Jigsaw Puzzles

When my husband and I were courting, we discovered that both of our families had a history of enjoying jigsaw puzzles. My family did them in the summer sitting on the porch of the Big Bear cabin. His family did them around holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas; his mom often put a tablecloth over the unfinished puzzle on the dining room table so they could eat and then removed it so the puzzle workers could continue.

Most people probably look for a pretty or interesting picture. We have arrived at certain criteria before adding a puzzle to our collection. Because we like to do puzzles together with family (usually around the holidays), we look for puzzles with “zones.”
This puzzle my sister-in-law brought to our house for Thanksgiving is a good example.

Though there is some repetition of color, there are distinct areas an individual could work on while others worked on other zone areas: the embroidered towel; the small blue and white plate; the medium plate which has a distinct pattern; the garlics; the wooden board and knife; the eggplants in the bowl.

I liked this puzzle so well, that I searched ebay to see if there were other Ceaco Culinary Classics puzzles. There are, but the only one zoned as well as this one is the fruit puzzle.
We have started stocking up on smaller puzzles (less than 1,000 pieces) which gives us a better chance of finishing in one day.

Puzzles with extensive unbroken portions of one color (sky, grass, snow) don’t make it to our house these days either. I will never forget the puzzle I worked on one Christmas at my parents-in-law. Grayish white sky, snow-covered ground with the only “anchor” being a fence that ran thru the middle of the scene. Not at all enjoyable. Yes, I want a challenge, but I want to enjoy it. Complicated puzzles like the one I gave my husband while dating consisting of a pizza means studying the picture extensively to see if the pepperoni lies next to a green olive and a mushroom at a certain angle and are also troublesome. I have experienced plenty of puzzle sessions with box hogs who insist on holding the box lid in their hand or turning it towards his/her self. In this case, that was the only way to do the puzzle.

One Christmas we met in the fellowship room/dining area of my mother-in-law’s senior apartment complex. We had 3 puzzles going at the same time (some claimed we were in competition to see which table finished first, but I never signed on to that), but when we came down to the last half dozen pieces they didn’t fit, and even the colors seemed somewhat off. Turns out we had a roving family member who decided to surreptitiously move pieces from one table to another. All 3 tables of puzzlers found themselves with a conundrum, but we finally figured it out.

Searching ebay for the Culinary Classics got me hunting for a Christmas puzzle. We have a 1,000 piece village scene, but I was hankering for something smaller. Ta-da! I found it, and it arrived Wednesday. The sky will probably be the hardest part, but at least some of it is straight-edged border and there appears to be a shaft of light breaking it into parts. We’ll find out next week when we unbox it and lay it out on the card table.

P.S. The hardest part turned out to be the tree. So many ornaments and candles look alike.

My husband has incorporated puzzle making into his woodworking hobby. He affixes posters or calendar pictures on birch plywood and then creates “figurals” (special shaped pieces relevant to the theme of the puzzle) before cutting the pieces. Many of these have been gifts to family, and he houses the puzzle in special boxes he makes.

 There have also been some free-standing puzzles.
  

  Yep, we are definitely a puzzling family.