A little snack while waiting for the bonus challenge for April to be published. It was nice enough, although the dark areas took a while. The box was square, and I didn’t really realize that the puzzle would be portrait format until I had started.
A rather typical Dominic Davison image, which made for a nice little puzzle. Enjoyable, but very fast to do.
I haven’t done a space puzzle in a while, and it turns out I still love them! For the puzzle challenge, I’m counting this as #12, my favourite brand. No surprise there, it’s still Ravensburger.
A very pleasant puzzle, although the fit was so tight that I damaged a few pieces while taking it apart. Since I really like lazy Sunday breakfasts, I’m counting this as #11, “the puzzle somehow illustrates my personality or me” for my puzzle challenge. Although honestly, I would probably not have the breakfast in bed, that would be too messy even for me.
Anyway, I have a lot of lazy mornings to look forward to, because I’m taking four months off work! This is made possible by a system that we have in Finland (although not for long, the government has decided to discontinue it, this was my last chance) whereby if you fulfill certain requirements (like having a 20 year work history), you can take up to six months off and be paid 70% of what you would get if you were unemployed. Your employer then has to hire an unemployed person for the time you are gone, although they don’t have to perform the same tasks that you do. Overall an excellent scheme to give people who have worked for a long time a bit of a break, and also to give someone who is unemployed a chance to work for a while. I actually started in the library as a sub in this scheme. That was in January 2002, and I’m still there, so the scheme also helped me find a permanent job. Too bad that it’s being discontinued, but at least I can do whatever I please, every day, until August 1!
This image is from a series called Come to Finland that features travel ads for Finland. Some of them are actual, vintage travel ads, but they also have modern designs. The year for this one is given as 2017, and the other one I’ve done was from 1898.
Close Your Eyes by Adrienne Széll, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on March 23, 2024.
The woman in the image is clearly a modern rendering of the Maid of Finland, a sort of personification of Finland, a bit like Uncle Sam for the US, I suppose. She is wearing a Marimekko dress (design instantly recognizable to any Finn), and her long, blonde hair is full of things associated with Finland. Here is a more traditional rendition of the Maid of Finland from a postcard in 1906 (artist unknown):
Anyway, back to the puzzle image. Here’s some coffee, cookies, mushrooms and strawberries in the hair:
The reason I chose to do this now was, however, this creature:
This puzzle is #14, a fox, for the puzzle challenge. It’s a very small fox, but it was the best I could find in my to-do pile.
Unfortunately, this was not a good quality puzzle. I’ve mentioned previously that Tactic is hit and miss, and this was an annoying puzzle with many false fits. Too bad, because I like the image, and I still have three puzzles to do from the same series.
This is one of the most enjoyable of the duck puzzles so far. It looks much more difficult than it is, and I have really come to enjoy puzzles where there are large areas with a slight shift in colour tone. Loved it!
The Light and Warmth in November by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on March 21, 2024.
Another Stenvall, another cranky duck. The word “cabin” in the title should really be wardrobe, I think, and it’s a reference to a Finnish saying, where “showing where the wardrobe should stand” means to assert yourself, to show that you are in charge.
The Place of the Cabin is at Home by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on March 19, 2024.
The chair in the painting is a famous design by Ilmari and Anneli Tapiovaara, originally produced for a building with student apartments in 1947. The building was called Domus Academica, and the chair is known as a domus chair. Later, the Undergraduate Library was also moved to the area, and they were furnished with the same chairs. We still have some of those chairs in the library I work in (the Undergraduate Library merged with many faculty libraries to form the current library). The domus chairs have been very popular, and they are still in production, but at about 1000 EUR they’re not cheap.
The wood paneling in the background was surprisingly difficult, otherwise, this was an easy puzzle.
A very traditional Alpine landscape. The mountain the background is the Matterhorn, on the border between Switzerland and Italy. As a puzzle, it was enjoyable until I got to the trees. Trees and bushes are perhaps my least favourite things to puzzle, but thankfully, Clementoni is a good brand. For the puzzle challenge, this was #27, a forest.
Back to the duck puzzles, and I really enjoyed this. I started with the sky and the dark green trees, then moved on to the grass, and the road was the last thing I did. Usually, I do the duck(s) pretty early, but this time, the pieces were somehow not that easy to find.
I had to look up the word drophead, and apparently, it means convertible, which makes sense, for once. I wish I could say the same about the Finnish title, “Hyvissä merkeissä”, which might be translated as “in good faith, in a good spirit”.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, even though I ended up looking at the box quite a lot. I started pulling the pieces according to colour, first the yellow cars, I think, but at some point I gave up on that and just placed pieces here and there. This was an older Heye, it says 1998 on the box.
There were some puzzle deliveries stuck in traffic:
In addition to normal cars and buses, there were some more exotic vehicles as well, like a train and a few tractors.
I really liked all the different vehicles, and the drivers and passengers were all individuals with their own style and facial expressions.
Puzzler1909 