skater43 stitches Zelda games

[skater43]

Thank you, Firehawke. Am enjoying WW so far. As I've said, each of these are different and unique. I'm definitely seeing similarities to TP with so much all together with little spacing in between (and you can see some of my tags on threads that will be continuing to the right. Most of the colors here are much more distinct than I was dealing with on TP, but why make it hard on myself trying to remember/guess what the colors are), but not having to completely fill the hoop and having odd angles and such is different for this project. Have continued working on Link: we have most of the outline of his head and hat done and have started work on his face. Think I'll be able to finish him this weekend, but we'll see how things go.

Glad I could help out, BMH. You helped me with patterns for my OoT pic and while this isn't quite the same, happy I could give something back. Do agree color patterns are easier to follow, but the big thing is just having distinct symbols, so it's clear what is supposed to be what. Wasn't sure how doing one in black and white would work, but it's been fine so far. No idea how difficult it would be to convert to color, but good luck with that. And good luck with knocking it out yourself. Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

[skater43]

Happy New Year, all. First day of the new year, first WIP pic of 2023. 7 weeks in and things looking good. Well, 7 weeks in and a day since what we see includes today's work. Still a lot to do, but I'm pleased with progress thus far. As you can see, we've got the back of the boat done as well as all of Link. We've got most of the lower part of the mast done, too. So, next plan of attack is taking on the sail. Got the bottom part down and a bit up the left side and started filling it in. Just moved the hoop after stitching today, so we'll do a bit of thread cleanup tomorrow or Tuesday before getting to more of the mast/outline of the sail. The picture gets narrower as we go up, so moving the hoop up another time or two, we'll be able to do all of the sail on both sides of the mast before we start working our way down to the front of the boat. With colors all together to make a picture, this does bare some resemblance to TP. The fact that I'm not having to fill every hoop/stitch every square, though, does make things faster and easier.

AGDQ 2023 starts this coming Sunday. Unfortunately, I have not heard anything about my prize. Filled out the application 2, 3 weeks ago, right after I got it back. Sent GDQ an email last Monday or Tuesday asking about it, seeing if I'd filled something out wrong or whatever, and didn't get a response. The Accepted Prize page wasn't being updated/changed for several days, though I saw it was today. So they just have a huge backlog/got busy with the holidays? I don't know. Deadline was yesterday, but I did get my application in well before that. But it does take time to ship things and while the Christmas rush is over at the post office, things happen, delays, etc., so I'd really like to know by say, tomorrow, so we can get it shipped off. We shall see.

[skater43]

10 weeks in now and have to say, things are looking pretty good. We aren't as almost done as Mom thought, but we are making great progress. Moved the hoop on Friday and this hoop and the next are going to be quick. See the few black/dark grey stitches out by themselves a little middle of the hoop towards the bottom? Those are just about at our right edge. So we'll only be going a couple stitches further right in some spots for this hoop. Need to do a few stitches at the top of the left sail to finish that off, but otherwise, we won't be stitching anything to the left of the mast the rest of the picture. So this hoop and the next are just moving up, getting the rest of the sail and mast, so lot of vertical stuff, but not a lot of horizontal, so most of the hoop won't be filled in. So maybe mid-February, we finish that. And then we jump back down to do the front of the boat. Quite a bit there, so we'll call the end of April the way too early end date prediction, but give us a rough idea of how things are going. However, I just checked and the dates for SGDQ 2023 are May 28 - June 4, so April will be spent working on our prize for that. Got a great picture planned for that, something I put together myself, that's been updated and changed a few times since I first thought of it, but like how it currently looks, so we'll go with it. I'll share that in a couple of updates once we get closer to starting it. But another 3 1/2 months to finish Wind Waker? Seems reasonable.

[Firehawke]

This is looking great and is filling in quickly! Happy stitching!

[skater43]

Thank you. Definitely coming along faster than TP. What is nice also, is that objects are small enough to complete or mostly complete within a hoop/between pics. So we can see the back of the boat, then Link, then the left sails and next time will be the right sails, so we have something more definite to look at and see progress that way. Been working on the outline of the right sail and should have that done tomorrow or Friday. Have a whole bunch to fill in, so that'll be the weekend and a good chunk of next week. Couple of days for more mast work and that's about it for this hoop. As I said, stitching area for this hoop isn't very wide, mostly vertical, so there's almost more here not stitched than stitched. And next hoop stitch area will be even skinnier, so maybe we can finish it off before the next pic? If not, then shortly thereafter. So I'm definitely pleased with how well things are moving along and taking shape.

[skater43]

So it's actually been 4 weeks since our last pic, rather than the usual 3, so we've had a chance to do a bit more work than normal. Was out of town last weekend, so that threw the schedule off a little, but we're back on track. As you can see, we now have the left half of the picture done: Link, the sails, the back of the boat are all done. We're currently working on the front of the boat. We will have to move the hoop a bit to the right to finish the picture, but my plan is to go up from this hoop, then see if we can do all the stuff to the right in one more hoop. Actually, looking at the finished picture again, we're definitely going to need two hoops to do the right stuff. Not much down at the water level, but the lion's head will need a hoop. Still, we'll go up from here, then right and then down. We're in the midst of a bunch of red, so we'll be able to make some good progress not having to switch colors. However, this isn't just mindless filling like the sails, as I learned today. Following a path of red up and to the left, got a ways in and realized I was off. Took a bit to figure out where the problem was, but I did. Good news was it only involved undoing one color. Bad news was it involved 30-40 stitches. So most of yesterday's and all of today's stitching counted for naught. But, we undid the wrong stuff today and are back on track and ready to continue. We've had a couple of other minor hiccups along the way, usually only involving 8-10 stitches, so not nearly as bad, but overall, I say things are going well.

Just a quick note about said minor hiccups and a bit of a head's up to @blackmageheart and others wanting to stitch this. Vertically, the pattern lines up, no problems there going from page to page. Horizontally, it's trickier because there are no numbers along the edge of the pattern or other helpful indicators where you are. I mean pages 1,1 and 2,1 line up so there's no need to adjust anything, but if you're stitching a color that's 15 squares up on page 1,1, you then have to count 15 squares up on 2,1. It's not a huge deal, but it does require a little extra work keeping track of where you are/where you want to be and obviously, caused me a couple of problems. Today's issue was totally unrelated to that and just a matter of me losing track of which path of red I was on.

SGDQ 2023 is the end of May/start of June, so I'm looking at my calendar and planning things. Three weeks from now would put us at March12, which I think will be a good point to pause this project. That gives us about a month to stitch our prize, then 4-5 weeks for The Artery to frame it. So we'll go with that plan, that'll give us another update on WW where we should have most/all the front of the boat done, do our SGDQ prize and resume WW mid April or so.

[Firehawke]

It's looking SO good! Bummer about the frogging...but yay for it being under 100 stitches!
I have to ask a non-stitching question...are you going to be playing the Zelda games on the new Switch emulators??? Been playing Minish Cap (been wanting to replay for YEARS!) and loving it!

[blackmageheart]

Just a quick note about said minor hiccups and a bit of a head's up to @blackmageheart and others wanting to stitch this. Vertically, the pattern lines up, no problems there going from page to page. Horizontally, it's trickier because there are no numbers along the edge of the pattern or other helpful indicators where you are. I mean pages 1,1 and 2,1 line up so there's no need to adjust anything, but if you're stitching a color that's 15 squares up on page 1,1, you then have to count 15 squares up on 2,1. It's not a huge deal, but it does require a little extra work keeping track of where you are/where you want to be and obviously, caused me a couple of problems. Today's issue was totally unrelated to that and just a matter of me losing track of which path of red I was on.

I haven't started stitching this one yet as I have a project for my sister's birthday I need to get done in like...less than 3 weeks ANYWAY I noticed there was no overlap indicator like you usually get on patterns as I was copying it into PCStitch and that actually slowed me down a bit because I was having to re-count bits across pages to make sure it was right. No big deal for me there exactly because I wasn't stitching it, and now it's copied, PCStitch won't give me that issue either (plus my poor old eyes will be able to read the pattern better!)

[skater43]

Thank you. TP was great to work on and the final product looks absolutely awesome, but I like this style of picture more because you do get to see objects finished, know what you're looking at and such. So finishing Link or the sails or back of the boat feels like more of an accomplishment and you guys can tell what's going on. Mistakes happen, just a part of life, but thankfully, nothing has been too major. Saturday/Sunday's was the biggest by far, but we've already redone what we messed up on and done much more. Looking at where I am in the pattern, looks like we can finish the front of the boat with this hoop, with a gap to the top before we get to the lion's head. So I think if we move the hoop up and then right, we can get the rest of the boat/lion/all that stuff. We still need to go right from where we are to finish up the water, though. So three hoops after this one? Always like having a plan/rough idea of where to go, but we'll see once we finish stitching this hoop.

Alas, I don't have a Switch. Very much a retro gamer, so the newest console I have is a GameCube (and only got that because my former roommates had it and gave it to me). Do play DS games via emulator, but haven't gone beyond that. But that does mean that all the old games Nintendo is throwing on the Switch, I already own/have access to. I've beaten Minish Cap on an emulator and now own a copy of the GBA cart, but haven't had a chance to play/beat the cart (other than to check that it worked). Consoles are currently packed up and I've been considering giving Minish Cap another emulator run. Just started a second playthrough of FF7, a first playthrough of Breath of Fire 2 and a first time run of Bionic Commando (GB), so plate's a bit full at the moment, but Minish Cap is on the "someday soon" list. Have a pattern for it, so it is likely the next Zelda game I stitch, which will give me time to find/create patterns for Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass. Know roughly what I want to do for the former, just need to get the picture into a workable pattern. No idea what I'll do for PH, but we've got several months to figure that out.

Good luck, bmh getting your sister's project done. Deadlines are great motivators to get stuff done, but can be stressful, too. Yeah, no overlap on this pattern, which I think makes it easier to follow vertically. Horizontally, it's a bit trickier, but I don't think I have much more swapping between pages that way. Good news is the pattern's only 8 pages, 4 pages per column, so there's not much page changing. Never used PCStitch, but if you got the pages lined up next to each other as the actual picture is, then you should have no problems. Well, fewer problems. We can never get rid of all of them.

[skater43]

So here is where we are going to be pausing this. 17 weeks in and things are looking pretty good. Have some more in the front of the boat/some water to do plus the lion head, but that's about it. Can do the rest of the water part in one hoop and the hoop is big enough I should have little trouble finishing up the bits and pieces to the front of the boat where we left off. Then I think we can do the lion's head in one hoop, but we'll see. Rough guess, I say we have two months left to go, but we'll see when we resume. Made a bunch of progress and not much to go, so feeling good about this one.

And with that, we have started our SGDQ prize. We'll jump to my other thread to show what I'm planning on stitching a little that went into coming up with the pattern.