skater43 stitches Zelda games

[Firehawke]

Glad to hear that thing weren't as bad as originally thought!!!

[skater43]

Me, too. Definitely could have been worse. But thankfully, that's behind us and we've carried on with no other issues.

After spending the past few months doing quick and easy projects, I'm finding it a little hard to adapt back to a longer project. I mean, I need to temper my expectations some. Been working on this about 2 weeks, about 12 hours now and while one could ague I don't have a lot to show for it, I do actually. It just doesn't look like much because there is so much more to do. Last few projects, 12 hours, I would have had 1/3 of the picture done already. So comparatively, I don't have a lot done. But by number of stitches, I'm right in line with my usual pace (maybe a bit behind, but only because there's a lot of color changes, but not a lot worse than say, Twilight Princess). Planning on taking a WIP pic this weekend so you guys will be able to see how things are coming along.

[skater43]

Here's our first WIP pic, about 2 1/2 weeks in. This includes today's stitching time, so we've put about 19 hours into this so far. And yeah, it doesn't look like much yet, but we knew this was going to be another long one (took this pic from a ways up, just to show the overall scale of things/where we are currently working. Later pictures will likely be zoomed in more to just where we're working/what's done, so some of the details will show better). You can see some of the basic shape of the arc of the picture and we have several of the panes at least outlined in this area. And some of the panes are filled in or nearly so. Other than the mess up misreading the pattern and spending an hour and a half or so undoing some stitches, the only other real mishap was 10 or stitches I did the other day a row too low. But that was fairly quick to undo/redo. This picture is an interesting mix of several large sections of a single color (you can see all the green I've done/am working on) and one or two squares of a different color. Guess that isn't surprising given the number of colors used. And many of the colors are very similar to each other, so part of the reason I've spent a fair amount of time doing the black outlines was to help keep track of where I was. As the number of colors/threads involved can make it a little tricky to find the color I want, we will likely organize them into smaller clumps based on number. Switching colors is slow, especially if I have to hunt for a new color, so some days we may not make a ton of progress, but one stitch at a time, slowly but surely, we'll get there. Won't even throw out a wild estimate at this time at a finish date, just that I do have the next 7+ months set aside for working on it, so should be able to get most of it done in that time (and maybe all, but I have my doubts).

[skater43]

We are moving right along. This includes today's work, so we're about 40 hours in now. Obviously still a long way to go, but progress is being made. Things have been slow this week as we've been mostly filling in little spots here and there. We can see there are still several to do around the sword and elsewhere, but every stitch is one closer to the end. And, like Twilight Princess, the artistry of the picture/pattern is how the various colors give depth and subtlety to the final product. So even some of the spots where there are a few blank spots together, I'm likely looking at a few colors to fill those squares, maybe two or three stitches of the same color if I'm lucky. So most of this week will also be doing this little spots. Because I have several threads/colors wanting to continue upward, my plan is to move the hoop up next. I don't know if I'll need to move the hoop up again to finish a column, but we'll see. Because the picture curves, we will/should be moving the hoop to the right slightly, too. So plan at this point, is fill things in from the bottom up, then see if there's more on the left edge to finish. No idea how long all that will take, but I'm guessing some time next week we'll have things sufficiently completed for me to be okay with moving the hoop. Ballparking hoops, we say we're 1/6th the way done, or will be next week, at about 50 hours, that would put this project at around 300 hours. Which is about 43 weeks. Taking a break Aprilish for SGDQ 2024, we're looking at wrapping this up next June or July maybe. Which will put it up there as one of the longer projects, though think TP will keep the crown as the longest. But, as they say, one step at a time, one stitch at a time, we'll just keep plugging away and see how things go.

[Firehawke]

It's looking so good! Good luck with all of the stitching!

[skater43]

Thank you. I appreciate your continued support. I am pleased with how things are shaping up and the progress we've made. Knew going in it was going to be another long project, but we can only do one stitch at a time. Got a dozen or so holes I want to fill today, but then I think we're going to go ahead and move the hoop up (and slightly right) and see where that takes us. Little earlier than I expected, but think now's a good time. So the rest of today's stitching time will be cleaning up some of the threads/colors in progress, then we'll continue on from there tomorrow.

[blackmageheart]

It's really good so far! <3

[skater43]

Thank you. Really like how it's shaping up, but looking forward to moving to the right so we can start seeing some of the emblems, swords, Link, etc. so have a little more discernible stuff to look at. We did move the hoop yesterday at the end of stitch time (filled in more holes/did more other stuff than expected, so that took longer than I'd anticipated), so today we'll clean up our loose ends and then see about defining our left border. Hoping we can get to the top of the picture from here, but we may need to move the hoop up again. So we'll see how that all shakes out. But the end of next week, we should have at least a rough idea of where the top of the picture is. Or more accurately, the top of the stained glass part of the picture. Because there's a lot of the white on the outside I'm not stitching, but a few off white stitches forming part of a border I plan to do (and then at that point, we'll see if they look out of place and should be skipped, too, or I stitch all the white background, which will add quite a bit of time to our project).

[skater43]

Another three weeks, another 22ish hours in (putting us at about 62 hours total thus far, including today's work), things are coming right along. Had to fix a minor mistake with the top of the yellow bit there near the left edge, but that was only 2 or 3 stitches. Otherwise, no real issues, problems, mistakes, etc. We are going to have to move the hoop up one more time to get to the top of the picture, but won't have to move it up very much. And because the picture curves, we'll be moving the hoop to the right as well, so can continue or progress in that direction. Like Twilight Princess, the plan is to essentially do this in columns, though because of the curved nature of the top, things aren't going to be always straight up and down. But we've made good progress on the current hoop as you can see. First sword is mostly done and the left edge is done past where the blue ends. Because the plan is to move the hoop up and right, my main focus is currently finishing up things on the left side of the picture, but we're doing some stuff around the swords as well. Several spots of single or maybe two stitches, so we want to make sure we hit those, too before we move the hoop, just so they aren't forgotten and missed. Long way to go still, but I'm pleased with the progress made so far and looking forward to seeing things take shape the next few months.

[Firehawke]

It's looking fantastic! Loving how things are popping!