About 10 years ago, Heye had a series of four 1000 piece puzzles with historical portraits. I tried a bit of Googling, but couldn’t find any information (such as year of release) about them.
I have to say I don’t remember much about these, but I must have enjoyed them as I completed the whole series. The frames look like something I would not be too keen on, but it can’t have been too bad, as I don’t remember them. Then again, it is over 10 years since I did the last one 🙂
A 500 piece puzzle from Finnish manufacturer Peliko.
The artist, Mauri Kunnas, is a very successful illustrator of children’s books in Finland. Before he turned to children’s books he used to do a very popular comic strip in a youth magazine in the 70s and 80s. The comics were usually parodies of movies, TV-series or bands.
I wish they had chosen images from his earlier works for puzzles 🙂
Turns out, Castorland also uses the same dies for 500 piece puzzles, but in this case, the puzzles fit on each other so that the other image needs to be upside down. That was something I hadn’t considered. The two jigsaws I used were Sunset Harbour and The Stony Bridge.
These work a bit better than the previous ones, but nothing spectacular yet. The puzzle mashup artist, Tim Klein, did say that he preferred older puzzles because new ones are so busy and full of detail. I think he’s right, this mashup thing would probably work better with less stuff in the images, to begin with. I kind of like the sunshade landing in the garden, though.
Next up a 2000-piece Grafika puzzle, a Collage of Da Vinci works. Started on December 8th, 2018.
At this point, I had to leave the puzzle and come back to Helsinki, but I will be back for one more trip to Dortmund before Christmas.
You’d think I would be able to tell which puzzles will be easy and which will be hard by this time, but I am so bad at it. I thought this was going to be easy!
Eventually, I sorted the remaining pieces. On the puzzle are all pieces with some pink flower, on top the ones with just a tiny hint of pink. To the right, on top the pieces with just orange lines, then the ones with some green and at the bottom the green dots at the points where the orange lines intersect. This way I was able to fill in the remaining parts reasonably fast (with heavy use of the image on the box). Usually, I sort by shape at the end, but here this worked better.
Enjoyable, if more challenging than expected.
Excellent quality. The pieces are really thick and great variety in shapes – the traditional “two pegs opposite” pieces are in a minority here. The texture is also especially nice. I tend to run my hands over puzzles while working on them, and this one feels really nice 🙂
When I spread out the pieces I was a little worried that it would be really difficult, and while it wasn’t the easiest puzzle I’ve ever completed it wasn’t that hard either. In the end, there were fewer white pieces of the same shade than I expected.
Somehow the level of difficulty remained the same during the entire puzzle, which is unusual.
I looked up the artist, Wayne Thiebaud, and it turns out he is 98 years old! He was a kind of forerunner to the pop art movement, although he did not consider himself a pop artist and he disliked Andy Warhol’s style. He often painted pastries and cakes. I would love to do more puzzles with his paintings.
When I’m in Dortmund I like to order puzzles from German online shops and take advantage of free shipping. This time I ordered from puzzle.de. I try to order right before I leave for Dortmund so that there is as much time as possible for delivery.
For the first time, I had a bit of trouble with delivery (I expect DHL is quite overworked in these weeks before Christmas). The package was supposed to arrive on Friday 30th, but I didn’t get it until Wednesday 5th. I needed to stay inside waiting for the package for several days, but fortunately, it’s been raining a lot, and I wanted to stay in and puzzle anyway 🙂
There were 20 new puzzles:
Another 500 piece Castorland puzzle.
I like Castorland more and more, and it’s also nice to do these smaller puzzles. Took me a couple of hours.
Another easy one. I probably wouldn’t have gotten this a couple of years ago, but recently I have started to enjoy this type of “idyllic cottage” theme in puzzles.
Castorland is a Polish manufacturer. The pieces are much thinner than Ravensburger or Heye, but not so thin that it’s a problem. The fit is excellent, and pieces only fit where they belong. Considering that their puzzles are much cheaper than the premium brands, I think they are excellent value.
After the pigs, I wanted something quick and easy.
This was one of those puzzles that get harder towards the end – the last 100-200 pieces were the most difficult to place. All in all, it was, of course, really quick and easy.
I have to say hardly any of these books are familiar to me, the only one I know I’ve read is A Christmas Carol (by Charles Dickens, although the name of the author isn’t visible on the cover). Some familiar authors, of course, like H.G. Wells and the Grimm brothers.
Puzzler1909 