kyoko has some great designs on Creative Poppy!) and even when I look at Japanese stitching blogs and shops, all I see are imported designs. Gotta do more searching...