This was not all that easy, but fortunately, the cut was excellent.

There was one rather strange quality issue that I haven’t seen before. The top layer of the cardboard is, apparently, a thin film that makes the finish matte, and it had come loose from some of the pieces:

You can clearly see the difference in colour, the pieces without the thin film are much darker, and the finish is glossy:

A painting from 1931 by Italian futurist painter Luigi Colombo, who also used the name Fillìa. There’s only the Italian title on the box, the word adorazione means ‘adoration, worship’. I didn’t know of this artist before, but many of his paintings look like they would make very entertaining puzzles (here are some images). He sadly died at the early age of 31 in 1936.

This was the last puzzle I did in Dortmund before returning to Helsinki a week ago. I actually didn’t expect to finish it before leaving, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. I did the red ball first, then the blue cross, then the black shape, then the brown shape and finally the background. Even the background wasn’t too difficult, there was so much variation in shades. Loved it!

I managed to finish Himmel. This was so much more difficult than I expected it to be. It became more entertaining towards the end, but somehow, I also expected this to be more fun than it actually was. The image is a painting from 1914-1915 by American modernist Marsden Hartley, who was in Berlin at the time. The title, “Himmel”, is also present in the image, and it’s German for sky or heaven. In this case, it’s should probably be translated as heaven, as there is another word in the painting, Hölle, which is German for hell.

This wonderful Kandinsky painting from 1936 makes a great puzzle. It also happens to be one of the best quality Grafika puzzles I’ve ever done, and the end result was one of of my favourite puzzles ever. And this is the second Kandinsky on that list (The first was Balancement). I’m not sure what makes these so appealing to me, but I love them, and find them almost impossible to leave until the last piece is in place.

Lovely painting of some sea creatures from 1904. It was a bit more difficult than I expected, but not too bad. I did the large one in the middle (second from the top) last, that one was hard.

Les Ascidies, 1904 by Ernst Haeckel, Grafika, 1000 pieces. Completed on October 10, 2021.

Lovely collage of clocks by Grafika. Fun and easy, and probably the best quality Grafika that I’ve ever done. The pieces were thicker than usual, and very few pieces were stuck together, which is a problem I’ve had with Grafika in the past.