The Inner Mystic and Zozoville puzzles turned out to have the same cut, which of course means mashup time 🙂 This may be really obvious, but the fastest way to check if a puzzle has the same cut is when you’ve completed the first puzzle is to find a corner piece from the other and try it out (bearing in mind it can also be upside down). It may not be 100%, but if the corner doesn’t fit, you can definitely put the first puzzle away.
This was again a case where the puzzles where one puzzle was upside down in relation to the other, going by the cut.
It would have looked better having those eyes on top, looking down on the scene, but not too bad. Except now I feel I should probably apologize to Andy Kehoe for ruining his beautiful picture 🙂
The troll is thinking about the forest.
I have to admit, when I bought the Zozoville puzzle I was thinking how great those enormous eyes might look in mashups. You can expect to see them everywhere I can fit them in 🙂
My first puzzle in Heye’s Zozoville series. Very enjoyable and easy. Even though there is quite a lot of red(ish) background there’s enough variation that even that part was easy. I started with the eyes, then the rest of the monster and finally the background.
Monsta Hi! by Mateo, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 3rd, 2019.
I just bought two puzzles at the only thrift store I’ve found in Dortmund so far:
A collage of Victorian die-cut paper scraps. These were still popular when I was a child.Bavarian farmhouse. This is a bit older, the kind of puzzle where you would have to use serious force to bend a piece 🙂
The absolute best news acquisition wise comes from Finland, though. I looked in on the website of my local puzzle shop in Helsinki, and they have Historia Comica Opus 2 in stock! I ordered it immediately, and also got the new Funky Zoo instalment, Australian Habitat. So, I’ll be getting my hands on those next week, probably.
Next up Forest Cathedral from the new Heye puzzles, part of the Inner Mystic series.
Forest Catherdral by Andy Kehoe, Heye, 1000 pieces. Completed on January 3rd, 2019.It started out surprisingly easy, only the part with the white flowers was really difficult. On balance much easier than I expected.I started at the bottom and worked my way up
I’m really glad I got this, it’s not my usual style, but I loved it, and I’m definitely getting the other puzzle available in this series. I hope there will be more instalments. For even more great images, here’s the homepage of the artist, Andy Kehoe.
This painting by Kandinsky from 1913 works great as a puzzle, and with Ravensburger quality, it was a joy from start to finish. A good way to start off the year. Towards the end, I was certain I had lost a piece, but I found it in the box, still in the plastic bag.
Color Study of Squares and Circles by Kandinsky, Ravensburger, 1500 pieces. Completed on January 1st, 2019.
Great fun, old James Bond movie posters with Sean Connery and Roger Moore.
James Bond 007, Ravensburger, 500 pieces. Completed on December 29th, 2018.“Everything he touches turns to excitement” 😀
I actually did this one once earlier, in May 2017 (no pics from then, though). I did it again partly because I was hoping for a mashup with the previous puzzle, Colourful Ribbons. That didn’t work, unfortunately. While each piece has the same basic shape (same number of pegs pointing in the same direction) as the corresponding piece in the other puzzle, the cut is still different, so that the pieces won’t fit in the other puzzle.
On Friday, December 21st 2018, the last piece of coal was brought up from a mine in Germany. It is now officially over. Ever since the middle ages coal has been brought up from the ground in the Ruhr area, where Dortmund is located. In later times much of that coal was used in producing iron and steel, but since the late 70s heavy industry, as well as coal mining, has been winding down, causing a painful structural change in the area, with very high unemployment. In Dortmund, coal mining ended in 1987, and now the last mine in Bottrop is also closed.
The area has adapted and turned to other ways of making a living (in Dortmund, there are, for example, a lot of insurance companies, and many work in technology), but coal mining and heavy industry is still part of the cultural heritage. Some of the large headframes that still dominate the landscape have been turned into museums, as is the case with Zeche Zollverein in Essen, seen on this puzzle. Unfortunately, I don’t have a puzzle with a headframe from Dortmund. Or Bottrop 🙂
Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Calvendo. Completed on August 30th, 2018.
I didn’t know the manufacturer, Calvendo, from before, but it turned out to be a good quality puzzle. As it indeed should be, at 30€ for 1000 pieces! I bought this from one of my usual online stores (https://www.puzzle-offensive.de/) and was happy to find a puzzle with a Ruhr-area theme, nothing from Dortmund though.
Recently I checked out the website of the manufacturer, and found that they have lots and lots of puzzles available, and several with Dortmund themes! It seems that you can sell posters, calendars and puzzles of your pictures on the site, and Calvendo prints them, cuts them and sends them out. The catalogue is enormous! I will definitely be ordering some of those Dortmund puzzles, but I’ll wait until summer when I’ll be in Germany for many weeks, because who knows how long these take to ship.
I wasn’t able to finish the Da Vinci Collage, but good progress. All the remaining pieces are various shades of brown, grey and black… I’ll be back to finish it after Christmas.
Puzzler1909 