Afternoon at the Park by Steve Read – MasterPieces – 500 pieces
Such an adorable puzzle! It’s also an image with hidden animals, some you can see in the image as it is, and some you can only see when you look at the glow in the dark image. Most of the glow was no longer visible, even after sitting it outside in the sun for about 20 minutes there was almost no glow at all. It doesn’t really matter though, it was still a cute puzzle that was entertaining to assemble.
The quality was quite good, it had an offset grid cut and pieces that were a good thickness and fit together very well. It was a bit shiny, but the image reproduction was otherwise very good. I had a great time with the assembly. 🙂
I started with the easiest pieces to find, and the gorgeous puppy.
I’m getting close to the end here, and it was a bit more difficult than I’d assumed. Difficult doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable though, I like having to concentrate and focus all my attention; it’s part of what’s great about puzzling for me. It turns off my brain to almost all other thoughts and I’m only thinking about shapes and colors and what goes where. It’s almost like meditation.
The pug’s face was almost the last thing I assembled, but look how cute it is! Can you see the hidden kitty in his fur?
Municipal Bldg. New York – Pastime Puzzles? – 1600 pieces
Cue the fanfare and fireworks, the Puzzle Posse has completed The Challenge of 2019! The Mystery Box Puzzle I gave to mom for Christmas is finally finished! 🎇👵👵🎇
It took us almost 7 weeks, but partly because we only wanted to work on it together; we had to wait for days when we were both available and able to puzzle. There were many days with no progress made at all, but we loved all the time we got to spend together. ❤
I purchased this from eBay, it was just a random box of vintage wooden puzzle pieces. I had no idea how many puzzles were in the box or if any of them were complete. One of the absolute best puzzle purchases ever! It was given to mom for Christmas last year, the gift wasn’t the actual puzzle, but the time we would be able to spend with each other assembling it – and if I had spent 10 times as much money as I did it still would have been worth it (but I’m certainly happy that I didn’t have to empty my wallet quite that much 😉 ).
It’s a fantastic image – and was extremely challenging; not only the busyness of the bottom portion of the puzzle, but the deviousness of the color line cutting. They weren’t playing around back in the days of hand cut wooden puzzles! Sometimes you could rely on the image to help you with assembly, but where one thing meets another – watch out! We loved it❣
From what little research I was able to do, we believe this is a Pastime Puzzle manufactured by Parker Brothers. Two of the pieces had the word Parker written on the back, and some of the pieces look almost exactly like examples of pieces produced by Parker Brothers for their Pastime Puzzles shown in The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History by Anne D. Williams. It’s our moderately educated guess. If you have any information about this puzzle, I’d love to hear from you!
The puzzle was missing only 2 pieces out of 1600, which isn’t bad at all. Sure, it’s a tiny bit of a disappointment, but it takes nothing away from our enjoyment of the assembly. We believe this was manufactured in the early 1900’s, so it’s most likely at least around 80 years old. The swastika shaped piece in the sky portion makes us think it most likely pre-dates World War II, so that’s our best guesstimate. Missing two pieces doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal when you consider how old it is and how many total pieces there are.
We wanted to get a good close up of the amazing color line cuts to show you, it’s something, isn’t it? Unless you’ve worked with this type of cutting before it’s difficult to explain how this messes with your mind. Your eyes are telling you that the piece that should fit next to something should be a certain shade or color, but you absolutely cannot trust that! Bright sidewalk next to the dark green of the grass with the cuts made almost exactly where the colors meet – it’s an incredibly strenuous mental workout!
Here is just another example of the color line cutting, and the puff of white smoke from that smokestack kept us guessing until almost the very end! You can see here where the hand coloring has been added – and it looks as if it was painted directly onto the puzzle image itself. The green of the grass and trees was enhanced, as were the 3 American flags, the cupola of one of the smaller buildings, and the white smoke. This is a beautifully crafted puzzle, stunning in it’s complexity and quality!
This part had us faked out, we were certain it should have been at the top of the puzzle somewhere, and spent too much time looking for where we thought it should have fit in. Again, with no help from an image our brains were tricking us – it’s in the lower third of the image, nowhere near the top. We had to override our puzzling instincts and just go where the piece shapes took us. 🙂
Here’s my adorable mom with “the best Christmas present she’s ever gotten”. Her words, not mine. ☺ You can tell from this picture how very large this puzzle is, approximately 30 x 40 inches. Wow. The Posse has done it again!
From this…
To this…
In 48 days! With no box, picture, or a clue as to what it might be I think we did a pretty damn good job! I have no idea what we’re going to do with ourselves now, mom says we have to find another big project. It’s her turn to find us something awesome!
Not the best quality, but I still enjoyed myself; blocks of color make me happy (or perhaps I should say circles of color 😉 ).
I’ve done other cra-z-art puzzles with very good quality, just depends on the puzzle and place of manufacture I guess. These were quite thin and slightly warped, but being a second-hand purchase I can’t blame the warping on the quality because I don’t know exactly how it’s been used or cared for.
It’s a cute little puzzle that was fun to assemble, even if there was only one piece shape. 😎
The House Party (Best of British) by Geoff Tristam – Ravensburger – 500 pieces
I’m having such a good time with these puzzles I got from the marketplace, I’m so happy we went out of our way to get them! This one was complete even though it isn’t in this picture; I found the missing piece after I had already put it away – of course. I’ve always loved Geoff Tristam’s comic style and humor, add that to the wonderful Ravensburger quality and you’ve got a great puzzle that was a joy to assemble.
This joke makes me smile, it reminds me of my dad saying he couldn’t wait till the “horse’s ovaries” were served. When I was young it made no sense because I had no idea how the words were spelled, I thought dad was just trying to gross us out again. 😉
Another ridiculous joke that makes me smile. American pies are way different than British ones – obviously. We normally have pies for dessert, their pies are usually the main course, made from meats, vegetables, etc. But when they say “game pie” in this puzzle they obviously didn’t mean venison – it was backgammon!
There’s something about the smaller piece count Ravensburger puzzles, they seem to be even better quality than the larger piece counts – even though they’re made from the same stuff. Perhaps it’s that the pieces are bigger and there is more area to feel the quality of the chipboard and the finish. They’re just fantastic puzzles in my book, and I’m always happy to find a Ravensburger to assemble.
Mom and I got this smaller building put together, or perhaps it’s a separate wing of the larger building – we’re not sure. But it’s moving along much more quickly now! Unfortunately, we’re positive that the missing symmetrical piece you see here was not in the box; but hubby and I are brainstorming on possible ways to make new pieces for however many are missing.
We also completely filled in the top of the municipal building, and added the “el” (elevated train) to the right side of the puzzle. So much progress! My daughter even found a piece and added it in. 🙂
I can’t describe how exciting it is for us when we find a large connection, we’re having so much fun with this! None of the family is as delighted as we are about it, but we don’t care – we have each other, and our puzzle bliss isn’t dependent on anyone else understanding it. (Although most of my readers get it, don’t you?)
My Jigsaw Journal 