2000 Piece Update

On February 13, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling8 Comments

2000 Update

This one is going quite slowly, but it’s a combination of things that’s making it take so very long. It has nothing to do with the quality or the amount of fun I’m having with the assembly; it’s mostly about how I’ve been feeling and the location of the board I’m working on.

Since it’s 2000 pieces it has to be done on a larger board, and my 3 x 4 foot puzzle board is currently occupied with the Mystery Puzzle. I borrowed mom’s board of the same size but it’s on the floor in my bedroom and that’s really the only place I can work on it. It’s not easy for me to get down on the floor to work on it (and getting up is no picnic either), so the time I can spend on this puzzle is limited at best.

If someone’s around to help, I could lift it onto my bed and work on it there; but even then I have to work sitting up with no support for my back and hips and the amount of time I can do that is pretty restrictive.

I’m 9 days into this assembly, still dealing with a cold/virus that doesn’t seem to want to go away, and a place to puzzle that isn’t very conducive to quick or efficient progress. Oh well. I make it a point to place a few pieces every day – no matter what. So although it may take me quite a while to finish it, I will definitely be completing it at some point in time. 🙂

I’ve gotten all the words together, and almost all the lines between the scenes done, so now it’s up to sorting and assembling each section. I love the look of it, the fantastic Ravensburger quality, and in general am having a great time! ❤

Harry Potter Book 6

On February 12, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw PuzzlesLeave a comment

I love the color on this one, and like the first five in the series this one was great fun to put together.

NY Puzzle Company has a bunch of 100 piece mini puzzles, and I find them relaxing to assemble and extremely entertaining! Being a proud cheapskate I find it a little difficult to spend full price for a puzzle with only 100 pieces that will only take me 10 minutes or so to assemble, but that doesn’t mean they’re not lots of fun. 😉

Mystery Box – One Month In

On February 11, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling6 Comments

Mystery Puzzle 14

It’s been a month since mom and I starting working on The Challenge of 2019, and we’ve made excellent progress!

About 2 weeks in we’d finished the sky portion of the image, and we’ve been working on the symmetrical pieces for the last couple of weeks. All these clusters are the results of that progress. You can see on the right side all the little assembled pieces of buildings, that’s what we’re currently working on. There are many buildings in this image, but I think there will be one enormous building in the foreground when we’re done – the Municipal Building in New York City.

The color line cutting makes things very challenging, and you have to try to make your brain focus on the shapes only, because color and background are almost no help at all. You can see the many straight edges on some of the pieces we’ve already put together; where the building meets the roof – straight edge, where the roof meets something in the background – straight edge. It makes it almost impossible to assemble the edges of the puzzle first, but we’re loving it anyway❣

Every piece we find and connect feels like an enormous victory, and mom and I are constantly stopping the other so they can witness the connection. It sounds stupid to put in into words, but it’s an extremely complicated puzzle and the connections almost never look like what you think they will – we’re so proud when we find something!

Mystery Puzzle 15

We’ve also gotten a very large chunk of pieces connected to sky, and believe me there were many little old lady high fives all around! Connecting two pieces together is awesome, but connecting a large block of pieces to the sky made us so unbelievably happy – we both have P.A.D.S., and finding these connections made our entire day. 😉

We still don’t have a final piece count, but mom promises to print out the pictures today so I can start counting the sky pieces and get a grand total. (Why we didn’t think to count them first I honestly don’t know, probably because we didn’t know that the whole box was only one image) I’m hopeful that whenever I post next about this puzzle I’ll be able to give an accurate piece count, we’re thinking it’s going to be around 1500 pieces. It looks like it may be missing a piece or two, but that doesn’t matter much to us, we’re still having a fantastic time puzzling together and enjoying this amazing vintage wooden puzzle. 😎

Grandpa’s Cabin

On February 10, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzles, Thrift Store Puzzles5 Comments

I’ve had this puzzle at my house for a few months, and just wasn’t in the right mood for it when mom first found it. I finally decided to dive in, and had a great time. The artwork by William S. Kreutz made for a challenging and beautiful puzzle and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Love it when that happens!

MasterPieces random cut usually keeps things interesting, but this one was quite devious! Many times I was convinced a piece was missing, and it turned out to be 2 oddly shaped pieces in a configuration I hadn’t even considered. It certainly kept me on my toes right until the very end. This isn’t one of those puzzles where the nearer you get to the end, the faster the pieces fly into place; and I really enjoyed the challenge of it. Maybe our work on the Mystery Box Puzzle is giving me a greater appreciation for fun of conquering a complicated puzzle. 😎

I love the image, especially the characters. Grandma’s face is so sweet looking! Although if it were my family my daughter would be the one who went fishing and my sons would have stayed inside at the cabin to play video games or watch a movie. 😉

There’s something about this puzzle that makes me very happy, but I’m not sure how to articulate it. I had a wonderful time with the assembly, and just looking at the pictures brings a smile to my face.

Yesterday’s Awesome Find!

On February 9, 2019 By Stacey at myjigsawjournalIn Jigsaw Puzzling, Thrift Store Puzzles10 Comments

Marketplace 1

Yesterday was another LONG trip to my pain management doctor over 4 hours from home; but I decided to try and make it a little less painful by finding myself some puzzles – and find some I did!

Marketplace 2.JPG

I got all 27 of these puzzles for $25 from a fantastic lady I found on Facebook Marketplace. (Thanks Jan! ❤) I don’t use Facebook, but my husband has an account that I use to look at puzzle pages, etc. One day when I was bored and looking around I found the marketplace and obviously searched for jigsaw puzzles for sale in my area. I didn’t see many bargains, or even puzzles that I wanted anywhere near my house, but I did find this lot almost 100 miles from home. It didn’t seem very cost effective to go that far for them, but luckily when I had to make another appointment with the doctor and knew I’d be within 10 miles or so of these puzzles I was VERY excited!

So here’s what I got:

Twelve 300 piece
Eight 500 piece
One 550 piece
Two 750 piece
Four 1000 piece

Great brands too! I’m so very happy with my purchase, even though 3 of the puzzles I’ve done before. No worries at all, even with those 3 taken out of the mix I only spent $1.04 per puzzle. 🙂 There’s another image that I have assembled before, but with a different piece count and by a different brand – so I’m definitely going to be doing that one again.

Finding these puzzles made a terrible day in the car and at the doctor’s office a whole lot less horrible – because I was so happy to find such great puzzles at such a great price!

These ought to keep me busy for a little while, right? ☺