2012: The Year in Jigsaws

This year, as well as going to work, writing things, promoting things, travelling back and forth to New Zealand and Germany, watching anything that mentioned the words 'Olympics' or 'Jubilee,'  (sporadic) cooking and (persistent) talking too much, I've done a lot of jigsaws. Twelve, in fact. All of them a thousand pieces, aside from the two jigsaws that annoyingly had one piece missing.

Before any of you decide to tell me how much time I must have to indulge in such a retirement-age pursuit, please remember the following: a) that I wrote a book this year (UNBROKEN, which Scholastic U.S.is publishing in February); and b) jigsaws were the only thing that seemed to keep me distracted, i.e. sane, through some difficult times.

So here they are, in more or less chronological order, starting with the one begun last Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the second one (the antique map of the world) was the hardest, and the Gorey puzzle was the easiest. TMiddy chose the WWII fighter planes one, even though I pointed out the excess of sky. As you can probably guess, about half of these were bought from the London Transport Museum. Two of them - Waterloo Station and the Jubilee jigsaw - I did a second time, when I had nothing new on hand and was beginning to feel jigsaw withdrawal.

Work has already begun on a new puzzle, a fiendishly difficult Renoir painting (note to Impressionist painters: you weren't really thinking ahead to jigsaw renditions of your art when you did all that blurry brushwork), and I have a follow-up ready to start. I may as well begin 2013 as I mean to go on.

 

Comments

[Barry Ahearn]

Paula, since some of your puzzles are taken from London Underground posters, you may now amaze your friends and confound your enemies by telling them that the special font created for the L.U. (and introduced in 1916) is named Johnston.

[Richelle Munkhoff]

Paula, I wish I would've known about this hobby while we were all in NOLA. Puzzles are a holiday tradition in my house! Anyway, I wanted to say hello and to apologize for being such a poor correspondent. And to say that we bought _Unbroken_ at Helen's school book fair in the fall! Happy New Year to you and Tom!