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.