Month: August 2019

[Movie Posters], In Progress

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I’ve stared on a movie poster collage by Czech brand Dino. I’ve only done one Dino puzzle before, and that was about 10 years ago. I wasn’t happy with the quality, but I decided to give it another go. The problem I had was pieces fitting where they don’t belong, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem with this image.  There is no title on the box.

It took me almost two days to spread out the pieces and turn them right side up – it’s my least favourite part of the process and I was feeling lazy.

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The puzzle itself is progressing well, though, and I’m really enjoying it.

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Great Shipwrecks, 2011-09-22

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This was so much fun! In the middle the Titanic, and all around other, less well-known shipwrecks, all with a short description. I have a thing for shipwrecks (and air crashes), but there were many that I had never heard of before.

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Great Shipwrecks, White Mountain Puzzles, 1000 pieces. Completed on September 22nd, 2011.

In the lower left-hand corner is the Swedish ship Vasa that’s already appeared on the blog.

I gave this away before I moved in 2013, but I now wish I had kept it.

Amazing World, 2016-02-20

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World map with a border of flags and pictures of animals as well as boats and planes on the ocean. More fun than a regular map 🙂

I was juggling four pieces of cardboard to assemble the puzzle on, and a whole stack of them to spread out the rest of the pieces. As you can see, I didn’t bother putting the sections together properly.

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Amazing World, Heye, 3000 pieces. Completed on February 20th, 2016.

Hygieia, 2019-08-07

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Hygieia by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, a painting from 1900.  The quality was good, as it usually is with Grafika, but it was still pretty difficult.

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Hygieia by Gustav Klimt, Grafika, 1000 pieces. Completed on August 7th, 2019.

It was really only the red and gold dress that was hard. Up until this point, I had no problems, but then all the pieces looked the same. At one point I thought it would be have been easier to have an area of the same colour rather than all this confusing red and gold, but I did learn to pick out some of the pieces. I found most of the snake-pieces, and I also managed to pick out most of the pieces with the small round / heart-shaped dots. Slow, but not unpleasant.

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Upper Class Puzzling

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I’m preparing for the upcoming Downton Abbey movie by rewatching the entire series, and AHA, there’s a puzzle! The Dowager Countess of Grantham and Mrs Crawley are having some sherry while doing a puzzle. You can’t make out the image, and they make no reference to the puzzle, but you can see that the pieces are wooden, and it seems the countess has done the edges first.

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Mrs Crawley has her own little section to work on.

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My grandmother, who was also a puzzler, once told me that Queen Elizabeth is a keen puzzler and that she has an enormous room with many tables with puzzles on them, and even though she is too busy to spend much time puzzling, she sometimes walks through the room placing a piece here and there. This may not be true (except for the part about Queen Elizabeth liking puzzles), my grandmother liked the kind of magazines with royal gossip where much of the content is entirely made up by the “journalists”.

I’ve heard that Queen Elizabeth likes puzzles elsewhere as well, although it’s difficult to verify – it’s not like she gives chatty interviews about her hobbies 🙂 According to a story in the Telegraph from 2010, it is even said that Her Majesty prefers her puzzles without an image on the box in order to make it more challenging.

Anyway, we seem to be in very good company 🙂

Hygieia, In Progress

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Hygieia was a Greek goddess, daughter of Asclepius, the god of medicine. This version has little to do with Greek mythology, it’s a painting by 19th Century Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. I like his paintings, and sometimes I can’t help myself even though I know they make difficult puzzles. This is my favourite, and I also have a mug with the same image.

As a puzzle, it is quite difficult, but not too bad. I did sort the greenish area on the left according to shape, but it was fairly fast and enjoyable to complete, mainly because the quality is excellent. I expect it will become more difficult from now on.

There were some pieces stuck together again, this, unfortunately, happens with Grafika quite a lot,  but it wasn’t too bad this time. I didn’t pull them apart, I don’t mind a bit of help with this 🙂

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Doors of India, 2016-10-31

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This is a Nathan puzzle, produced by Ravensburger for the French market. The quality is exactly the same as in other Ravensburger puzzles, the only difference is that the finish is shiny, as opposed to the more matte finish that other Ravensburger puzzles have.

This was perhaps a bit more difficult than I would have expected, and also not quite as enjoyable. I have no idea why; quite possibly I was just in the wrong mood.

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Doors of India, Nathan, 1500 pieces. Completed on October 31st, 2016.

Dortmund City Puzzle, 2019-08-02

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A map of Dortmund. I’ve placed a coin on the puzzle where I live, below on the left. I bought this in a local book shop, and it was expensive, but nice quality and very entertaining to me, of course. It was a bit more difficult than expected. The brand, Extra Goods, is new to me, and they seem to offer various gift items, including puzzles with maps of various cities. Helsinki is also available, but not from their site, they only sell wholesale to other stores, but I’ve seen the puzzles on Amazon. Obviously, they don’t produce the puzzles themselves.

The puzzle came in a tube, which wasn’t much use, since a huge part is obscured by the title, and the puzzle also covers a larger area than what is seen on the box. In fact, I was happy to see that my house was on the puzzle, after all, I thought it wouldn’t be because of the box. I’m not usually a fan of posters, but here, one would have been nice.

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Dortmund City Puzzle, Extra Goods, 500 pieces. Completed on August 2nd, 2019.

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The Waitress, 2019-08-01

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A 500-piece Ravensburger from the series Happy Days at Work (No.16). This is my first from the series, but the others I’ve seen also seem to depict scenes from the ’50s. Unfortunately, this series hasn’t been released in Germany (it’s from the UK branch of Ravensburger), which makes the puzzles expensive for me. This was totally worth it, though, I loved it!

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The Waitress, Ravensburger, 500 pieces. Completed on August 1st, 2019.

Somehow painted cakes look even more delicious than cakes in photos!

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