My husband and I take a little time each day to work on this 4,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. It covers the whole dining room table. We should have put in the center leaf before starting, but I was confident we could manage without expanding the table and taking up even more room in the dining area…but it’s too late now.
Because all of the pieces we haven’t placed yet are covering the space where we need to work, I decided to put my cookie sheets to good use and sort some of the colors on them. We could then move the trays around at will, search through smaller groups of like colors, and easily move trays of colors from one end of the table to the other. I got this far.
Katie likes to help, especially when both my husband and I are doing puzzle work. This time she just wanted to be in the picture.
I did not take a picture of what happened next.
I had moved the two trays off the table and put them on a nearby chair so I could arrange a new bunch of pieces on a third cookie sheet.
My husband walked in, reached down to pick a stray puzzle piece off the floor, and knocked the two loaded cookie sheets off the chair. Ordinarily it’s me who does things like that, so I had to laugh. He did pick up all the pieces after this incident, but piled them all willy-nilly onto one sheet, some right side up and some upside down. It’s going to be a little harder to rummage through those pieces until one of us gets around to re-sorting.
I think this puzzle was first opened and the pieces spread on the table sometime around Christmas. We should finish it by the 4th of July. Maybe.
What kinds of games or puzzles do you like?
I’m sorry to be so very late to this party, Pat! I completely agree with you, though, that it’s good to step away and take a break from the computer and from writing. Relationships need to be nurtured, and it’s important to get ‘out of your head,’ so that you can interact with the world. That’s what’s great about getting outdoors when the weather allows. And doing jigsaws when it doesn’t! 🙂
Oddly enough, Margot, this puzzle is not just another sitting activity…it’s so spread out that the most effective way to look for puzzle pieces is to stand and move from one end of the table to another. I don’t have enough cookie sheets to separate all the colors. 😀
Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know 4,000 piece puzzles existed! No way I would have the patience for that. I think 1,000 is my limit, and that’s pushing it. Puzzles can be a great escape from writing, and vice versa 🙂 Good luck, and I hope you will post a picture when you’re finished!
Hi Jenny! I’m going to document progress as I go, using a better camera than the one in my tablet. I can’t seem to hold the darned thing still enough. And I’ll most definitely take photos when we’re finished. I managed to place about six pieces yesterday so you can see we’re speeding right along. 😀
I curtsy to you, Pat, the queen of puzzles! Four THOUSAND pieces!!! I can only imagine the rejoicing when you and your DH find a piece that fits!!
Plotting a four-hundred-page novel feels similar — matching similar pieces of character traits, finding a common thread of motivations among the characters, and finding a place where external events fit in with the color scheme. I’d like to see your completed “killer” puzzle!!
Hi Janet! Thanks by stopping by and making that wonderful tie-in to writing. I found three pieces yesterday in the fifteen minutes I had before my oven timer went off. Sometimes, however, I can sit for an hour and find nothing. And yes, that’s the way I write as well. 😀
My grandma used to love doing puzzles, and she would have them on a table like this when we went to visit her, and everyone would pitch in now and then with a piece. Nice memories. :O)
This winter with our two 1,000 piece puzzles followed by this 4,000 piece challenge has us hooked. If we ever want to use our dining room table again, however, we may have to stick to puzzles that will fit on our round coffee table. 😀
Wow! I think the largest puzzle I ever did was 1000 pieces. I love the idea of using the cookie sheets – that’s about the most use mine would ever get. 🙂
LOL! Madeline, we made a lot of cookies over the holidays and I figured it was time (for our diets) to give up that baking hobby for a while and substitute something else. If the cookie sheets are in use for the puzzle, I’m not likely to haul out my recipes.
Oh my goodness! We love puzzles, but 1500 is big enough for us. We have one that is 3000 that may have to wait until we are both retired.
That’s a good time to take on the big puzzles…except that we never really retire if we’re writers. We just have to take a break from time to time.
That is one scary looking puzzle. We had one really tough puzzle get half knocked to the floor – my wife gave up, but I put it back together and continued on.
Many years ago we worked on a puzzle that was a real killer. All the pieces looked like the exact same size and shape, so you had to work by matching colors. My husband did most of the work on it, and when finished, we had it mounted and framed. It hangs above our sofa today.
Hi Yolanda! Thanks for stopping by. Before we broke open the plastic on this puzzle, we did two others with 1,000 pieces. That was a little easier, but still took some time. We’ve found the best way to handle the big ones is to just do a little bit at a time and rejoice each time a piece fits.
That is one huge puzzle. My husband loves puzzles. It’s too tedious for me. In other words, no patience. LOL