Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Blackbirds Roost at Mill Creek is a 500-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. I just love his images, especially ones like this with a lot of buildings and other interesting elements. I love the coloring of the sky as well.
This was a nice, easy puzzle that was very enjoyable to put together. Here are a few closeups of some of the details:
Trick or Treat Hotel is a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. I purchased this several months ago and have been holding onto it for Halloween puzzling. My friend Suzanne was over one night and helped me get it started. She did the border, which she loves doing, and I started on the house.
It took me a few days of puzzling to finish this one, mainly because the colors are so dark and similar to each other. I figured that would happen going into it, though, so I wasn’t upset by it. I really loved putting the house together. The rest was okay, but the house was great.
Happy Halloween!!
Along with the clue of books for the second week of the Facebook challenge I am doing, there was a bonus available for a puzzle with a lighthouse. I chose Daddy’s Coming Home, which is another Charles Wysocki puzzle, also from Buffalo Games. This one was 300 pieces.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. I especially loved the deep rust color of the lighthouse. I normally don’t love doing sky, but in a small piece count like this, it’s no problem.
The current puzzle challenge on the Casual Puzzlers Facebook group involves a weekly clue/puzzle theme, and the second one was Books. For that theme, I chose to redo a puzzle that I originally did back in 2021 – Frederick the Literate from Buffalo Games. This is a Charles Wysocki puzzle, and it is 750 pieces.
This was a lot of fun. I really enjoy putting together words in puzzles, and this one had a lot of those. All of the book titles are made up and cat-related – very cute! Of course, I found the cat fur to be the hardest part.
The day after my friend visited, I did two puzzles from the puzzle box.
The first one was Sewing Circle from E&L Corporation, which was a 500-piece puzzle. It appeared to be an older puzzle from the way the box looked. It was of average difficulty, but not too bad. There were definitely some false fits, and at the end of the puzzle, I had a piece that would not fit in the open spot, so I had to closely examine the puzzle to find the piece that was in the wrong place!
The other puzzle I did that day was a Charles Wysocki called Confection Street. It was a 300-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games. I really liked the image with the colorful houses and other interesting elements. It was quite easy to put together.
Pete’s Gambling Hall is a 1000-piece Buffalo Games puzzle featuring the artist Charles Wysocki. His images are plentiful in the puzzling world, but this is only the second puzzle of his that I have done.
I got this second-hand and was pleasantly surprised to find that all the pieces were there. It’s always a gamble (pun intended!) when you get a puzzle that has already been done before.
There were a number of false fits, and I had to move pieces around several times. Other than that, the quality was good. I appreciated that there wasn’t too much of the sky and mountains because those were the hardest parts to solve.
All in all, a very fun puzzle! I enjoy putting together buildings, so this had a nice variety for me.
So I did buy a 1,000 piece puzzle called Fantastic Fashionista from Ravensburger Puzzles and even finished about half of it, but I never completed it. I had finished all of the colored parts and was left with the white walls and floor to do, so it was definitely getting pretty tricky. Then we went out one day and left Baxter in the kitchen/dining room, and he pulled the puzzle down off the dining room table and completely dismantled it!
I had no way of knowing how many pieces were ruined or missing after that, so I decided to just trash the puzzle. At least I got to do the fun parts of the puzzle before it was wrecked! Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of my progress, but here’s a picture of the front of the box.
Before starting my next puzzle, I went to Michael’s and bought some foam board to put the puzzle on. That way I could move it to the sunroom if I needed to leave Baxter alone in the house (since we close that door when we leave him alone).
The puzzle I just did was Frederick the Literate by Buffalo Games. It’s part of the Cats of Charles Wysocki line. It was super cute. If you look at the picture closely, you can see that the book titles are all fun, made-up titles related to cats. The cat fur was definitely the hardest part, but because the puzzle was only 750 pieces, even that wasn’t too bad.
I am still really enjoying spending time doing puzzles, although I don’t think I have the patience for large difficult sections, such as single color areas. I want to be making progress all the time, even if it’s a bit slower some of the time.
My next puzzle is Sandra Boynton’s Puzzle Complaints. It’s 500 pieces and just looks like a lot of fun.
In So Many Words 