Thank god for
I am now doing this beast with the more traditional 3 strands of floss, and it's looking much much much neater than the 6 strands that the pattern insisted it wanted. Sure, that looks big and puffy, but it's also just a right royal bitch to do, and the stitches need to be a hell of a lot more perfect for it.
For those wondering what I'm on about,
--I'm doing the letters in purple, otherwise, this is where I'm going. The somewhat blotchy appearance of the blue-white background can be attributed to the fact that this was me cutting-and-pasting around with an extant pattern to make it say what I wanted it to, to see if I COULD do that before I bought the pattern.
I'm about 1/2way done with God, and I have all the leaves to the left of the G in God done, as well as all the leaves above the od.