Sprite Stitch Board!

And we've finished. Just dropped it off at The Artery, so the project is in their hands now. Had a couple minor delays the past week+ due to my work schedule, but we otherwise finished right about when I expected. Only had to shift/adjust a couple of the Essences to get the circles to fit together and remain symmetrical and even and all that, so that was nice. Always easier when you can just follow a pattern rather than having to adjust and think on the fly. But that was part of the reason I chose this combo design: it required minimal adjusting. And I like that it connects the two patterns as the games are connected, but they are still distinct and separate like the games are two separate games. But this was a fun little project to work on.

And, of course, this means turning our attention to our next project. Actually had two in mind as possibles: Minish Cap and Twilight Princess. Both are going to be much more elaborate than any of my previous works, though not bigger. The Minish Cap pattern in fact requires 130 colors or something like that. Beautifully done, but going to be a challenge. Twilight Princess wasn't quite as involved, but still 40 colors or something (Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask were prolly the projects I've done requiring the most colors and I don't know that either used more than 15 or 20). However, in light of recent circumstances, I've decided to hold off on those for now and work on a more personal project. Still Zelda related, but this is a little extra, rather than just a representation of a game in the series. Basing it off a screenshot of the original Legend of Zelda, so step one is playing through the game to get to where I need to take the picture (do still have my original NES cart, but we'll do this on the computer like I did for my Super Mario Bros. picture last year so we more easily take screenshots and manipulate things). From there, I'll need to figure out how I can show the important stuff, without having to stitch the entire screen. 256x224 is a lot to stitch, even if most of it is black background/doesn't need to be stitched, so I'd rather cut the picture down if I can. Certainly the height can be, but the width maybe not. So the next few days/couple of weeks/whatever, we'll be working on coming up with this pattern/design. Then we'll see about starting to stitch it.

I am also just about done playing through Spirit Tracks. Got 3 or 4 things I want to see if I can track down/find before beating the game. So the next few days/couple of weeks, we'll be adding that game to our list of Zelda games to stitch. But that should be it. Not planning on getting a Wii or Switch or 3DS anytime soon, so don't have plans for playing/beating any other Zelda games I haven't beaten before.

It looks gorgeous!!!! Have fun with the other projects!!!

Thank you. I like how this came out and how I was able to blend the two patterns.

Next project is officially underway. Haven't stitched much yet, but have my pattern figured out and colors in hand. Think I'm going to keep the pattern a surprise, but I will still send along the occasional WIP pic. So you guys can speculate what the picture will be, it's significance and so on. I'd hoped to cut it down from a full screenshot and was only partially successful. To show all I wanted to, I had to keep the width, which at 256 pixels/stitches, is pretty long. But the height I was able to cut almost in half, so that will save us time. Still looking at a few months, but not as long as SMB or AoL were.

And while working on developing that pattern, I came up with a great idea for a SGDQ 2021 prize. That came together fairly quickly, so we've got that pattern all set as well (I'll share that pattern, but will wait until we start working on it). Haven't gone through and picked colors for it yet, but we've got some time. Figure I can start it March or April and have plenty of time to get it stitched and framed. So we'll work on our mystery project until then, pause for a couple months to do our SGDQ prize, then back to mystery. And that should take us through most of the summer or so. After that, we'll get back to our last five Zelda games. Yes, up to five now as I finished off Spirit Tracks this morning, making 14 games in the series I've beaten now.

Ooooh...a mystery! Can't wait!

And congrats on finishing Spirit Tracks!

Thank you. Was able to clean up the couple of things I was missing within a day or two, so we can officially add another Zelda game beaten 100% to the list. Ran through Link's Awakening again a couple of weeks ago, just for kicks and recently picked up copies of the Oracles and Minish Cap, so I'll be running through those again at some point near future. To go along with the 80 gazillion other games I own and haven't beaten yet.

Meanwhile, we're a couple of weeks in to our mystery project and making progress. Still a ways to go though. Been awhile since we've done some tedious bricks, so we'll get our fill here. Figure I'm about a quarter of the way through the bricks or so. But, those are maybe 2/3 the whole picture, so a few weeks down the road once I finish them, we'll be well on our way to finishing the whole thing. And fortunately, the bricks occupy a space that fits height wise in my hoop, so I can do whole sections and only have to move the hoop horizontally as we go along. Will spend the next few days filling in between the light grey and there's an object that'll go on the inside corner that'll take a day or two to do, but prolly the end of next week, we'll be done with this hoop section and can move to the right. Pleased with how things are looking so far, but we're definitely at least a few months away from finishing. But there's no deadline on this one, so we'll finish when we finish and enjoy the work along the way.

Took another picture showing the overall project, but it's either still en route from Mom's phone or lost in cyberspace. Anyway, you can look at the last WIP picture to get a feel for where we are/how far we've come. But this gives you guys a chance to have a better look at the part I'm actually working on. Finished up the first quarter or so of the brick section and have moved the hoop, so we're moving along. Lot to stitch, but it's not overly difficult work. Some keeping track of where I am as far as which brick or section. Obviously, when Nintendo put the game out in 1987, they weren't thinking some one 35ish years later would be cross stitching it. So weren't worried about doing something silly like a single white pixel in the upper left corner of each of the small bricks along the left side and top. Debated how  best to stitch those without the back looking too sloppy and decided to do them with one piece of thread, but going underneath previous stitches in the back as much as possible. Seems to be working/looking okay so far. Otherwise, the bricks haven't been too bad. And we have the statue in the corner now, so we've got something besides bricks to look at and a splash of color. Next bit of color besides grey and white won't be until we finish this section, so savor this bit.

In addition, picked up my Oracles picture yesterday all framed and finished. Again, real pleased with how this turned out. Essences themselves had some bright colors, so the matte could be more subdued and I think works well.

Fantastic frame job...and congrats on the great progress! Have fun stitching and gaming!

Thank you. And yup, still having fun.

Stitch by stitch, little by little, we're making progress. We're now 40-45ish% of the way through the bricks and such. Whole thing is 256 pixels/stitches wide and we're around 100 or so. Just to the right of where we've left off is a door that marks the middle of the pattern/screenshot. So we're getting there. The right half of the bricks will take a little longer as there's a couple of objects we'll need to stitch along with the bricks, but on the plus side, that'll give you guys something to look at that's more interesting than a bunch of bricks. But we get the monotonous stuff out of the way, the last few weeks will be more interesting and really bring the picture together. Plan is still to work on this through March (which should get us just past the door and all the bricks/floor tiles around it), then switching to my SGDQ 2021 prize to get that done (no word yet on dates or whether it'll be online only again or any details, but I figure I can get the prize ready for when they do start announcing things). Then we'll spend likely the rest of the summer finishing this up. Stopped by Michael's today and got the last couple of threads I was missing for Twilight Princess, so that will be our next project after this, getting back to stitching something from each of the Zelda games I've beaten. That one's going to be pretty involved, lot of colors and entirely stitched, so should make for an interesting project and a little more of a challenge than some of my others. But fun, too.