Month: April 2019

Paradise Sunset, Starting

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I decided to start on the 18 000-piece sunset-puzzle! It’s my first ever 18 000-piece puzzle, the largest one so far was 10 000 pieces. It comes in four bags of 4500 pieces.

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I had planned on grabbing a bag to start with at random, without knowing which corner I would start with, but turns out the bags are marked! I took A, so starting with palm trees and a temple.

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First I spread out all the pieces on tree large pieces of cardboard. At the same time I pulled the edge pieces.

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First connections.

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One section fits on my table, and my plan is to assemble each on a large Ravensburger Puzzle Roll and then roll it up. I only have two rolls, and both of those are in Dortmund, but I’ll try to find one in Helsinki. I’ll get the last one in Germany, I can get them cheaper there.

Firmly on the Ground, 2019-04-18

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A puzzle from the Kaj Stenvall Collection, with a cranky duck in a boat. This has only pieces of the basic shape with two tabs opposite, and it makes a big difference. There are a lot more candidates for each spot when you can’t rule any pieces out on basic shape. While the quality is pretty good, I had some cases where I had placed a piece wrong, and only noticed after I couldn’t get any further. It was possible to identify the wrongly placed pieces, but I had to look really closely.

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Firmly on the Ground by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on April 18th, 2020.

The trees were the most difficult part.

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Here’s a close-up of the duck from the box. You can see the texture of the canvas, which is a great help while puzzling. You can’t see it in the really dark parts, though.

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The Spring, 2009-12-06

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This image is an ancient Roman fresco from Stabiae (a town near Pompeii that got destroyed at the same time). It’s very beautiful, but man was it difficult! You would think that the female figure at least would have been easy to pick out, but somehow wasn’t. I don’t have this anymore, but looking at it now I almost wish I had kept it.

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The Spring, Ricordi Arte, 1000 pieces. Completed on December 6th, 2009.

One Dot at a Time, 2019-04-15

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I spent an entire day and much of the night on this, and managed to finish it!

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One Dot at a Time, Ravensburger, 1500 pieces. Completed on April 15th, 2019.

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The German title of the puzzle is “Colourful stones”, without that I probably wouldn’t have worked out what’s actually depicted 🙂

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The bits with green and blue were the most difficult.

Acropolis, 2009-03-09

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Again a puzzle that’s missing from my records, so completion date is actually the date I took the photo.

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Acropolis, D-Toys, 1000 pieces. Completed on March 9th, 2009.

My first and so far only D-Toys puzzle. I remember I was not impressed with the quality, but now that I look at the cut it seems fine to me. They have some nice images, and someone recently praised the quality on the FB jigsaw group, so I might give this brand another go.

As for the image, I’m not a fan of the style. I may be way off, but it looks at least computer-assisted, and it definitely lacks the wonderful expressiveness of Degano, Loup or Ryba.

Balancement, 2017-11-05 & 2009-03-03

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This is one of my favourite puzzles. I’ve completed it twice, and I expect I will do it again one day.

 

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Balancement by Kandinsky, 2000 pieces, Ricordi Arte. Completed on November 5th, 2017.

 

Some of my friends have completed it too, and strangely, some find this puzzle very hard, while I think it’s quite easy. It’s never occurred to me before that puzzle difficulty level isn’t an absolute, but that different people find different things difficult. I would love to know why this puzzle seems so much harder to some than to others.

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The image on the box has faded so much that colourwise, it’s not much use anymore, but on the puzzle itself, the colours are still vibrant. Somehow you can’t see that in the photos, but the colours really look quite different on the box.

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There are a number of all-black and all-white pieces, but there is so much variety in piece shape that it’s not a problem. On the photo, the black pieces are already sorted by shape.

A couple of photos from the first assembly in 2009.