I worked on a jigsaw puzzle throughout December of 2024. I started it towards the month’s start but don’t recall the exact date. Finished it last night. Sorry the photo is miserable.
I knew it’d be a challenging one. The stones, flowers, boats, and the myriad of background pieces would make it so. But I loved the scene. Reminding me of a few places I’ve been to, it invited me in.
I followed the regular routine. Edges first. Then I divided the tiles between sky, sea, boats, background houses, blue door, dark green shutters, cafe, plaza stone, bicycle. The pieces were put into baggies. I’d pour out pieces for the focal point I was working on and do that area. I started with the plaza but it frustrated me with its shadows and interlocking browns, rusts, etc. As it didn’t come together, I pivoted to the blue door and then the bike.
One major encumbrance to working on the puzzle is that there wasn’t a good photo of the completed scene. The scene’s bottom was cut off on the puzzle box front, and the birds were almost completely covered. While four views were offered, the other three were tiny. I looked the puzzle up online to get a good sense of everything after the first two days.
Between this one and puzzles done with friends, I worked on four jigsaw puzzles in December.
It was worth doing, and satisfying to complete. It’s still a place I’d like to visit. Have a little light lunch and glass of wine or cup of coffee and read a book, intermittently chatting with my companion as the water does its thing in the background…
Completed another 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle last night. It was a fun one, except the clouds. Took days and several wrong piece placements to get that sky finished.
Yes, it’s sideways. Didn’t feel like making it go another way. Just that sort of morning. More coffee, please.
Our intrepid band of three hundred million plus call Earthlings or Terrans come at last to the day noted as Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Once a date studied by prophets and feared by rulers, the reasons for that have been lost. Only one man knows the truth, but he’s been frozen and forgotten. And so we, the survivors, skip through this day not knowing its significance.
It’s sunny in Ashlandia. The sky’s blueness is marred by some lazy stray clouds hanging above the valley’s high edges, as though spying for an enemy ruler. Current temperature is in the upper 50s F. We’re shimmying toward the upper 60s. This is a fine example of how spring should appear in the middle of the season in Aslandia.
My wife and I have been involved in a jigsaw puzzle. She picked it up at the library of things last Friday. We began working on it that day.
It’s a Ravensburger, which is my favorite. Ravensburger puzzles have solid pieces which fit together well, and vibrant colors. This one is a tableau of a beach house living room looking out over the sea. A small dog rests on his bed in the foreground, looking back at you. His orange toy is on the bed beside him.
A coffee table dominates the center. It sits on a striped rug on a hardwood floor. Sharing its surface top is a tray of food and wine, a long scarf colorful with sea creatures and flowing aquas, purples, oranges, and blues, a gold-rimmed bowl of shells and starfish, and a plate of food. Sea foam green easy chairs and sofa are arranged on either side of the table. Past the table are open sliding doors leading to a deck.
Beyond the deck is the sand and churning waves. Further out are sailing vessels and a coastguard ship. Osprey and gulls wheel through light clouds and blue skies.
I’d love to live in that place. Wish I was there now, listening to the ocean and reading a book. Small stacks of books are on the sofa and the coffee table’s lower shelf.
The puzzle is coming together fast. We are now about 85% finished. Sky and sea remain, along with the birds.
It wasn’t that way yesterday morning. Back then, we had one edge piece missing. The coffee table was almost complete, and the dog and several other areas were completed. I’d say it was thirty percent done.
I was focused on that missing edge piece. My obsessiveness had kicked in. I hadn’t plan to work on that puzzle at the point in the day. It was mid-morning and I had things to do. But I sure wanted to find that missing piece.
Going through the pieces, I began asking deities and fates for help. None came but The Neurons, taking up my issue, began an ABBA song: SOS from 1975 began playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sinking).
I found an American Bandstand episode with Dick Clark and ABBA on the net. Seeing Bandstand shook up memories like they were in a snow globe. Many teenagers and pre-teens hustled into a television’s presence to see the show in the 1960s. I never became deeply into it, but my older sister surely was. ABBA wasn’t a group I followed. I didn’t aspire to their style. But I respected their talents and their drive to succeed. There they were, doing what they’d set out to do. Congrats to them. I knew about them because AM radio broadcast their music. Then there were the friends who were so into them, too…
By the way, I didn’t find the missing piece and left for the coffee shop. My wife returned from her exercise class and answered the call, finding the missing piece. She’s my hero.
Stay positive, persevere, and Vote Blue this November. Coffee is being actively consumed in parallel to my typing. Hope you have the kind of day you wanted when you awoke this morning. Here’s the music.
We enjoy jigsaw puzzles at our house and do a few a year. I do most of them as my wife does the edge, walks away for a while and then returns to help finish. We usually get them from the local library of things in Ashlandia. That was the case for this one. Unfortunately, as happened with two other puzzles this year, this one was missing pieces. The first one missing a piece this year, we didn’t know it was missing one until the puzzle was done. With the second episode, a note in the box noted that a piece was missing and showed where it was missing.
In this case, nothing was said about a missing piece, and it was more than one piece. In fact, six to nine pieces were missing, including multiple edge pieces from two sides. As we didn’t know, we spent a lot of time carefully going through pieces looking for those edges.
It’s a shame, though, because the thousand-piece puzzle was challenging and otherwise fun, and a beautiful scene. Several times while working it, I thought, I wouldn’t mind being there, sitting a table with a glass of wine.
When we take it back to the library, we’re going to point out how many pieces are missing. My wife says she’s going to suggest to them that it be removed from circulation.
I finished the Christmas jigsaw puzzle. Though she picked it out and suggested we do the puzzle, my wife helped with the edges and then bowed out. I worked on it in evenings and found it a mentally stimulating diversion, which might be the best kind. It’s the first puzzle of 2023, though technically, it was begun in 2022. We found it at our local library of things and will return it after I admire it for a day or two.
Hardest part was the tree. Took a few days. Fireplace was easiest. Last done was the top wood paneling.
I was a young boy, sitting on the floor, putting together a puzzle. Every piece was a shade of blue. Most were dark blue. The pieces weren’t like jigsaw puzzle pieces but were irregularly shape and not interlocking. Sometimes they seemed like they were pieces of tin while other times, they were cloth. Those differences peeved me. How was I supposed to put them together when they were such different materials?
People were going by. No one stopped to help, although an old man, in an overcoat, with a hat and cane, sunglasses covering his eyes, stopped to watch. Aware of his presence, I began working more diligently. Achieving some success, I became happier, more determined. Wrestling I found some tin snips. I saw no reason not to use them and started cutting shapes to fit together. In minutes, I had completed the puzzle. It was a large, uniformly blue rectangle, like a flag.
Awakening, I thought, I pulled a Kirk, cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test, to win. Hah!
Michael Seidel, writer 