Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
As part of the puzzle haul I got from the friend from church who moved away recently, I got a set of Ceaco puzzles labeled “10 Seaside Jigsaw Puzzles.” I ended up doing six of them before I got tired of them and decided to stop. I know I could do the others later, but I don’t think I will.
The puzzles I did included two 100-piece puzzles and four 300-piece puzzles. I did not do the four 500-piece puzzles. Here are pictures of the ones I completed:
The Mother’s Day Picnic is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Jane Wooster Scott. I find her images charming and enjoyed putting together this puzzle.
Check out my puzzle haul! A woman from my church is moving and gave me a bunch of puzzles she didn’t want to take with her. Of course, I said I’ll take them all! I’ll do the ones I like and them pass them all to other puzzlers.
The first ones I chose to do were the set of Thomas Kinkade puzzles. They were from Ceaco, and there were 3 of them. I have never done any of his artwork and thought I would give these a try even though they are not my normal style.
I had a pleasant time doing them. The largest one was a bit tricky because there was a lot more sky and also the border has a lot of false fits. I had to mess around with the border a few times to get it right.
A Walk on the Pier is a 300-piece puzzle from MasterPieces, and the artist is Art Poulin. I got it at the puzzle swap I attended recently.
This was another fun, quick puzzle with large, random-cut pieces. It was fun to do, and I like the image a lot.
Sunday Promenade is a 300-piece puzzle from Bits and Pieces, and the artist is Mary Ann Vessey.
I got this one for free secondhand and really enjoyed it. It was a nice, quick solve with oversized, random-cut pieces. It really is a charming image. One of the ladies in my puzzle group called it “quaint.”
Colorful Harvest is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Tracy Flickinger. I first did it with friends at Thanksgiving last year, but have been wanting to do it again solo.
For the last few weeks, I have been participating in a puzzle by number challenge in a Facebook group I belong to, and one of the prompts was mushrooms. I had a 1000-piece puzzle picked out to do, but I kept putting it off. I do want to do that puzzle, but I have done some harder 1000-piece puzzles recently and was just not feeling it right now. I had another 300-piece option that I was considering, but then someone in the group posted this puzzle for the mushrooms prompt and I got excited, knowing I had this puzzle and hadn’t remembered it had mushrooms on it.
This is my last puzzle for the challenge, so I am looking forward to what I call “mood puzzling” again. There is actually one more prompt left on the challenge, but I get a freebie for being a subscriber to the YouTube channel run by the group organizer.
This was a fun weekend! On Saturday, I attended a Brunch & Craft women’s event at my church. Everyone was invited to come for brunch and bring any craft they wanted to work on while socializing with each other. I don’t really have any crafts I am working on right now, so my friend Suzanne and I decided to do puzzles together.
There was a good turnout at the event, and everyone was talking about how we would like to do it again. I brought four puzzles for us to choose from, all ones I had previously done. Our friend Brianne joined us for the first one, Mountain Camper from Ceaco. It was a 300-piece puzzle and went very quickly with the three of us working together.
After that, Brianne decided to do some coloring, and Suzanne and I did Paper Paradise from Galison, a 500-piece puzzle. One of the other women at the event who enjoys doing puzzles stopped over and helped for a little while. We finished just under the wire.
This morning I was a greeter at church. The pastor started a new series for Lent called Practicing the Way. It was inspired by the book of that name by John Mark Comer. The sermon was very good and we also had a surprise visit by our bishop. We gave out t-shirts to 5 newcomers today, which was exciting.
This afternoon we had a small birthday celebration for Michael, who turns 23 tomorrow. The party included Renee, Chris, Evan, and Hans. We had lunch followed by the cake Michael has requested – chocolate with chocolate frosting with chocolate chips in the frosting. He got some fun gifts including a metal 100-sided die and a Nintendo 64 t-shirt. After that, the boys played games on the Switch while us old folks napped and chatted on the couch.
I do wish I had one more day to the weekend to decompress a bit, but I am glad I was able to participate in both events. I will get a bit of down time tomorrow after work since Michael’s therapist is out of town and Michael won’t have an appointment like he usually does.
What did you do this weekend?
Christmas Camper is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Stephanie Peterson Jones. This was an adorable, quick puzzle that I have been saving for the Christmas season. I knew it would be pretty easy, so I did it without looking at the image to make the puzzling last a bit longer. I love all of the festive details!
Colorful Harvest is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco, and the artist is Tracy Flickinger. I have done several of her puzzles and really enjoy her style. The quality of this one was good, which was nice because Ceaco can be hit or miss.
I took this puzzle with me to Thanksgiving at Renee’s house. I thought the image was appropriate to the holiday and also though the smaller piece count would be good for the time we had available. Renee and I were about 75% done when our friend Mike showed up, and he joined us to finish the puzzle.
I liked this puzzle a lot and will definitely redo it sometime by myself to enjoy it even more.
This was my second box of four puzzles from my Completing the Puzzle subscription. I enjoyed three out of the four, but that fourth one had me questioning whether I want to continue with the subscription! I have decided to give it another month and see how it goes.
The first puzzle I did was Sugar Spectrum from the brand Fred. It was 500 pieces, and the artist was Emily Blincoe. It is a classic rainbow style puzzle and was a lot of fun, as well as being pretty easy. I have done several puzzles of this style, and this one was a good representation of it.
My second puzzle was Le Cinque Terre, which was also from Fred and 500 pieces. This is the one that made me question everything. I really liked the image from Maurizio Santucci and Elisa Certi. I enjoy buildings and this one had adorable ones. At first glance, the sky and sea didn’t seem too bad, but they were actually horrible. I had to take the sky apart several times before finally getting it together – there were so many false fits that I almost gave up. When I finally finished the sky, I found there was one piece missing. Ugh!
I did give up on the sea. The parts with a design on them weren’t bad, but the plain blue pieces seemed to go together correctly until I realized I had two open spots but the two pieces I had left were different shapes than the openings I had. I did find one piece out of place and fixed that, but I couldn’t find the culprits that caused the mismatch at the end. I finally gave up and just left the pieces out.
I had another Fred puzzle in my box but decided to switch it up and do the MasterPieces 300-piece puzzle from Dean Russo called Mad Kitty. This one had large EZ Grip pieces that would be great for someone with arthritis or some other hand issue. It was random cut as well, which was fun. I love cats, so this image was great. I also enjoyed how colorful and chaotic the pattern was. Super fun!
The last puzzle I completed from this month’s box was Beach Trash, also from Fred. It was 500 pieces and the artist was Emily Blincoe, just like the Sugar Spectrum puzzle I did earlier. It was one I had seen online before but never quite liked enough to buy it outright, so I was glad to get the chance to do it this way. It was a good puzzle; the difficulty was medium low so I never got stuck or frustrated.
I find it interesting how I can have such a negative feeling towards the subscription when three of the four puzzles had absolutely no problems at all. That one bad experience almost overwhelms the positive feelings from the other three. But, like I said above, I am not going to cancel just yet. I am going to give it another month and see how it goes.
In So Many Words 