The Sun Sits This One Out

Thus ends the most ambitious needlepoint project I've undertaken to date. :p The pattern is a scene of my own design, using sprites from Super Mario Bros. 3 (GBA edition). Fans of the game should recognize the characters, and I want to point out in particular the evil-looking sun hiding behind the blue block in the upper left. He's a pretty memorable character in his own right, and he's the reason for the name I chose.

Anyway, I made my own embellishments on the sprites and in the background, from shadowing on the clouds to adding emotion and motion effects, not to mention a rather interesting gradient on the sky, if I do say so myself. :3 The hardest part of it all was just finding enough disparate colors of yarn to work with, because it was a rather ambitious project (by my own standards, at least). It's 144 by 79 pixels, which translates to 11,376 "crossed" stitches, spanning 21.5" by 13.5". It was very, very tedious at times, and I'm not sure if I'll ever do something like it again. ;

I used worsted weight yarn (for the most part) on plastic needlepoint canvas. Took me approximately 25 days to complete, working on it in the evenings.