Trevelyon's Cap: too smooth?

Yesterday all I did was computer work. This morning everything is fine, but late yesterday afternoon I was pulling my hair out. I reinstalled my operating system and the after effects were confusing to say the least. While I enjoy using the computer and learning about computers, my limit is about 3 hours. Today is stitching, only stitching and lots of it! After I finish this article :)Here's what I've been up to on Trevelyon's Cap this week. At the beginning of the week the design was stitched to this point.The color balance is good and the mix of stitches and threads pleasing.  The next elements to work up were the two long, narrow leaves on either side of the blue flower.I stitched the first narrow leaf in long and short shading, using the lighter shade of green nearer the blue flower and the darker shade nearer the other leaf. When it came time to add the gold vein, I decided to add only the center vein and not the branching ones, couching the gold with green silk.Then I did an experiment using the palest shade of green Gilt Sylke Twist - Gawdie Green. It's a very yellow green and really catches the light. I back stitched a border around the leaf edge. As an individual element, I was really pleased with what it looked like.However, in the context of the whole piece (so far) I wasn't as pleased with how it looked. I'm not sure if it's because there's too much long and short shading and satin stitch ( so the effect is just too smooth) or because the greens don't work very well together (there's not enough contrast).Either way, I decided to try two things to see if I liked it better: firstly, I would work one leaf in the next section of the piece using only Gilt Sylke Twist and detached button hole stitch. Secondly, I would add the branching veins in gold to one of the shaded leaves. Both ideas will reduce the overall 'too smooth' look and I might like it better.I'm waiting for the newly released book Elizabethan Stitches to arrive and I'm hoping there will be ideas in that book to help. This is new territory and I"m not sure which stitches will look best together when trying to recreate a cap like this. It's the interesting part of embroidery - to discover new stitches and stitch combinations that look well together in a particular piece.Any suggestions? As always, they are very welcome!