skater43 stitches non-Zelda things

[skater43]

Plan to do a bit of stitching in the upper left part of the hoop today and maybe tomorrow before we move the hoop, but we'll be doing that soon (well, first part of stitch time today will be finishing up the cheese, but that'll just take a few more minutes. And then we'll work on the upper left part of the hoop). And I should be able to put the hoop in such a way as to finish off the middle section. Expect it to take me into next week, but by the time we do our next WIP pic, should be on the text up top. Actually, depending on how things go this week and next, this might be the last update until we're finished. We'll see how things go. But we're at least getting near the end. Still ballparking the early part of December as our finish date. But as seen by the fact that the right half of the middle section is basically done, along with the text on the bottom, stitching these past two weeks has gone well. I did catch one mistake in my pattern, but thankfully, caught it before stitching it. Originally, the "A" in "are" was an extra square too wide. But as I said, I noticed it before stitching it, so was a simple matter to fix the pattern and then stitch the right thing. Again, stitching goes faster when you aren't having to undo/redo stuff. Just a helpful tip for the other stitchers out there. But yeah, work is coming along. 60 hours in now, through yesterday. All total, I doubt we'll make it to 100 hours, don't think it'll take that long. But 85-90 is probably where we'll end up. Which I think would make it the longest GDQ project to date, though King Zora was certainly very involved/time consuming, too. But we're having fun with this, so the exact time involved doesn't really matter.

[skater43]

Just picked up our prize donation for AGDQ 2026 from the framer. Some discussion debate whether to highlight the orange stars or the blue ones with the matte and think we made the right choice going with the orange. If nothing else, it's a bit different and so stands out a little more from that perspective. Hosting duties just got announced for AGDQ, so if prize submissions aren't open yet (haven't checked yet), they will be shortly.

Our SGDQ 2026 prize is coming along. I've finished the middle section and started the upper text yesterday, so I'm not planning on doing a WIP pic this Sunday. Current ballpark finish time is right at the end of November/start of December, so we'll just wait until it's finished to show it off. Then we jump into AGDQ 2027. And then the plan is start of the next year to start work on Phantom Hourglass, our last Zelda game/project.

[Firehawke]

Another fantastic framing job for a wonderful cross stitch project!!!

[skater43]

Thank you. Simple, but that little bit of orange really adds something.

Saw that prize submissions are open, so this afternoon, plan to fill out the form. Hopefully, filling out the form this early means I'll hear back sooner and get this shipped off maybe mid-December and avoid the usual shipping madness around Christmas, but we'll see.

[skater43]

And just like that, another project is completed! As we can see, we finished a bit ahead of some previous estimations. Saturday/Sunday, I was taking a closer look at how fast I was stitching the letters up top (about 6 a day) and how many there were (59, including the apostrophe and period) to get a better feel of when I'd finish. Was going to likely fall right on Thanksgiving, so decided yesterday I'd do some extra work today to finish up before Thursday (what else are days off for?). So that's what we did. Only had to do an extra hour and a half today, so we could have finished tomorrow with a little longer stitch time. But we got it done today and dropped off. 78.5 hours total stitch time, so one of our longer donation pictures, but definitely less than some of my previous guesses. When I dropped this off at the framers, there was actually some one there ahead of me having a picture framed and wanting/needing it done mid/late December for Christmas. So the framer appreciated that she would be able to set mine aside for a bit to focus on the Christmas ones. Won't need this back until May, so she's got plenty of time. Interestingly, this was one of the harder projects for her to come up with a good color for. She was hoping to match the royal blue around the cheese block, but all her matte colors were too purple or just not right. You'd think a royal blue would be an easy match, but apparently not. Tried red, but that didn't work with all the blue(s). Tried a couple of lavenders, but they were more grey purple and the thread I used is more pink purple. I won't say we settled on a dark grey as that makes it seem like we had no good choice and picked the least bad, but dark grey is what we chose. Briefly tried a bit of yellow under the dark grey to go with the cheese theme and match some of the yellow in the picture, but it didn't look that good. So,dark grey matte (think the official color is a smoky grey or something, so it's not super dark like almost black, but pretty close to the dark grey of the picture), standard black frame. As always, looking forward to seeing what the final product looks like, though I know it'll be a couple of months.

And so, we'll begin our AGDQ 2027 picture a bit earlier than expected. Being mostly text, this will go much quicker (included as a reminder of what we'll be stitching). Looking at it again, we stick with the 6 letters a day we were doing above (though these letters look a little simpler, so we'll maybe be able to do 7 or 8 letters a day), looks like 12 days of stitching text, and then another 4 or 5 days to stitch the mice. So we start tomorrow, we're looking at finishing around December 12 or 13 probably. As always, we'll see how things go once we start stitching, but that's a good beginning point estimate. And being so short, I won't bother with a WIP pic, you guys will just have to wait until it is finished to see it.

Filled out the prize submission form the other day for AGDQ 2026. Hope, of course, is that by filling out the form now, they'll get back to me maybe mid-December or earlier, so I can get it shipped off before all the Christmas madness, but we'll see. I've finished stitching the picture, framer got it all framed and back to me, I've filled out the submission form, I've done everything on my end, just need to wait for the greenlight from GDQ.

And, because sometimes I can learn from the past , I'm including the colors I used (all DMC):
green 701
red of Graham's outfit 22
brown 918
light blue Graham's pants 3761
dark grey 535
light grey in Graham's pants 168
turquoise 3810
yellow of Graham's body 745
royal blue 824
pink/purple 211
white BLANC
black 310
orangey yellow 742

[Firehawke]

It looks so great!!!

[skater43]

Thank you. Imagine what it'll look like without all the creases and turned the right way. Did come out good and I'm looking forward to seeing the final product all framed up. Still would have liked a darker blue for the background, but what we used certainly works and I'm not displeased with it.

Mappyland is coming along. We're averaging about 4 letters a day, so they're a little bigger/more involved than those in King's Quest. But 4 letters a day is still making good progress. We should finish up the text on Wednesday, so then we'll see how long it takes to stitch the mice. Only expecting them to take a few days at most, so 20th, 21st is our likely finish date. Framer is closed Mondays, so I may push a little that weekend to finish to get it turned in, rather than having to wait until Tuesday, but we'll see. We don't need this for literally another year, so time is not a concern. So not getting it turned in for a day or two is not going to really make a difference.

No word yet from GDQ about my Gradius picture, but prize submissions are still open for another 10 days and there's nothing up on their page set up to show accepted prizes or anything. Again, sooner I get word, sooner I can ship it out and maybe avoid some of the madness of holiday shipping, but I'm not worried I haven't heard anything yet, either.

[skater43]

You guys have been in suspense these past couple of weeks since you haven't gotten update pictures, but here we go, project complete. Couple day delay getting this started getting materials and such, but since we're doing this literally a year ahead of when we need it, we were hardly pressed for time. But just over 23 hours to finish, which isn't too bad and about what I expected. Mice took an extra day+ to stitch than I was maybe anticipating, but again, not a big deal. And as I said, was averaging about 4 letters a day on the text, so finished that up on Tuesday, so we were just about spot on on our finish date estimate. Did stop by the framers today and while the store was open, the gal that does the frames wasn't in, so we'll have to wait until later this week to drop it off (not that we need it immediately/are worried about getting it back in time). Limited colors this time, but sure she'll come up with some good ideas. And I guess the best part is you can use this picture, or the original screenshot, to send to some one for their birthday because you're not going to come up with a sentiment greater than "I send a gift in celebration the birth of you."

Speaking of those wanting to use this picture as a birthday greeting, here are the colors I used:
text: BLANC
blue of Mappy: 3885
grey of Mappy: 169
yellow of Mappy: 677
pink of Mappy's girl: 211
her red: 666
orangish peach of her ears/mouth/etc.:945

Haven't heard anything from GDQ yet about my Gradius/AGDQ 2026 prize. However, today is the last day of prize submissions, so I expect to
hear something this week/should see some activity on that front as prizes start getting accepted and listed.

While we wait patiently for BMH to finish up my Phantom Hourglass pattern, I've got my SGDQ 2027 project all planned and patterned up. Had originally planned for this to be for 2026, but came up with the King's Quest idea/picture, so we bumped this a year. Actually, depending on when I get projects back, since we have until May, I may still use this for 2026 and save King's Quest for 2027. We'll see. Regardless, have this pattern ready to go, so we'll jump in. Attached is my plan/pattern for my SGDQ 2027 prize submission. Also included is the original screenshot I used for the pattern. And a slimmed down version that I considered, but ultimately felt was too big/complex. Obviously would give more details and showcase more, but doesn't really add much. Those that know, know we're in Magnet Man's stage from Mega Man 3. Those that don't know, well, we're still in Magnet Man's stage from Mega Man 3, they just don't know it. While all the Mega Man games have various zips and glitches and such that speedrunners exploit (my SGDQ 2021 picture from Mega Man 2 being one such example), Mega Man 3 is unique in that there seem to be some debug features left in. One such is holding Right on controller 2, which allows you to jump extra high and will even allow you to jump out of bottomless pits. Jumping out of a pit when your life meter is
empty and you'll be invulnerable for the rest of the stage, though you'll lose the use of your main weapon (secondary weapons you may have acquired still work). And this is the idea behind the text. Clearly, life/hit points (HP) isn't needed to beat the game, hence them being overrated. I'll mention that at SGDQ 2025, a two player Mega Man 3 run was done, using some of the debug features. Holding Right to superjump/get out of pits was one I knew, was mentioned in an old Nintendo Power magazine or something, but the other features were new to me. You can watch the run at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULA57icJ5ow At about the 25:50 mark, you can see them lose all their life and continue on, just highlighting kinda what my picture is showing.

So this week we'll start getting stuff together for this. Not worried about the threads, but the background is interesting. Maybe isn't obvious, but the background is actually three different colors that grade into one another. Limitations of the NES and such, each pixel is a single color, but the colors do blend together. But since the background isn't one solid color, it means we'll have to stitch about 2/3 the background (big reason we cut down the size of the picture). And I may end up stitching all of it, depending on how it looks. So we'll see what color cloth options are out there; I think the light blue of the top of the background will be the easiest to find/match. Take a few days for the cloth to ship, so we're looking at next week/start of 2026 before we'll begin stitching, but that's okay. And if we get Phantom Hourglass in the meantime, we'll start work on that instead (have plenty of white cloth, so it would just be a matter of getting the threads together).