Sunday, March 21, 2010

Puzzel mania

For Christmas, grandsons Cole and Clayton gave me the neatest puzzle. It was a tranquil country scene with hanging quilts. It had eleven quilts in the puzzle. It was really fun to look at the picture of the finished puzzle. But, it had 500 little pieces. Once I started it, could I ever finish it? Did I need to send for granddaughter Meagan to help me work on the puzzle? She put a puzzle together very quickly when here a few years ago. Alas, she was in school when I started and couldn't be called in to help.


For some reason, January and February flew by this year and I hadn't started the puzzle. Then on March 1st I said "this is the day to start my puzzle." I took out the pieces and laid them on our big coffee table in the front room. Oh, so many pieces. Remember, there are 11 quilts in the puzzle, two houses, people and the background of flowers, sky, and trees. To bring some order, I took sticky notes and put numbers on them to correspond to each quilt and house. Working with the colors in each quilt and the lines in the houses, I made piles of each item and put them by their assigned number. Dan made fun of me, but he wasn't doing the puzzle. Then, I was finally ready to start. I started with one quilt that was on the left side. I was able to get most of each of the 11 quilts done and connected.


Whenever someone telephoned me, I worked on the puzzle again. After exercising on the bike in the front room, I worked on the puzzle. It was so fun and addictive. I just couldn't stop working on it. Even Dan got involved one day and helped put some of the last pieces together.


The construction only took a week, from Monday to Friday. Thanks Cole and Clayton for sending me such a fun puzzle to work. I would show you the completed puzzle that Dan took a photo of, but he has it on a small drive he can't find!