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Here's my first SAL it's supposed to look like this when finished



As I started long before I joined this forum I have now completed page 22/77 and 100,000 stitches I'm using 20ct easy count white Aida, here is what I have done so far


The colours are a bit more orange than I expected but I've done too much to stop now and it's a present for my dad

Becky

Looking awesome!!

Fantastic! I love those colors and you are doing a beautiful job of stitching!

Carole

Wow you are doing an amazing job on this gorgeous project

What an unusual design and so lovely. You are making great progress on it and I am sure your Dad will love it when it is all done. Just remember 1 stitch at a time is one less to do.

What a gorgeous project very dramatic and your stitching is lovely

That is really incredible. 100k stitches in... Wow. Not much less than I've done in my lifetime so far.
It is a remarkable looking image, and HUGE! I love the wolf portraits and to combine that with a motorbike. Hmm, can't get much better than that (I took a bike from Vancouver to Fairbanks and then to Toronto in an amazing trip after leaving college and only learnt to drive a car at age 25). Only thing the image is missing to make it perfect is a cat, but can't have everything .

As for the more powerful 'orangey' colour, I think I can give an explanation, if nothing else.
HaED use a piece of software called 'Pattern Maker' to do the conversions. This seems to rely on the same public domain thread colour definitions as 'PCStitch', 'Ryijy Stitch Designer' and my own 'BlendThreads' software (and probably others). As far as I can trace, the thread definition file seems to originate as an unofficial (and therefore non-contractual) release by DMC. In the thread colour definitions B5200 White has value 255/255/255 for the red/green/blue components, and Black has 0/0/0. Now, in reality, that is impossible as all white colours absorb some light, and all blacks reflect some. In a photo I've taken of these threads I've had B5200 white come as 232/232/232 and 310 black as 7/7/7. In order to cover the possible range of colours, I think someone at DMC tweaked the figures to stretch the range so that the digital image range of 0-255 for each colour component was covered. An un-intended consequence of doing so was that they made the average colour definition lighter than, and less saturated than, the real threads (though for a few darker threads the colour definition will be darker than and more saturated than the real threads).
So, what you find is the resulting stitched image tends to be about 10% darker and be a richer, more saturated version of the digital image unless you do a bit of photo processing prior to converting the digital image (by making it approx 10% lighter). On the basis of seeing a number of their stitched images, I do not think HaED do much image processing prior to their conversions, so the pictures will tend to look a bit darker and more saturated than the digital image that was converted. (The 'Pattern Maker' software seems to have issues of loss of texture in dark areas too, but that is not going to be a noticeable issue in this image.)
Having realised that these problems exist, and wanting to cater for extreme faithfulness to the original image, on my own software I have included an optional modified thread definition file that makes the definitions darker to reduce the effect noted above. However, I hope sometime soon to create my own DMC definition from scratch based on a photo of a DMC floss card. I wish PM, PCStitch etc would invest the time in doing it for themselves too.

Hope this explains the colour deviation, even if it can't do anything to alter it.

Regards,

Richard

That will be magnificent!

Your Dad will love it!

Stunning work on a beautiful design.

Wow, this is an amazing project!

That is amazing, love the colours you've done so far. Well done on such a good start to this one

Thank you for the lovely replies and thank you Richard for the explanation of the colours. Your road trip around Canada is exactly something my dad would love to do one day, in fact I think my whole family would move to Canada my parents for the scenery my OH for the mountain biking and me and kiddies for the snowboarding

Becky

This is such a beautiful design. The wolves are almost mesmerizing. You're doing such a fantastic job. I look forward to seeing more updates. Keep on stitching!

Here is a quick update pages 23/24 now complete thanks for looking

Becky

Cannot get over your technique. It's superb. All the stitches are the same size & tension. That is really excellent craft skills. Wish I could do as well.

Regards,

Richard

Beautiful work

Beautiful progress!!

Carole

You are making great progress with this interesting design and it is great seeing those bright colours showing up.

Very nice progress!!

Beautiful work and update. You seem to be cruising right along. I see you're currently working with the same colors I am. I'll look forward to your next update.