New year's resolution

This Amish quilt puzzle is kickin' my butt. When I dumped it out of the box I managed to put the border together. Then I stared, gobsmacked, at the other 900 pieces, all jumbled together in colorful cacophony, and was not able to wrap my brain around how to organize anything.

No single color anywhere that was more than an inch in diameter. No recognizable image to speak of, to build around.

Data Dad takes a quick look. He says, just organize the pieces into piles according to the colored lines of boxes in the pattern. Hmmph. Says you, I said. Well, I don't like to admit it but he was right. His suggestion made me look at everything in a new way. I'm eating humble pie as I write.

Working from the image on the box, it took a day to organize everything into piles (see pix). Then, I started in the middle at the bottom and have been working my way up ever since. The pix show my progress thus far. I'll post more as I move through this.

So what's my new year's resolution? Admit to Data Dad more often that he's right. It will be dang hard but hey, if it shifts my paradigm, why not?

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw Maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Transported to another place and time . . .

Isn't this lovely? Plum and Peach Bloom, by artist Gustave Baumann, makes me yearn for farm living: an orchard, a water pump, hens and chicks roaming the yard, a bloomer-clad tot—the whole bucolic enchilada.

Baumann's paintings were strongly influenced by the landscape of New Mexico and, in addition to painting, he was a puppet maker and an expert woodblock printer!

Finishing the the white blossoms of the trees was just plain hard. Maybe not as hard as completing a large section of one solid color—but close. Assembling it was tedious, a process of moving piece by piece, looking for shapes that would fit (rather than going by colors and images).

I'm now working on something harder, though—a puzzle that is a reproduction of an Amish quilt. Will post when it's done, which may be Christmas 2011, given the challenge—I'll post pix in progress!

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw Maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Holidays & puzzles

Extra! Extra! Jiggy Jr. returns, inspires Jiggy Senior to resume blogging!


Yes, dear readers, Jiggy Jr.'s lovely presence (home for the holidays) has reminded me of the pleasures of blogging. It was Jiggy Jr. herself who taught me the fine art of uploading photos onto the blog site and using the blog tools. And it was with Jiggy Jr. that I last encountered (and bought) a pile of wonderful puzzles. While she has been benefiting from the hallowed halls of higher education, I have been swamped by those halls and, alas, blogging has fallen by the wayside.

Nevertheless, those who know of my love for jigsaw puzzles have continued to forward pictures of things (statues, games, books, monuments) that demonstrate the "jigsaw puzzle as metaphor for life." And, despite Jiggy's absence, I have continued to work on puzzles. Above, a puzzle based on the wonderful Diego Rivera mural. The details of this manufacture—engine assembly in Detroit—kept me absorbed over the fall season. Later, I'll post a new puzzle which has absorbed me in the early days of winter!

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Wild dogs of Roy De Forest

I count ten "Country Dog Gentlemen" in this splashy picture (click on the pictures for a detailed look). Very fun to assemble, with sections so uniquely colored that I could pick out the correct pieces from a pile just by eyeballing them. De Forest is called a "humorous figuration" artist; he taught at UC Davis from 1965-1982.

This is another Pomegranate puzzle—I love this line of jigsaw puzzles. The cardboard is really substantial, the pictures are fun, and, wow, do the pieces snugly interlock.

Sadly, Jiggy Jr. has returned to the hallowed halls of higher education; thus, I no longer have a jigsaw buddy or blog master. This is the first time I've created an entire blog posting on my own, including transferring photos from camera to computer. But Jiggy taught me well! Queen of the Cabin in the Woods will soon leave the beauty and solitude of the Woods to join us here in civilization; she's a much better puzzler than me (has more patience with hard puzzles, for one thing). Jiggy must have inherited her patience from the Queen.

Jigsaw trivia: National Jigsaw Puzzle Day is January 29th!

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw Maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Charley Parker: now you see it, now you don't

Loved this Charley Parker puzzle by Pomegranate. Whimsical design, sturdy pieces that are the very definition of "interlocking," discrete images that are challenging but straightforward to assemble. But the real joy came upon completion. Turn the puzzle upside down? The beaver's pond turns into the Rocky Mountains (the title of the puzzle), an unidentifiable object (at the top of the puzzle on the left, on the bottom of the puzzle on the right) became a chipmunk, and shadows morphed into deer heads (see the dark brown, shadowy area around the light brown tear-drop shaped objects that cross the puzzle, one-third of the way down or one-third of the way up, depending on which position the puzzle is in—be sure to click on the images to see the details). What fun!

Jigsaw trivia: This blog has highlighted examples of jigsaw puzzle imagery on book covers, to signal something meaningful about the book. Jigsaw imagery and activity is everywhere, though. The symbol for autism is the jigsaw puzzle, which represents the complexity of the condition. One jigsaw puzzle manufacturer dedicates a portion of its profits to autism research. Another makes special jigsaw puzzles for people with Alzheimer's.

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Upon my stars ☆

OMG. I just discovered the American Jigsaw Puzzle Society! Darn—*I* wanted to start an American Jigsaw Puzzle Society ☹ (although my name for it would have been something like Jigsaw Puzzle Lovers of the World—Unite).

Where do you fit in the AJPS typology of the jigsaw puzzle community? Here are the three categories of jigsaw puzzlers identified on the AJPS website: casual puzzlers (they can take 'em or leave 'em), regular puzzlers (they enjoy puzzling very much but don't do it all the time, mostly confining their puzzling activities to cold, dreary months), and the Truly Dedicated Jigsaw Puzzle People, described thusly:

"These are the people for whom assembling jigsaw puzzles is a serious hobby. When there are jigsaw puzzle competitions, they go, and they compete. Generally, they're lovely folks, but there are a few fanatics out there who take jigsaw puzzles perhaps a bit too seriously. To illustrate, I once took a phone order from a man for an expensive 13,200-piece puzzle. He had to have it shipped to his friend's home, where he was staying temporarily, because he'd just been evicted from his apartment. "

You can find me between regular and truly dedicated. I'm a passionate puzzler but still go to my job, spend time with my family, and have a permanent residence! ☺

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌

Eat, play, jigsaw puzzles

I ♥ jigsaw puzzles, signed, fat cat

Jiggy Jr. and I had a marvelous little vacation in Santa Cruz last week (it's not Rome, it's not India, it's not Bali, but we take our vacation pleasures where we can). When we travel we love to visit good bookstores. I love jigsaw puzzles and my family tolerates them but books are our holy grail. Jiggy Jr., DataDad and I read voraciously and we worship well-stocked, eclectic, non-chain bookstores (all hail Powells; a moment of silence for Cody's). In this vein, Jiggy Jr. and I spent hours at Bookshop Santa Cruz—truly one of the best West coast independent bookstores.

After luxuriating for a few hours in my favorite sections (brand-new edgy novels by unknown authors! a huge section on healthy cooking! more books than can be consumed in a life time on mindful living and positive mental outlooks!) I turned a corner and lo-and-behold, there sat before me a large table chockful of jigsaw puzzles! There were jigsaw puzzles on the bottom shelf and jigsaw puzzles on the table top. I parked myself there and studied puzzle after puzzle (could not contain myself: I bought five, after a full hour of serious contemplation—see fat cat with puzzles, above).

The neat news is my discovery of a new jigsaw puzzle designer/manufacturer: new for me, anyway: Pomegranate Artpiece. Their puzzles are eye-candy: beautiful images, not tacky—and, it turns out, made on unusually hearty cardboard stock which makes it fun to work with. I'm starting with a Charley Harper image, "The Rocky Mountains," which I'll post upon completion.

In fully interlocking solidarity,
Jigsaw maniac

Loose lips sink ships—keep busy with jigsaw puzzles ✌