We got this jigsaw puzzle as a Christmas present, and the minute I looked at it I knew it would drive us nuts. This was possibly the most difficult puzzle that we have ever done and at one point quite early on – I nearly gave up on it. It looks like a beautiful room though and after we got about a third of the way through it it started to seem possible.
We have quiet a queue of puzzles to do so I’m going to have a few days off and then begin one that we got last year, The Salt Path – an Angela Harding design and of course it’s the cover of the book of the same name.
Yes it’s jigsaw season again, we’ve been a bit later than usual in doing a jigsaw puzzle this year, and we have a queue of new puzzles to get around to. As we were in the Lake District in the north of England fairly recently I decided to choose this one as the first to tackle. It’s one of those with several scenes on it which sort of morph into each other. I thought it might be a difficult one to do but it wasn’t too bad at all.
The different skies were fairly easy to discern, and actually a lot easier than trying to complete a vast sky of the same shade of blue. We had the usual scrabble on the floor for the last piece of puzzle, surely it wasn’t missing?! Thankfully we found it. I think I’ll leave it until after Christmas to start another one.
We were given a couple of jigsaw puzzles at Christmas. This one was particularly for Jack as it’s of Boghead in Dumbarton, and a house builder bought the ground years ago, so this was a real nostalgia trip as Jack has supported Dumbarton FC since he was a lad, it’s a tough life!
As ever, about ten minutes into the jigsaw I wondered if it was a wise thing to do so soon after another puzzle!
It was a strange one as we had presumed that the sky and pitch would be the really difficult bits, but it turned out that it was all the supporters that we puzzled over the most. Anyway, it was very satisfying when we each took a corner of the last piece and slid it into place – and we didn’t even have to have a frantic last minute search of the carpet for a missing piece.
Over the years so many old football grounds have been bought up by house builders, it looks like this puzzle company is making a good business from the nostalgia of the older fans. Even I used to go to the matches as a youngster as there wasn’t much else to do on a Saturday unless you took the train to Glasgow to do some shopping. My pal and I used to ask a couple of likely looking men if they would lift us over the turnstile, and they always obliged. You couldn’t do that nowadays with the modern turnstiles. Yes it was aptly named as it was indeed a very boggy pitch. I remember during the 1970s when there was basically a paddling pool stretching across the whole of the middle of the pitch and the players just played through it.
I hope that you had a lovely time at Christmas, wherever you are.
I’ve been absent from Pining because we’ve been busy celebrating Jack’s BIG birthday, over in the west of Scotland and also back here in the east. It all went very well, at least it didn’t snow and so the football match wasn’t postponed, even the football match virgins among us enjoyed it, but that might have been mainly because of the banter. Let’s just say that I’m glad that our three year old granddaughter wasn’t there. She would definitely have expanded her vocabulary, and not in a good way!
Anyway, one of our Christmas gifts was – a jigsaw puzzle – one of those 500 piece chunky wooden ones. With nothing worth watching on TV when we got home from all the celebrations we broke out the puzzle, and of course it hijacked our life until it was finished. It took me ages to even get the first two pieces together, but it felt so satisfying to complete it, after a frantic search with a torch to find the missing last piece!
Anyway, here it is in progress.
As you can see it’s of Klimt’s The Kiss. I really like his work and I have a print of one of his landscapes in our sun room.
This was the first jigsaw of the winter for us, somehow we’ve been busy doing other stuff, but as we have a queue of four or five others to get through, some that we bought in the summer when we were in the Netherlands – it won’t be the last.
One of my favourite Laurel and Hardy films is Me and My Pall from 1933. Oliver is getting married, but a jigsaw puzzle gets in the way!
Our second jigsaw puzzle (and possibly the last) of the year is of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. It’s a place that I almost visited because back in 1970 I was in Bavaria staying with a penpal, and we were supposed to be visiting the castle, but I was so homesick and was not having a good time so I decided to go home a week early. I’ve always wondered if I made a mistake doing that – so when the saleswoman in the shop we bought this puzzle in told us that she had visited the place with her parents in the 1970s when she was a child, and her father was furious when they got to the castle I realised I hadn’t missed much. Apparently it’s a long hard walk up to the castle and when you get there it is completely empty! The original owner spent all his money building the place and couldn’t afford any furniture. I wonder if it has been furnished now. This is supposed to be the most photographed and prettiest castle in the world but to me it looks like a barrack with a few pepperpot turrets stuck on it.
Anyway, this autumnal view of the castle almost did me in, the building was easy, the trees not too bad but the sky was a nightmare, after a few day’s rest we tackled it again and got there.
We still have a queue of four or five other puzzles to do but I might leave them for next winter!
Last Christmas we were given a double sided jigsaw puzzle, it sounded like a bit of a nightmare to me so it languished in its tin tea caddy packaging the whole year. This year we got another Rington’s puzle so I rolled my sleeves up and got on with the first one. As you can see even the puzzle is shaped like a tea caddy.
It was actually a lot easier than I had anticipated although I wouldn’t have tackled doing the green side of it, when we had completed the puzzle we carefully turned it over to this side, just to see what it looked like.
Rington’s is a hugely popular company based in the north east of England, unusually they only trade through reps, not in shops, so people still have their goods delivered to them at their home, although nowadays they use a van, not a horse-drawn cart.
It took us about a week to finish the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the Eric Ravilious painting of The Westbury White Horse which is in Wiltshire, England.
It wasn’t as difficult as we feared it might be, it was really enjoyable, but we’ll leave it a few weeks before beginning another one I think!
It’s that season again – jigsaw time. It’s of The Westbury White Horse, which is in Wiltshire. The painting is by Eric Ravilious and the jigsaw puzzle has 1,000 pieces. So far it hasn’t been too frustrating, but all of those green bits might get me down. I love the wee steam train chuffing away on the left hand side.
During World War 2 the artist Eric Ravilious was a war artist. Sadly he died on active service in 1942 when the aeroplane he was in disappeared over Iceland. I really like his style of painting.
I was lucky enough to get a couple of 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles as Christmas presents, and as the Christmas festivities were very low profile indeed – it was just me and Jack on the actual day – and there was absolutely nothing worth watching on TV, it wasn’t long before we broke into the first puzzle which as you can see is a John Tenniel illustration from Alice in Wonderland, produced by the British Library.
I think Tenniel’s illustrations are the best, but all that cross-hatching made this a fiendish puzzle to complete. Believe it or not I found all the white areas to be easier to deal with, at least I didn’t go cross-eyed with those bits.
As ever though there was a huge feeling of accomplishment as we fitted in the last piece, indeed we each put a finger on it and we slid it in together. It’ll be a wee while before we tackle the next one though! That one is an image from Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflower series.
Yes it’s that time of the year again – jigsaw puzzle season. As you can see our first choice this year is another one from The Railway Poster Collection. The image depicts The Western Highlands, it’s a 1,000 piece puzzle and it was a charity shop purchase which is always a bit of a worry, mind you in the past we have had the annoying experience of buying a brand new factory sealed puzzle in the past and it had several pieces missing!
Anyway, this puzzle turned out to be not as difficult as I had feared, so it was really enjoyable. However, there was one piece missing and we were just about to commence the manic shaking out of throws, cushions, newspapers and such, we had already gone over the carpet with a torch looking for the piece. But I needed something in my handbag which was on a table in a different room and suddenly the piece was on the table! I can only think that it had fallen into my bag when it was under the jigsaw table.
When I spotted the piece I was so shocked I couldn’t actually say anything, just pointed and screeched, Jack thought I had seen a beastie. Ah well, all’s well that ends well, but we’ll leave it a few weeks at least before tackling another jigsaw puzzle.
