Interior by William Ireland – Liberty Puzzles – 527 pieces

This puzzle was so much fun! Usually painterly images like this aren’t my pile of pieces, and perhaps with a cardboard puzzle this wouldn’t have been as entertaining, but put that artwork on top of a Liberty Puzzle and I am all over it!

It’s my first time with artwork by William Ireland, and there’s something about his art that draws me in. There must be something about it, because normally I would never choose something like this for puzzling. I’m not sure if it’s his use of color or perhaps the symmetry – something made me stop when I saw this, and kept me thinking about it long enough to decide to order it.

The whimsies were gorgeous, of course they were. They always are, and as usual I didn’t find all of them when the pieces were laid out on trays.

There were several multipiece whimsies, the grandfather clock and birdcage for example, that I was able to find and assemble, but also several of them I wasn’t able to get them all on my first look through all the pieces. Opening up a Liberty Puzzle for the first time and finding all the wonderful shapes and whimsies is almost a magical experience for me. Mom and I used to spend so much time on that first look-through, it’s special; we never took it for granted and I try not to get jaded and remember how much fun there is in just looking at the pieces and seeing what the designers came up with.

There’s so much to see from the back, and thankfully I got an excellent image of it. Even now, just as I am writing this up I found something that I hadn’t noticed before – what looks like a fishbowl has smoke coming out of it leading up to the beautiful fish shape. How did I miss that before?

This really was an enjoyable assembly, and I consciously tried to make it last as long as I could. I forgot though that my son has gotten more and more interested in puzzling, and goes into the puzzle room when I’m not there to work on them. When I got up this morning the puzzle was almost entirely finished, even though last night there was almost a whole tray of pieces left to put in. Oh dear. He’s getting better at it and doing much more than he used to – it makes me so happy!