Month: April 2019

Firmly on the Ground and the Kaj Stenvall Collection

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I wrote earlier about the puzzles by Tactic with images by Kaj Stenvall, and I decided to try to get all of them. They are all out of print, so I’m getting them second hand, although some are still factory sealed. I’ve been able to identify 30 puzzles, two with 500 pieces and the rest with 1000 pieces. There may be more, of course, as there is no complete list by Tactic, or by anyone else that I can find.

I currently have 19 of the 30, and four more are already on the way. They are good quality, although some of them have only pieces of the basic shape with two tabs opposite.

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I started on one, called Firmly on the Ground, and unfortunately, this is one of those. Some pieces were still stuck together from the previous assembly, and I’m taking advantage of that 🙂

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The World, 2010-06-06

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My first and most definitely last Photomosaics puzzle. This was insanely difficult.

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The World, Photomosaics, 1000 pieces. Completed on July 6th, 2010.

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Every piece has an unrelated image, and the colour ties it to the macro image. The quality was great, but I’m not doing another one of these 🙂

Pirates of the Caribbean, 2019-04-08

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I’ve seen at least two of these films, although I’m not a huge fan. This took longer than expected, there were a lot of dark pieces. Bought used but complete, one piece was damaged (the image layer missing from one tab). Actually, the damage almost looks like an order pinned to Norrington’s uniform.

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Pirates of the Caribbean, Ravensburger, 500 pieces. Completed on April 8th, 2019.

I usually keep my beverages away from my puzzles (I’ve had several accidents over the years), but I just bought this glass mug with a lid and a straw. Should limit the damage 🙂

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I started with the faces.

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Bavaria, 2019-04-04

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Finally finished Bavaria. Dortmund is playing Bayern Munich today in a huge game that could decide the championship, so I’m hoping they will also finish Bavaria later today 🙂

 

 

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Bavaria by Ryba, Heye, 2000 pieces. Completed on April 4th, 2019.

Unconventional transport for tourists …

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… as well as more traditional vehicles.

 

In the bottom right-hand corner there’s a Wagner opera in progress.

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The opera set includes a model of the castle 🙂

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A great puzzle, the mountains and vegetation were the hardest parts.

Herren im Bad (Bathing Gentlemen), 2009-05-10

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An image from probably the most popular German cartoonist of all time, Loriot, who died in 2011, aged 87.

The text says “The duck remains outside!”.

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Herren im Bad by Loriot, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on May 10th, 2009.

I don’t know how well known Loriot is outside Germany in general, but we had several books with Loriot cartoons in Swedish when I was a child, and I loved them.

The puzzle itself was otherwise easy, but I remember that the blue parts took quite some time to finish.

The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 2011-09-18

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The image shows a scene from a story that is part of the founding myth of Rome.

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The Intervention of the Sabine Women by Jacques-Louis David (1799), Ravensburger, 3000 pieces. Completed on September 18th, 2011.

While working on this I promised myself that I would no longer get a puzzle just because the image has something to do with ancient Rome or Greece. (I studied Latin and ancient Greek in my youth.) I didn’t particularly like the image, and it was also quite difficult.

From the photo, it looks like one piece is missing, but I have not recorded any missing pieces. Probably I found it after I had taken the puzzle apart 🙂

 

The Persistence of Memory, 2007-11-20

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I love this painting by Salvador Dalí, and it also makes a great puzzle. It was painted in 1931, and since 1934 it is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, Ricordi Arte, 1500 pieces. Completed on November 20th, 2007.

I’ve passed on many Dalí-puzzles even though I like his paintings because they often have large monochrome areas and would be too difficult. I still have this and want to do it again one day.

One Dot at a Time, In Progress

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Here’s an update on the dots. It’s slow going, as expected, and also I haven’t had that much time to puzzle.

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All around the puzzle I group together pieces that look like they belong to the same dot:

Picking out the pieces for this dot was somehow easy. Looking at the image I can’t see why, but it somehow jumped out at me and I did it first.

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