Our family had assembled a few jigsaw puzzles, maybe around 250 pieces, without it becoming an extended affair. However, after Christmas 2007, Winnie had started a 1000 piece puzzle called “Puppy Love Holiday Puzzle“ by Current (see picture). This had 1000 pieces, the edges were not straight, and most of the interior pieces were about the same shape. Months went by and the puzzle stayed on the table with occasional short bursts of progress that mostly halted after the edges and color boundaries were in place. Then the stockings slowly got filled in, and the final pieces were the dark colored dogs. To our amazement, we did not lose a piece along the four month journey.
Next was a 250 piece National Geographic World map puzzle printed on both sides. That was a snap, so Winnie brought out another 1000 piece one from Buffalo Games which was a Snoopy “Joe Cool” photo mosaic. This was much easier than the puppy one because although many of the frames appeared in more than one place, many pieces could be located from the picture, and the orientation was usually known. Still, it took about a month to complete and we ended up one piece short. There will probably be a break once we fold up the puzzle table again.
