Stitching Bloggers Question of the Week: Charts

Which do you prefer and why? "Old-fashioned" black and white symbol-only charts, charts with colored blocks, or charts with a combination of colored blocks and symbols?

I like the coloured charts with the embedded symbols which most magazines seem to favour now. I still can make working copies of these using a combination of scanner and coloured printer.

In fact, I really like making duplicates of charts because you can do enlarged sections of portions of the chart where needed - like in areas of fine detail like the face.

With Paradise Island, I'm working from scanned chart sections, which is why my work is building up in a series of blocks - this is not to do with the gridding, although I'm finding this a real help with avoiding mistakes.