Tag Archives: Jigsaw puzzles

Another Heat Wave On The Way

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Another Heat Wave

Another heat wave! It’s Hot Hot Hot.  90+ temps for at least 3 days in a row. The tropics are stirred up. There’s a hurricane headed to Waikiki. Hurricane Douglas , the strongest storm on the planet has Hawaii in its sights. Meanwhile Hurricane Hannah is en route to Texas. Here in Boston we just plan to melt as heat and humidity continue to climb.

2020 Continues to Torture

If Corona Virus wasn’t bad enough we’ve got race riots, police protests, Australia burned, volcanoes exploded and  hurricanes are everywhere! What’s that you say? Don’t forget the killer bees? What else can possibly go wrong in 2020? 

On the South Rim, Grand Canyon 2008

Travel

Believe it or not I’m starting to really miss travel. I’m not sure I’m ready to squish myself into an airplane yet but I’d love to revisit some of my favorite places such as the Grand Canyon. Get a 2nd chance to get a spectacular photo. Or maybe just see what I missed. Even a day trip or long weekend to my neighbor state to the north, New Hampshire. I haven’t gotten a picture of a loon yet but I know where to find them on Squam Lake, NH.  Did you know that Squam Lake is where they filmed On Golden Pond?

But here we are, still in lockdown, wearing masks and social distancing which brings me to my most recent update. I know you are all wondering. Have I finished the puzzle or did I give up. What’s new in the jigsaw puzzle world?

Jigsaw Puzzle Update Time

I am still plugging along. Making some progress. I’ve got a lot more bits put together that I have no idea where they go but I also have the beak. It was easy. It was red, and I’ve added more to the border. I can recognize part of a leg. But now I’ve got a lot of very similar colored pieces without unique marks, colors or stripes. This part is going to be really hard.  But I will persevere.

 

 

 

 

 

Jigsaw Puzzle Update

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The Bird Jigsaw Puzzle Update

Brought to you by  popular demand is my Jigsaw Puzzle update. The Bird Jigsaw Puzzle is proving to be a challenge. As you recall a few weeks ago I was excited to share that I had used my pictures to have 4 – 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles made up.

 

 

For photos I chose a mountain in Grand Teton National Park, A Sunflower with a butterfly, and a seal with a fish. The last photo I chose was of a Bird. A purple Gallinule to be exact taken in the Everglades.

Purple Gallinule

I thought is would have a lot of detail to make the puzzle easier but my friends thought this would be the hardest of the 4.

Progress is slow But Steady

With my friend’s observations in mind I decided to tackle the bird first to see just how hard it was. Of course I’m a little rusty with jigsaw puzzles. I’ve had cats for over 20 years and during that time I gave up the puzzles. My cats were just too helpful. I hated little cat teeth-marks in the pieces. Needless to say things are moving a bit slower than I expected. I got the border done quickly but I’m running into trouble finding the inner bits on the corners.  Still I don’t spend hours working it. Its more like 15 minutes here, a half hour there. I try to spend a little time on it every day but I’m not obsessive. After all, I’m in no hurry.

 

I’m getting lots of little combos so once I figure out where they go the puzzle will start to move faster.

The Felt Mat

I was complaining to my friend JR that the pieces  were hard to identify against the wood grain of the table. He told me about the puzzle mats. I’d never heard of them. They aren’t expensive and they do make puzzle-ing easier. The pieces tend to stay in place once they are snapped together. According to the instructions on the box you can roll up the mat with the puzzle on it and it will keep the puzzles in place. The box included an inflatable cylinder around which you roll the felt with the puzzle. I haven’t tried rolling it up yet. I think I’ll wait until it’s finished before I try that. 

How Y’all Doing?

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How are  Y’all

I know Its been awhile. This Covid thing is taking its toll. How are all my Dusty Roads Friends? I hope everyone is staying well and safe. 

What Have you Been Doing?

I guess the next question is What Have Y’all been doing cooped up inside, sheltering in place? I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing …working and dreaming about the time I’ll be able to travel again.

How Y'all Doing?Work

As most of you know I don’t post much about work. It’s not PC and can easily come back to bite you but I will share that early on in the pandemic my company laid off or furloughed a ton of people. I don’t know how they missed me but I was one of the ones they kept. They expected business to take a steep drop and had to worry about paying a large staff with nothing to do. That was short lived. After a brief dip business came back strong but those of us that were still on board were overwhelmed. On my team they did some scrambling and almost everyone is back on board now. At least we still get to work from home and we’re still busy but its more manageable for now. Needless to say I didn’t have much time for my beloved Aroundustyroads.  

Being CreativeHow Y'all Doing?

When I had downtime I was doing a lot of reading but it was getting hard to find books by my favorite authors that I hadn’t read. I even made a list of upcoming new releases. I was getting desperate. There is nothing on TV these days. My one favorite show is all re-runs because they can’t go out and how many different ghost stories can a person watch? Tired from work my brain needed to just let go, not try to think up things to write about so I as I stretched out in my recliner I let my mind wander and I remembered that I used to love to put together Jigsaw puzzles. I wondered if they even existed any more.

Jigsaw Puzzles

I gave up these table top puzzles when I got cats. They love to bat away the pieces, chew on them and I even had one cat that would take a run and a flying leap. He’d slide across the table pushing all the pieces ahead of him to the floor. Not Funny Rocky! But now I’m  catless although it probably won’t be forever. I figured I’d try the jigsaw puzzle thing again but here’s the twist. I found a web site that would make puzzles from your own photos. I’m always looking for ways to use my pictures besides hanging them on the wall so I gave it a shot. I ordered 4 (they were on sale) and they just got here. I haven’t opened the boxes yet but the outside looks really good, even professional! I’ll let you know how the assembly stage goes. 

How Y'all Doing?