Did you know that Darth Vader never uttered the words “Luke, I am your father”? And that Humphrey Bogart’s Rick didn’t actually tell the piano player to “Play it again, Sam”? If you’re swearing up and down right now that those are the right lines, darn it – and maybe you also remember reading Berenstein Bears books as a kid – you’re likely experiencing the Mandela Effect. It’s a psychological phenomenon in which large numbers of people share the same false memory, and so named after the false memory many people share of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s (he didn’t, as you might have suspected). This article provides some great examples – as a psych major, I love how weirdly fallible the human memory is.
What does any of that have to do with this project? Nothing, really, except for a common misspelling of near-homophones. Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionary. A mandala is a geometric figure representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism.
Guess which one I recently stitched up for the Hoopless Hoopla swap on Lettucecraft?
My partner mentioned she’d like something featuring blue, pink, and/or gold, and had listed mandalas as one of her themes, and it felt like a perfect dovetailing of aesthetics. When I set about searching for a design, I inadvertently saved the same one twice, which I took as a sign that it was the one.
I don’t know who designed this, but isn’t it gorgeous? When I looked at it, my eye automatically divided it into three sections, and I decided an ombre effect would suit it perfectly.
I used DMC shades 3843, 3845, and 3846, the latter of which used a huuuuuge amount because I neglected to account for the fact that each successive “ring” would be so much larger than the last. I had enough, but boy, was I kicking myself for picking a design with such an intricate outer circle.
(And honestly, despite my griping, it’s not that big: only five inches across.)
Some gold seed beads added a touch of elegance and brought the design up to the next level. I agonized over the beads longer than I should have, and tried about ten different iterations of seed beads vs. E beads vs. both, but in the end decided to keep them small and subtle.
I was pleased with how this came out and hoped that my partner would like it, too (spoiler alert: she did). But I positively squealed at the cuteness of what she sent me:
Isn’t that lovely? I love the elegance of blackwork, and those tiny pops of red in the flowers positively make this.
Thanks for looking! 🙂
The Witty Child 
Oh I just love how you added those tiny gold beads! It really does elevate it to another level!
The children’s book thing, I think I remember someone posting on Reddit, two different books with the names spelled differently, so I think this was caused by a printing/editing error? Or I’m remembering wrong, very possible, ha!
I’m going to have to look that up! I swear up and down that my books were all “Berenstein” (both for the titular bears and the authors), but I don’t know if my parents still have them tucked away in a box somewhere to prove or disprove me. I’m going to have to search Reddit now – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Berenstein /Berenstain picture somewhere, but thought that was photoshopped to show what everyone thinks they remember.