Category: Dortmund

The Spirit and the Material of the Bottle, 2019-05-12

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I’m in Dortmund again, and I managed to finish the latest duck-puzzle. The white/grey areas were all right, but the wall was pretty difficult, especially the last 200 pieces. Having only the basic piece shape with no variety made it worse, but fortunately, the colour is not completely uniform, and you could also see the texture of the painting.

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The Spirit and the Material of the Bottle by Kaj Stenvall, Tactic, 1000 pieces. Completed on May 12th, 2019.

I checked my other puzzles in the series, and of the ones I have, there’s only one more of the “only two tabs opposite” type, and that’s not as difficult as this one. There are a couple with a lot of white, though …

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Close-up of the duck on the box.

 

The Spirit and the Material of the Bottle, In Progress

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I’m back in Helsinki, but before I left Dortmund I started on another duck puzzle.

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I’m doing the more difficult ones first on purpose. Unfortunately, this has both large monochrome areas and just one type of pieces (basic shape with two tabs opposite). The puzzle was factory sealed (I’m not surprised), and there were quite a few pieces not properly separated. I usually don’t like that, but in this case, I’m not complaining…

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There was also quite a lot of puzzle dust.

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So much for the easy part: the top of the table cloth and the window in the upper right-hand corner.

At this point, I had to leave for the airport.

Spices, 2019-04-30

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This was, predictably, nice and easy. The blue background could have been difficult with another brand, but with Ravensburger, it wasn’t a problem.

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Spices, Ravensburger, 1000 pieces. Completed on April 30th, 2019.

I did the bowls first, of course …

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… and then started filling in the background. I did the edges last.

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Shopping in Dortmund

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I haven’t been puzzling much for the last week, and I’m in Dortmund again. I’m working on one of the Ravensburger Exit puzzles, and it’s really slow going.

Anyway, yesterday there was a huge flea market in Westfalenpark with lots and lots of puzzles, but I only bought two:

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Factory sealed spice collage and an interesting image of the Berlin wall from 1990. On the bottom there are the flags of Czechoslovakia (the same flag is now used by the Czech Republic) and East Germany, the year 1989 and the word “democracy” in German and Czech (I presume, I don’t understand Czech). It’s an MB puzzle, made in Holland. MB used to have production in Germany as well, but they’ve completely withdrawn from the  European market, unfortunately.

One thing I didn’t see yesterday was a single Heye puzzle. Not one, with hundreds of sellers and lots and lots of puzzles. Not a single Heye. Perhaps professional sellers are there first thing and buy all the Heyes? The only place you can reliably find used Heye puzzles is eBay, and they’re not cheap.

I hope to have the Exit puzzle finished tomorrow, otherwise, there will be another old photo.

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.

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.

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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One Dot at a Time, In Progress

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I’m back in Dortmund until Tuesday, and I’m continuing on a puzzle that I started before I left last time, One Dot at a Time by Ravensburger, 1500 pieces. This is again one of those puzzles that I wouldn’t have considered too difficult, but I was warned. Someone in the FB puzzle group said it was really hard, and I saw that before I bought the puzzle, but went ahead anyway. I’m not sorry, it’s gorgeous, but man is it difficult! I will definitely not be able to finish this before I leave on Tuesday 🙂

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