Royal Persian Blossom - almost done...

This weekend all I did was stitch. Well, almost all I did. Grocery shopping, laundry, ironing - the usual weekend chores. My darling husband did his fair share and a big part of mine as well so I could stitch more. It's now late Sunday afternoon and I cannot continue stitching. My concentration is shot. It's been great - all 10 hours or more - but I'm completely done in. How DO the professional embroiderers do it?It's so close to being finished, but I can't concentrate any more and I've come to a part that will take lots of concentration. The anthers, or as I call them, the balloons at the top of the design are the very last things to do. They will have to wait until tomorrow.Here's some long and short shading...which then  was bordered with stem stitch. The blue lifts the gold and makes everything look so sunny.I just love the blue with the yellowy golds; it's such a beautiful color combination.With the lightest blue thread on the outside and the darkest on the inside, it looks like the leaf shape has real depth. This is probably my favorite bit of the whole piece; it's the colors and the combinations of the different stitches, especially the trellis.The little branches with buds and flowers are sweet.It's all done - except the anthers. As you can see, the shading is a bit more complicated than usual. The small comma shaped area in the middle is to be stitched with the lightest shade of gold. It is then surrounded with a medium shade of gold and the darkest shade of gold is at the bottom of each anther.I completely understand the concept and what it should look like when it's finished, I can't think of how to do the shading right now so it's smooth. It's those lightest parts I'm worried about doing well. I've only done long and short shading when it moves from darkest to lightest or vice versa, never when there is a lightest shade smack in the middle of a darker shade.Tish Burr uses this kind of shading in the Moroccan Plums project in her new book Color Confidence in Embroidery. Her instructions are very clear and I'm sure I can do it tomorrow when I'm not so tired and my brain is working clearly again. However, The Unbroken Thread community does have a huge amount of collection knowledge so...Any tips for me out there? Advise? Help!?