Nevertheless, She Persisted

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store PuzzlesLeave a comment

Nevertheless, She Persisted by Feitzky LLC – Cobble Hill – 1000 pieces

This thrift store find is a puzzle I’ve been wanting to do for a while and I finally found it. I wish I had better things to say about it, but my copy had either been VERY pre-loved and assembled many times or it was an extremely loose fit to begin with. Love the image – love it – but the fit left a bit to be desired.

Cobble Hill is a brand I consider to be towards the higher end of the quality scale: their linen paper makes for an excellent hand feel, their random cut makes for an entertaining assembly, the image reproduction has always been stellar, and the fit is usually good/very good. This puzzle may have been cut at the end of a run when the die is becoming duller making for a looser fit, I can’t be sure as this is a thrift store purchase. I still consider Cobble Hill puzzles to be very nice quality and I never hesitate to buy one if the image speaks to me.

To say I’m shocked that the puzzle is complete would be an understatement. The pieces were loose in the box, which was not taped up well at all. When I got to the checkout at the store and starting putting my puzzles on the counter I reached for the box under this one to find two puzzle pieces sitting there, they had come out of the box when I put it in my cart! The look and feel of the pieces told me they were Cobble Hill, so back into the box they went; but I was thinking about it all the way home and had convinced myself that there were going to be missing pieces in this one. When it came to putting in the last few pieces, I saw that their were four left – and four spaces – and I said, out loud, to no one, “I can’t believe it!”.

The piece shape is very prominent in this puzzle, which doesn’t at all detract from the enjoyment of the assembly for me, but does make getting a good picture difficult. I took several close up pictures of the puzzle but even close up it’s challenging to see the image behind all the lines. I wasn’t happy with any of them, even after messing with them in editing, so I’ve just taken a picture of the poster that came with the puzzle.

As a woman who supports women I love the thought behind this image. Without getting too political however, I question the inclusion of one of these women (who did NOT support females), and also the exclusion of the woman whose persistence in the face of bullies and having things “mansplained” to her before being silenced is the reason that Nevertheless, she persisted became a rallying cry for feminists. Just my own personal opinion of course – we ladies are still allowed to have our own opinions about things.

The loose fit was quite a bother to work with, but I still found myself lost in the assembly at times, completely focused on the pieces and where they went. I’m glad I finally got to assemble this puzzle and I did enjoy it, just not as much as I’d hoped. Still, Cobble Hill puzzles are good quality and I never hesitate to recommend them.

Downtown Freemont…In Progress…

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

Downtown Freemont, Las Vegas, Nevada by Susanne Kremer – Cra-Z-Art (Kodak) – 350 pieces

I’ve had a pretty terrible week, puzzle-wise. It started quite well, with a collage of musicals from stage and screen, obviously I loved that one. It began going downhill after that into a series of three different puzzles from three different brands that were disappointing, frustrating, and upsetting. I told my bestest puzzle pal that apparently I’m not supposed to actually enjoy puzzling this week. That day was a bad day and I felt the depression creeping back in.

So, after a day spent almost entirely in bed I decided I was getting back on the horse and I was going to find a puzzle here to make me happy – no matter what! Not an easy task when you’re in a black sort of mood and nothing looks good…or like fun…or the right one for the right time. I hope you have some inkling of what I mean, otherwise I’m just rambling here.

After much searching through all my new purchases, my thrift store finds, and all the puzzles on my shelves I came across this one; I have hopes that the assembly will be both entertaining and a balm for my bruised and battered puzzle mojo.

  • smaller piece count – ✔
  • bright colors – ✔
  • easy to moderate difficulty – ✔
  • relatively good brand – eh, we’ll see, this one’s hit or miss

So far this is all I’ve done, but it’s been a bad week in the pain department as well so there wasn’t much time that I was able to actually sit in front of the puzzle board and work on it. I’m about halfway done, and I’m happy as a clam that it hasn’t disappointed me yet. 🤞

Disney & Pixar Color Palette

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles4 Comments

Disney & Pixar Color Palette – Ravensburger – 500 pieces

For some reason I was a little apprehensive about this puzzle, but there was no need to be – it was an excellent assembly. For the second puzzle in a row I found myself wishing it was a larger piece count because the fun was just over too quickly.

Most excellent Ravensburger quality, the fit was exceptional, the image reproduction was beautiful, there were a nice variety of pieces shapes – in short I’m saying it was an excellent quality puzzle and it made for a highly entertaining assembly.

The only drawback, again, was the puzz fuzz. It takes no time at all to shake the pieces in a colander (take a tip from me though and don’t do it over the garbage can in case you get a little too aggressive with the shaking and a piece jumps out into the trash). Then I leave the pieces in the colander sitting inside the box while I’m laying them all out so that my reaching in and getting a handful of pieces moves things around and gets rid of any remaining blue fuzz. I don’t consider it much of a problem but some people do so I want to be sure to let them know. To be honest I’d rather deal with puzzle dust on an excellent quality puzzle than work with a lesser quality brand with that sharp white backing. But that’s just me, you have to decide what works for you and what doesn’t.

I assembled this one without using the box image, so other than the characters around the edge I had no idea where anyone went. As an added bit of challenge there are many characters that I have no idea who they are! My kids are all in their 30’s, so we stopped watching Disney and Pixar movies together quite some time ago and many of the characters are very new to me.

I also did something different with this assembly; the only thing I sorted was the edges, I didn’t pull any colors or characters, all the pieces were just laid out on trays. Each little character is pretty small and pulling out pieces for sections would have taken lots of time so I just put all the pieces on trays and once the border was assembled I started on the far right and assembled each column. Here and there I found a piece that I knew where it belonged and put it in, but for the most part it was put together one column at a time. I enjoyed it very much!

I chose three characters from Winnie the Pooh, because it’s one of my most treasured memories as a child. I had a book that came with a cassette tape that “acted out” the book, which was voiced by the actors from the short films. In addition we had an 8 track of the same short film to play in the van on long trips to tournaments that my dad was umpiring. My sisters and I knew all the words to every song, and especially loved to quote from it. Winnie the Pooh and his friends bring back happy memories and make me smile.

I wasn’t always sure why I liked Piglet so much, but now as an adult with severe anxiety issues perhaps it was recognition of a fellow traveler. He was always shaking and stuttering and full of anxiety, so of course I loved him. And Tigger. Silly, sweet, bouncy Tigger, he always made me smile and I identified with him too. He had so much energy! You know what they say about Tiggers don’t you? They’re bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!

This puzzle was great quality with a great image that made for a great (if too quick) assembly. It was much more fun than anticipated and I loved it. It was put back in it’s box and sent off to Penny – here’s hoping she has as much fun with it as I did!

Princess of the Sea

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles4 Comments

Princess of the Sea – Mega Puzzles (Multipack) – 300 pieces

Isn’t she beautiful? Of all the puzzles in this multipack of eight Disney images this one is my favorite. Almost all of the other ones are bright and colorful and very “Disney”, but this artwork of Ariel in the style of Alphonse Mucha really stood out to me. It wasn’t the easiest 300 piece puzzle I’ve ever done, but I think it’s stunning.

I know when I purchase puzzles in a multipack that they most likely won’t be the best quality, but if the artwork is something that I love it doesn’t matter, I’ll always take the chance. I’m enjoying this multipack so far, this is the second of the puzzles I’ve done and even though the pieces are VERY thin and the fit isn’t great they’ve been entertaining. I don’t usually do Mega Puzzles as the quality is less than optimal, but with a multipack I know that going in and am almost never surprised.

*There is one image from this pack that I haven’t decided whether or not to assemble. It’s an image called Dapper Dandies, and I assembled it seven years ago. It was also the Mega Puzzles brand, but in a different piece count. I may do it again as the one in this pack is 500 pieces and the previous one was only 300 pieces. I still haven’t decided yet. Thoughts?

I documented the assembly as I went along. The first picture shows everything that I pulled out on the initial sorting, all the words and the curlicues. It was much harder than I anticipated – perhaps that’s why I’ve never done a Mucha image – they look pretty difficult! The second picture is after Ariel’s top half was assembled with all that hair; luckily that section was little easier for me. After that I just did that thing where I stare at the pieces and put them in here and there until finally it was finished.

The artwork made this one so entertaining, and I love that it isn’t your typical Disney image. If there was a multipack of Disney princesses done in this style I would snap them up in a minute! (Unless they were Ceaco, of course 😈)

This puzzle was not great quality, but that didn’t matter to me at all. The image was excellent and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

She’s gorgeous and I love her.🧜‍♀️💚

Shopping Anyone?

On By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Miscellaneous5 Comments

Just a few of my Wentworth Mini Puzzles…

I normally don’t do this, but I just had to share this with you all in case you enjoy wooden puzzles and have some of your puzzle budget burning a hole in your pocket…Wentworth is having a sale!

Sales happen all the time, I know; but this sale literally made me get up out of bed as soon as I saw it to get to my computer to make a purchase. My son brought me the mail as I was resting and watching tv, and I noticed a Wentworth catalog. I was absentmindedly looking through it while continuing to watch my program when I came upon the page with Harry Potter puzzles. Many of them are quite interesting looking but they didn’t excite me that much – until I saw that they were all 70% off!

Every single Harry Potter puzzle that Wentworth makes is at this moment 70% off, while supplies last. I didn’t want to take the chance that any of them would be sold out so I hopped out of bed, grabbed my wallet and immediately went puzzle shopping. 🛒💸

Wooden jigsaw puzzles aren’t for everyone, I know, but just in case this might be for you I thought I’d let you know about the sale. I have not, nor will I receive any money for promoting them, and this post isn’t sponsored by Wentworth. This is just one excited puzzle geek letting my fellow PADS Posse members know that if they were interested in Harry Potter or wooden jigsaw puzzles – or both – that they might want to check out Wentworthpuzzles.com. In case Harry Potter isn’t your style there are also many select puzzles on sale for 10 or 20% off, there are lots to browse through.

If you aren’t interested in buying any of these puzzles, that’s okay. I bought 9 of the 14 different Harry Potter images that were available, so you’ll be seeing some of them here soon enough.🧙‍♂️