Thoughts of an introverted bookworm and avid jigsaw puzzler
Swedish Fishing Village is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo, and the artist is Monika Forsberg. I have had this one on my shelf for a while and finally got around to doing it. It was a lot of fun. I find eeBoo puzzles to be very consistent. The quality is always good and the challenge level is just right – not too hard and not too easy.
This was my third month getting a subscription of four puzzles from Completing the Puzzle. I received 4 500-piece puzzles this time. I was hoping to get some 1000-piece puzzles since I have a lot of those on my wishlist. My wishlist only has a couple of 500-piece puzzles on it now, so I should definitely get some 1000-piece ones next month.
I enjoyed all of the puzzles I got with this shipment. A couple of them were pretty well-worn, which makes them feel a bit soft and they don’t click into place. I don’t prefer that, but it’s okay. My friend Renee was over when I did Artsy Cats and helped with it.
Here are the puzzles I got this month:
I’m looking forward to what I get next month. I also have a bunch of winter/Christmas puzzles lined up to start on December 1st.
Marrakesh is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo, and the artist is Miranda Softoniou. It is a delightful and colorful image showing a street in a market area, and I had a lot of fun solving it. I really enjoy puzzles from this brand, especially the ones featuring scenes from various cities around the world. Even though there is a lot going on in the image, it was not overwhelming.
Park Avenue is a 500-piece puzzle from Puzzle Crush, and the artist is Joy LaForme. Interestingly enough, the first puzzle that I did back in 2021 was from Puzzle Crush. I had some definite quality issues with that one, but I am glad to say that the quality of this puzzle was much better and I had no problems with it.
I found this image to be so pretty that I bought it fairly quickly after seeing it. I knew the pink foliage would be tricky to put together, but I figured it couldn’t be too bad since it was only 500 pieces. And I was right – the bottom and middle parts went together easily, and once I shape sorted, the top part wasn’t too bad.
I would consider more from this brand and from this artist, who I know has a lot of puzzles out there.
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!!
Welcome to Spooky Town is a 500-piece puzzle from Mudpuppy, and the artist is Stephanie Birdsong. I picked it up because it was such a fun Halloween image, and it did end up being a lot of fun to put together.
I have always liked Halloween, even though I don’t really decorate for it. I always enjoyed taking my son trick or treating, and I also enjoyed the times I got to hand out candy. Now that my son is grown, he really enjoys handing out candy to trick or treaters as well. The last couple of years, he has done that at his dad’s house because they get a lot of kids in that area.
Mid-Century Modern Dream Home is a 1000-piece puzzle from Cobble Hill, and the artist is Diane Dempsey. The quality of this puzzle is outstanding. I chose it because I liked the image, which shows a variety of mid-century modern homes, along with some cars from that time frame.
With all that said, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked. There were a lot of the same colors spread across the puzzle, so it was hard to pick out a section to work on. It also had more brown and beige than I like. I do still plan to get some of their retro Christmas puzzles, though.
Midnight in San Francisco is part of the Cities at Midnight series from KI Puzzles. It is 1000 pieces, and the artist is Mandalina Tantareanu. This was my first puzzle from this brand, and I was impressed by the quality. The pieces fit together well but weren’t too hard to take apart when I was done.
I was drawn to the beautiful color palette. The colors are vivd and soft at the same time, if that makes sense. I also love doing buildings, which this puzzle has several of, as well as a cable car and a suspension bridge. This was a nice challenge and a very enjoyable puzzle.
The Gardener’s Palette is a 1000-piece puzzle from Ravensburger. The artist is Anne Searle.
This one had been on my wish list for quite a while. I think the image is so pretty, but I also thought it would be doable since each type of flower has its own block within the puzzle. I stopped at Barnes & Noble before my last therapy appointment and picked it up then. Last week, I had a tooth pulled and my friend Renee brought me a dinner of soft foods and hung out to watch some Grey’s Anatomy. I had already seen the episodes and was getting restless, so I decided to start this puzzle. After sorting the pieces, I was glad I had my little vacuum because of course there is so much puzzle dust with Ravensburger.
I worked on the puzzle little by little over the next several days and it was such a joy to do. I love the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. It was so much nicer than some of the puzzles I have done recently (either because of poor quality or having been done so many times that they were soft and breaking apart). The image is just beautiful and it even has words to put together to identify each flower. (I love puzzling words!)
So pretty!
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 