There are many ways to classify the difficulty level of a design.  Here at Adventures in Stitching we do more than just traditional cross-stitch with back-stitching.  Many of our designs include beads, drawn thread, Hardanger, and/or specialty stitches.  All of these things affect the difficulty level.  Most of our pieces have a difficulty level attached to them.  To help clarify what you as a stitcher should know before attempting one of our designs and getting frustrating we have outlined what we mean by the different difficulty levels we use.  If you ever have a question you may reach out to us and we can help you figure out if a particular piece is suitable for your stitching ability.  Remember though that a challenge is a good thing and is how we all learn, grow, and advance.  Some of our larger designs, or designs meant to be stitched on dark fabric will have a higher difficulty level due to those things, but with patience would be able to be done by the confident beginner.