Gryff: AKA Coontastic Gryffindor Update 25 May 2020

[richardandtracy]

Gryff loved his humans, and always liked to join in. Monopoly was his favourite game, where he usually became the banker:


Later on in life, while he was a gentle lump, he wasn't prepared to be bossed about all the time by the our 'Medium-Large' sized moggy, 'Squeaky', who was (and still is) boss cat in the family. Once in a while Gryff got fed up with Squeaky bossing him about and turned the tables on Squeaky. I managed to catch one occasion on camera, this photo, when Gryff was trying to investigate a box before it went out for recycling (you know what cats are like climbing into tiny boxes) and Squeaky was interfering:

He never did any harm to any of our cats or us. His claws were the same 20mm (3/4") length as his canine teeth and he could have done massive damage if he'd wanted to, but we never felt them - ever.

Regards,

Richard.

[Podolyanka]

Richard, thank you for sharing these two photos. They add so much to the Gryff from the picture you are stitching. These show nothing human was strange to him.

[Serinde]

Or he was boasting about the fish he caught...

[richardandtracy]

Our fish pond isn't big enough for a fisherman's tale of that size to be remotely believable. You can imagine Squeaky saying something like 'No Wai' in reply too.

Regards,

Richard

[vanessanjf]

Awwww such lovely photos thanks for sharing. You project is coming along really well. It’s great that you are stitching such a personal piece that will be treasured for years to come

[karen4bells]

Fantastic photos of your beautiful furbabies!!!

[poppy]

I now understand why you are taking such care in charting and stitching Gryff. He was really gorgeous ( and funny!)
Great photos

[Lulu22]

Richard your update is perfect and a wonderful tribute to Gryff

[Garnet]

Or he was boasting about the fish he caught...

That was my first thought too - "honestly it was THIS big"

Great update on Gryff, he really was magnificent and this labour of love will be magnificent when it is finished.

Well done Richard

[richardandtracy]

A fairly rapid update since the last one. I have finished page 16 of the chart:

And the result is:


That makes a total of 47372 stitches of the 98984 stitch project, or 47.8% complete. This last page went fairly fast - in fact it was a joy to do - at a rate of 6454 stitches in 23 days, or averaging a little over 280 per day.
The twig in the bottom left corner looks black. In actual fact there are no threads of black in any of the blends, there are dark purples, dark greens, light grey's, dark pinks and a few yellow greens (of all colours). The mix, on an individual stitch level, looks absurd. On the full picture level, it's just right. Quite counter-intuitive really.

I have already started on the next page of 'Luz', so I'm not slacking, and would like to get half of that project's chart pages complete before moving back to Gryff. The next two pages of 'Luz' are partial pages with incomplete coverage, so should be moderately quick.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

Looks great, of course. And how interesting about the colour blends! I have run across something similar when I stitched that tiger ages ago: the whites were rarely "white" but often combinations of pinks, blues and even yellow. Your software really is really pretty special.

[Mabel Figworthy]

Great progress, and its always very interesting to hear about the colour details and the unlikely blends. It's like looking at some Impressionist paintings close-up, and finding that people's faces apparently contain large amounts of green and purple!

[wendywombat]

One Special Cat!
Loved seeing those pictures of him and Squeaky.

[Garnet]

Wonderful update

Very interesting to read about the blends, you have really put your heart and soul into this special project.

Sometimes I have found colours look very wrong until the surrounding colours are stitched, then it suddenly becomes clear and the colours were right all along.

This does go to show how special your computer programme is (and well beyond my capabilities).

Fascinating.

[richardandtracy]

Thank-you for your kind comments about the stitching.

The program.
Hmm. I really don't know why it produces results so different from other packages. The colour analysis is nothing special. I did, after all, teach myself about it from Wikipedia - so the ideas are out there. The use of blends is nothing novel - PCStitch allows you to manually add your own blends. What does seem to be unusual is that I have made it so that the blended colours are treated as independent colours while remaining linked to the colours that are included within them. That appears to be the biggest (and possibly only) novel idea in the program. Everything else is just playing around the edges - it's not rocket science for the programmers of PCStitch or any other package to auto generate blended colours.
Ahh. I have realised that there is one other colour conversion paradigm shift between my program and the others. I simply cannot get my head around the way PCStitch and most of the others select their converted colours. I have looked at the source code that Jari Haurito published for 'Ryijy Stitch Designer'; Stared at it until my eyes crossed, and yet came no closer to understanding how it works. I understand the words of the code but can make no sense whatsoever of the meaning. Consequently, I had to invent a way that I could understand, and I seem to use a completely different starting concept for reducing the colour numbers. And that may be the root cause of the difference in conversion results between my program and others. I think - and it is a guess - that PC Stitch et al select the colours for the threads, then reduce the colour numbers and finally (if it occurs) apply dithering from the list of selected colours. Whereas I round the red/green/blue components at the beginning of the process, then take the colour that pops out after dithering. Gives less control over the exact number of colours, but seems to give a more accurate result for a similar colour count.

Regards,

Richard.

[Serinde]

Lordy I hope you have patented that! Or trademarked it. Or something!!

[Podolyanka]

I also love the cat, updates on him, his other photo and all the explanations. The third English engineer I know (well, in Richard's case not in person), and I must tell that they seem to know so much about how so many things work, not just about machinery, as I always imagined.

The cat is turning out above any words of admiration a foreigner can find in her poor vocabulary. Great work, Richard. I always look forward to more stitching of Gryff.

Happy stitching!

[vanessanjf]

Congratulations on another page finish It looks just like a photo. I feel like I could reach out and stroke that tail

[Squirrel]

First of all Richard, thank you so much for the 2 photos of Gryff. He is a magnificent lad for sure and good on him for Squeaky's ideas of who is boss. He sure was a never to be forgotten friend.

Your update seems even more real now and a huge WELL DONE on getting so far with it.

Looking forward to further updates.

[fccs]

Gryff is coming along nicely, and I love the photos! Maine Coons are really sweet kitties with very unusual personalities. I've never met an aggressive one - but several have been thieves (being extremely partial to rubber bands and pencils).