skater43 stitches non-Zelda things

[skater43]

Said this was going to be a quick one. Don't even get a WIP pic, just the finished product. 14 1/2 hours, which is prolly what a donation picture out to be closer to, rather than the 108 hours of King Zora. Oh well. But here we go, end screen to Flipull, all stitched up. Simple picture for a simple game (but not easy. Think I got stuck on level 42 [of 50] for about 6 months, working on it off and on). Only 4 colors (see below), so nothing complex at all. Just dropped the picture off at The Artery, so it's in the queue there. Marathon isn't until January, so they have lots of time and King Zora is obviously the priority, but we have this done and out of the way so that we can spend the next several months just doing Zelda stuff. Doing something different with the frame this time, so that should be fun to show off. Limited colors here meant limited colors to match, but I like what we decided on.

Need to see where we are with Minish Cap, but seem to recall we've still got around 2 months worth of work still to do on it. So end of July we finish? We'll see. It's for me, so we aren't on a deadline, so we can take our time/there's no pressure. But we will jump back into that tomorrow and see how it goes.

As for upcoming projects, mentioned last time we have a pattern for Spirit Tracks, so that'll be our next Zelda game (and second to last, unless I happen to acquire a more modern console/beat another game in the series). I also worked out a pattern for SGDQ 2025. Easy part was coming up with the text/theme. Took a little digging to find a game/scenario that fit. What I depict is outdated, but will serve its purpose. So I have that all set. Need to go color shopping, still, but we won't be working on it until February or March, so we have time. Actually, need to go color shopping for Spirit Tracks, too, but we have time for that as well.

colors used should anyone else want to stitch this:
text: BLANC
dark brownish of blobs: 434
light brownish/fill of the blobs: 945
heart: 3837

[skater43]

Picked this up yesterday, so we got it back in plenty of time for the marathon the end of the month/start of July. Just filled out the prize submission application, so now we wait for the greenlight from GDQ. Friday night, Ocarina of Time is potentially on the schedule as a bonus game, so we may be featured prime time on one of the busiest nights, but we'll see where they put it (Friday morning has A Link to the Past and Twilight Princess, so they may put my prize there). Went a little different with the matting this time, different color and texture, but that's some of the fun of these is taking it to The
Artery and seeing what strikes their fancy to highlight colors or themes or just try something new and out there.

Work has begun again on Minish Cap. Plan to send along a WIP pic tomorrow. First week and a half or so, I was doing a bunch of little stitches here and there, so didn't look like a lot of progress was being made. But, they still have to be done and every stitch done is one less to do. But this week I've mostly been filling in some of the big spaces, so much more obvious what has been done. Still quite a ways to go, but we're seeing signs of getting towards the end.

[blackmageheart]

Love the choice of mat, it really goes nicely with the finished stitch

[skater43]

Thank you. Once again, all credit to The Artery https://www.the1artery.com/ I walk in with the project and they get the visions and ideas of where to go with things. Obviously, I can throw in some input and have final say, but what direction we want to go as far as matte color (and texture in this case), frame color or style, those things, is all them. And I hope that whoever ends up with it is a big OoT fan, maybe even a speedrunner, or some one who will really appreciate it. And looking forward to showing off Flipull once I get that back. Way simpler with few colors, but think they came up with a good idea for that as well.

[skater43]

Prize schedule has been set, at least for King Zora https://tracker.gamesdonequick.com/tracker/prizes/48 Not a big surprise, but it'll be available Friday evening https://gamesdonequick.com/schedule/48 while Ocarina of Time is (potentially/likely) to be played. Because I leave for work about, there's a slight chance I'll be able to see it featured/talked about live, especially if they are trying to kill a little time to allow donations to come in for the OoT bonus game, but more than likely, I'll have to hope this event's VODs cover the prize and other non-gaming segments and watch it after the fact. But, for a mere $25, you can have a shot at winning my picture.

Not saying people are stepping up their game because of me or are feeling inadequate with their projects compared to mine, but I'll highlight https://ibb.co/7bpN0sJ which is available Friday morning. Look familiar? Yes, that's the pattern I stitched to represent A Link to the Past 4 years ago (almost to the day. Finished it 6-25-20). Just going off my WIP pics and dates, I'd say it took me about 110 hours to do, about as long as King Zora. So some one else put in a considerable amount of time/effort for their prize as well. As a stitcher, I do especially like to look at the other cross-stitch projects people donate and some of the other crafty ones.

[skater43]

Just got back from The Artery. Successfully dropped off Minish Cap to be framed. Nice thing about having so many colors in the picture is you have lots of options/directions to go. Bad thing about having so many colors in the picture is there are lots of options/directions to go. Was there a good 45 minutes looking at various mattes and frames, but I think we hit on a winner. And while I was there, I reminded them they still owed me the picture of Flipull all framed up. So they emailed me right then and there, so I have that to share with you guys. Minish Cap, we used 90+ colors. Flipull, we used 4. So opposite end of the spectrum, but gave us a chance to pull out a frame that prolly wouldn't otherwise be used. And I think it looks good. And I hope whoever ends up with it thinks so, too.

We are underway with Spirit Tracks. Only an hour and a half of actual stitch time in (first part of Sunday was measuring cloth, getting our starting point and other non-stitching, but vital, things. And I haven't stitched yet today) so not much to look at so far. But, have to start somewhere and we're closer to finishing than we were this time last week.

[blackmageheart]

Flipull looks great! Can't wait to see MC framed too!

Hope Spirit Tracks is going ok

[skater43]

Spirit Tracks is going well, with an asterisk. Got a week/7 hours in when a unexpected opportunity for a quick project popped up. So I spent last week working on busting that out and want to finish it this week. Lost a chunk of time when, 3 1/2 hours in, I realized I had the fabric turned 90 degrees and I was starting in the wrong corner. Much faster and easier to just start over, but considering I'm 11 hours into the remake, 3 1/2 hours lost is pretty significant. But it's going well now and the plan is to do extra work to wrap it up the next few days. So look forward to showing it off to you guys. Then we'll jump back to Spirit Tracks for the next few months. Unless another chance for a surprise gift comes up.

[skater43]

Suprise picture is complete. So, found out a couple of weeks ago that a friend of mine has begun pursuing her lifelong dream of learning to ride a motorcycle. While I wished she'd maybe chosen a little less dangerous hobby, I appreciate that she has this dream/goal and is taking steps to accomplish it. So, the idea came to me to put something together for when she gets her license. I have no idea how far or close this is. Just found out about this new hobby/goal a couple of weeks ago and she said she's done some riding, but wanted more practice. And I don't have a further update. But, dropped this picture off at The Artery a little bit ago, once I have it back then we can present it to her immediately if she's already gotten her license, or hold it until she does. Her birthday is today and I knew there was no way I could have it stitched and framed in time. I mean, I did just finish stitching it today, though we did have the delay at the start I mentioned last post.

The picture came together fairly quickly. Being a sprite stitcher, I started looking through games with motorcycles. Contra 3 and Kamen Rider SD Shutsugeki Rider Machine were possibles, though being on the SNES, they would have been more complicated. The quote I had in place; it's a classic line. But it occurred to me that there were a couple of Terminator 2 games made, maybe I could get something from there. SNES game didn't have anything, but did find the attached picture from the NES game from right outside the biker bar. Samus, from Metroid, was the first/obvious choice as a stand in for my friend. Admittedly, the power suit might be a bit extreme for riding a motorcycle, but safety first. And maybe she will decide to become an intergalactic bounty hunter (here's a reference some of you might get. When I found out about this, I asked her if she'd been watching Bubblegum Crash/Crisis and wanted to be Priss/did she also have a mech suit she wore to fight the evil robots in town. She said that was not her inspiration and alas, did not have a mech suit. Yet). I were less in a hurry/better with MS Paint, I prolly could have gotten Samus and the motorcycle scaled better, but good enough.

So, two weeks to bust this out. And, as mentioned above, we had a bit of a goof that cost us 3 1/2 hours. Undoing the text I'd stitched to that would have taken quite a while, so I just started over. Have to say, the years I've been doing this, this is the biggest mistake I've made (though not measuring correctly for my GDQ Contra picture a couple of years ago is up there. At least we could come up with a good solution for that that didn't require starting over). So that was a couple days down the drain, but we pick ourselves up and start again. And darned if I didn't try to start the picture the wrong way again. Fortunately, I caught it a couple of stitches in. But after that, no mishaps. 18 1/2 hours to bust this out, not counting the 3 1/2 hours wasted on version 1.0. So we were putting in some extra time each day to get this done ASAP. As I said, no idea how soon I'll have this back or it'll be relevant to be delivered, but sooner I finished stitching, sooner I got it to The Artery, the sooner I get it back.

Below is the list of colors used for this on the off chance some else reads this in the future and also has a female friend or relative learning to ride motorcycles and wants to stitch it (hey, you never know). Couple of notes: obviously, we did this on black cloth to save background stitching, thus went with white text. When throwing the pattern together, I did the text first on a usual white blank page, so the text is black. Didn't seem worth the time to change the text color when I put the pictures together since I knew it was going to be white for the final product. Also, I went with a darker brown for Samus' hair and eyes because it more closely matches the color of my friend's hair. All colors listed are DMC

text: BLANC
green of Samus' suit: 701
red of Samus' suit: 349
orangey yellow of Samus' suit: 676
Samus' mouth: 3350
Samus' hair and eyes: 938
Samus' face: 819
darker brown of the ground under Samus: 3021
lighter brown of the ground under Samus: 832
bright turquoise of the motorcycle: 3846
medium blue of the motorcycle: 3765
darkest blue of the motorcycle: 336
grey road under the motorcycle: 414