Luis Royo's 'Uranos Drops'. Finished 13 Oct 2014

[cairee]

this is looking great! Glad to hear that you are getting the hang of parking. once I finally figured it out I found myself parking for all confetti heavy projects.

oh and constant updates are lovely, we are never bored looking at lovely stitches!

[Oriettait]

Great update

[richardandtracy]

She's looking great! Can I request a picture from what would be a more 'normal' viewing distance? ....

Yup. Request away. Your command is my wish (or something like it):

That's cropped to slightly beyond the intended picture boundary. And if you look at it, you'll see there has been progress overnight. Not much, but it's there.

Regards,

Richard.

[richardandtracy]

...Your design is beautiful! What program did you use to chart it?

Congrats on moving to evenweave! Linen is tough, but I think once you see the finished product (without the huge Aida holes in the background), you'll be really proud. I do a mix of cross-country and parking, too - and it's always fun to hear about the process!

Thanks - I do think mixing cross country & parking is probably the way to go when there are large blocks of colour present and revert only to parking in areas of high confetti.

The program I used to convert it to DMC colours was a freebie called 'Ryijy Stitch Designer' available here: http://code.google.com/p/ryijy/ . When I first came across Ryijy the output was on one page only regardless of chart size (useless), but it could save converted pictures. So I wrote a program to load the colour converted picture from Ryijy and create my own multi page chart, list the symbols & calculate thread length based on the number of stitches and count plus a margin. I sent this to Jari Haurito (the programmer of Ryijy) and after an exchange of C++ source code, he saw how to make multi page output and incorporated many of the ideas into his program. I still prefer the layout & symbols from my chart making program, even though it makes for a more complicated workflow & I've not programmed in a preview facility so usually print to PDF to be on the safe side. My add-on to Ryijy is available here: http://www.chestnutpens.co.uk/downloads/planprinter.zip (714 kb).

In order to get a 'perfect' plan, I crop, and edit the initial picture in Paintshop Pro 5, do the initial conversion in Ryijy, do some further pixel edits in Paintshop Pro keeping to the palette of colours present, then load it into my program to print the chart. My program has an experimental facility for back stitches which isn't yet present in Ryijy (but may get there - we've talked about it). I did try using MS Paint and Gimp as the pixel editors, but both packages changed the colours away from the exact RGB values for each pixel that are specified in the Ryijy palette data file, meaning my program couldn't recognise the DMC colours, while Paintshop Pro stays faithful to the exact colour.

Regards,

Richard

[NeedleAndFork]

Thanks for the info on how you create your patterns. I'm looking at possibly creating a pattern out of an image I found online for my next large stitch once Kimono Mermaid is done, so it'll come in handy!

[richardandtracy]

Time for another little update. I have finished Sheet 3 of the plan, barring a few stitches down the right hand edge that will be filled in when I do the confetti on sheet 4.
So, what it's meant to look like:

And the awful reality:

When finishing off the waist band I went back to cross country stitching, so that I could get a feel for it again after a moderate amount of experience with parking. That was an interesting exercise. There is a bit less confetti in the waist band than in the leggings, but it did feel more awkward and ended up with more variable size stitches and more existing threads being separated apart by the needle as I added a new colour. Also, I'm not sure that it was any quicker.
So, if one ignores the extra concentration required for parking, I think it's the way to go, and will continue with it for any areas where there aren't distinct colour blocks.
Total stitches 3594 in 29 days (= 123.9 per day), which isn't bad using a new technique, with a smaller stitch size on a new material. It'll be interesting to see if the speed can pick up when I get more used to it.
As I have all the threads already in the work, I'll continue with the leggings, but the next update will be a while away - I'm going on a week's camping holiday soon and am not taking this piece with me as there is too much chance of something horrible happening to it. Going to SW Pembrokeshire looking at some areas I've not seen since I was 5. My memories of the area include violent storms that made the whole house stagger - just hope they're not going to be repeated!

Regards,

Richard

[rcperryls]

Your "awful reality" is looking pretty good. If you didn't add that it is a new technique on a smaller size and new fabric no one would know. I think you are doing a great job and deserve a week off. I hope the weather isn't quite what you remember from your childhood and that you have a lovely vacation. Are you taking any stitching with or going to "cold turkey"?

Carole

[richardandtracy]

Cold Turkey it is.
I just do one job at a time - I'm told it's because men can't multi-task, but think it's more due to me being tidy minded (if not physically tidy!).

The weather has recently been gorgeous, but it has a habit of breaking when we go camping. One year the campsite we wanted to go to in Scarborough was on the front page of a national newspaper the day we were due to go to it. The inshore lifeboat was rescuing people from their caravans... The same year we were in Fountains Abbey when the place was closed due to a deluge. We had 6" bow waves on the pram wheels as we walked up some of the paths that had turned into rivers. Then there was the river Usk outside Rippon, it came up 8ft and flooded half the campsite we were on within 4 hours of getting there, and then on a campsite near York, the River Ouse had broken its banks 100 yards away and was lapping on the back wall of the campsite..
2 years later we returned and the same thing happened at the same campsite, and they told us 'We've been here 30 years and it's only happened once before'. We said we knew, were there then, and took the hint. We've never holidayed in Yorkshire since...

Regards,

Richard.

[imogenX]

The weather has recently been gorgeous, but it has a habit of breaking when we go camping.

Have a blast! Fingers crossed that you'll have storm-free weather

Your stitching looks awesome. This is going to be so cool when it's finished!

[richardandtracy]

As I was posting a photo of the messy back of this project for Vanessa, I thought it might be worth adding a photo of the front too. Not as much progress as average because we were on holiday in a tent & camper van for just over a week. On our last night the tail end of ex-Hurricane Bertha hit the UK and our tent was at the top of almost the first cliff it hit having crossed the Atlantic. After an interesting time packing up the tent we crossed the country to find that a small part of the house had flooded...

OK, I know I'm grasping at the smallest of straws to explain why I've not sat down properly to make real progress.
The picture:


The front with nearly 2 columns of parking (out of 3) completed on page 5 of the plan.
(img)http://i771.photobucket.com/albums/xx35 ... .jpg(/img)

The messy back:
(img)http://i771.photobucket.com/albums/xx35 ... .jpg(/img)

I have discovered that this picture would probably count as 'Moderate Confetti' with a maximum of 20 colours in a 10 x 10 square and an average of 9.4. The 'Parking' method does seem an efficient way of handling confetti, and I will try to discipline myself to keep with it in the future.

Regards,

Richard
Edited to get rid of the photobucket photos, but I can't find the originals.

[Rose]

Wonderful progress!!!!!!!!

[LD282]

Looks great!

[rcperryls]

Any progress is progress and I think being in a tent on a cliff during even the aftermath of a Hurricane is a pretty good reason for not making more progress. As well as a flooded house . I think this is a great design and love your updates!

Carole

[richardandtracy]

Another little update:

I have finished page 5 of the plan, and wanting to look at something more interesting, I started the head on page 1. This is the area with most colours, and it has been quite slow going, down to 40 stitches per hour if I can concentrate. So, the figure's face is visible, if slightly disembodied. I hope it's in the right place. I counted 3 times, and got the same answer every time, so my fingers are crossed.


A good look at the face will reveal the crying need for some back stitches to sharpen the detail. How do you get the detail in your chart when using a small picture for the chart?
That is certainly a question I've been asking myself. The chart isn't a good place to scribble back stitches, as it's not the right colour with all those symbols all over it, and it's at a low resolution. The answer is to use the original high res image that was edited, cropped and colour reduced to give the chart image. But how to get from the high res image to chart locations?

Tricky one.

It's not something I've seen described in the literature for any of the chart generation programs I've seen. Dead end there, then.

Except...
I have written a C++ chart generation program, so why couldn't it be extended?
You mean, apart from the difficulty of imagining and then implementing something I've never seen before?

Well, after about 20 hours of experimenting with unfamiliar graphics commands, I think I'm fairly close to implementing the idea. I can now combine the chart image, high res image, then move and scale the chart image until it fits over the top of the high res image, as shown below (copied straight from the program - the two images of the figures are separated for clarity, and would normally be positioned to match as well as possible):

Then it's possible to move the cursor over the combined image and get the cursor position out in chart co-ordinates. Furthermore, the transparency of the 2 images can be altered to make one or other fully visible.
Once the two images are matched as well as possible, then the chart image would be made invisible and any back stitching would trace the high res image, gaining as much detail as possible. My chart making program can already print back stitches on a greyed out version of the chart, so this new way of defining backstitches should work once I have done the last bits of programming.

I feel quite chuffed with this idea.

Regards,

Richard.

[richardandtracy]

I have been puttering along at a rate of approaching 100 stitches a day over the face and torso. Turned out I did count correctly and the two halves of the image mated properly at the bottom of page 1 of the plan:



Parking got me through the section with 20 colours in a 10 x 10 square on the figure's right bicep without as much difficulty as I expected, and certainly less fuss & bother than I experienced using cross country stitching on my first non-kit project. I discovered yesterday when re-making the chart for that project that there was one area with 22 colours in a 10 x 10 square (of which maybe only 60 spaces were actually stitched), and the one identified was a spot that stuck in my mind for two years as being difficult, and even though I was using 14ct Aida, it was hard to get correctly formed stitches.

It is really interesting, with parking, the way the picture is revealed. It's as if you are slowly drawing the picture on the canvas with a wide multi-coloured pen that automatically gets the right colour in the right spot. Analogous to a wide colour inkjet printer head as it's drawn across the paper (can watch them for hours!).

After I finish this column, it'll be on to the swords and the figure's right shoulder. I'm widening the current column to about 12 stitches so that I can take in the contiguous stitches in sheet 2 of the plan, and as I reach each strand of hair I'm cross-countrying down with half stitches and finishing them off as I come back up the strand. That makes sure all threads behind the canvas are also behind stitches on the front face and nothing will be visible through the holes.

Hope this is of interest.

Regards,

Richard.

[littleturtlegirl]

Congratulations on the progress. I am so happy that the stitches matched up.
What a wave of relief. Keep up the great work!

[karen4bells]

Amazing!!! I really love watching your progress on this!!

[Rose]

Very nice progress!!!!!

[chalicedhearts]

Excellent work Richard cant wait to see the finished piece.

[Ainjel333]

You're doing a fabulous job on her!

Such a relief, I'm sure, that the image lined up...that can be a stressful wait and see.