Rizzi's Progress

Sky Complete!!

Ouch....

So lets say you make a 40,000 piece jigsaw puzzle from wood by hand, I would seriously thing twice about the choice of how you display it!

FROM: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316536/40-000-piece-world-record-jigsaw-collapses-floor-Weymouth-creator-turns-back.html

Apparently the guy who made it is in pieces: Webcam captures moment 40,000-bit world record jigsaw collapses to the floor 

• Dave Evans, 63,from Weymouth, spent five weeks creating the puzzle
• It's montage of Queen's Diamond Jubilee photos to display at Sandringham
• The 19ft 6in by 8ft puzzle crumpled to the floor while he was adjusting it
• Mr Evans now racing to re-do the puzzle by Wednesday
• Guinness World Record bid is not affected as submission was already in

By HARRIET ARKELL

PUBLISHED: 11:38 GMT, 29 April 2013 | UPDATED: 13:29 GMT, 29 April 2013

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These pictures show the wince-making moment that a world record 40,000-piece puzzle crumpled and collapsed to the floor, shortly after its creator had spent five weeks putting it together.

Craftsman Dave Evans, 63, of Weymouth, had just submitted his bid to the Guinness World of Records for the world's largest jigsaw with his hand-cut montage of the Queen's Royal Jubilee when it fell apart.

Now he is racing to put it back together again by Wednesday so he can still display it at a long-planned exhibition at the Queen's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.

Scroll down for the video 

Magnificent: The 19ft-wide hand-cut jigsaw is a montage of highlights of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee last year

Creator Dave Evans was adjusting the jigsaw when he turned to give a passer-by directions and the jigsaw started to sag...

Five weeks' work, ruined: Mr Evans was appalled when he looked back and saw what remained of his masterpiece

Last Wednesday, Mr Evans - a professional jigsaw-maker who had spent 200 hours cutting the puzzle before putting it together - had put the final piece into the jigsaw in front of a cheering crowd.

But the following day, his studio's webcam caught the awful moment when the puzzle, which was adorned with a 'Please do not touch' sign, collapsed as he was adjusting it.

The 19ft 6in by 8ft puzzle had been resting on a huge frame that was tilted at an angle to keep it safely up his workshop, and Mr Evans had removed the wooden baton it was resting on (the same baton he is seen holding in the footage) to adjust it slightly when a passer-by dropped in to ask for directions.

 

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Mr Evans said: 'I came in the morning after finishing it and noticed it had slipped downwards slightly as the floor of my workshop is on a slope.

'I thought I had better adjust it to stop it falling completely, so I started to gently move it, but a woman came in and asked about the shops next door.

'I turned around to talk to her and at that moment I must have pushed it too hard or something, because it suddenly came down as I took my eye off the ball. 

'Absolute disaster': Mr Evans' wife, Margaret, who can be heard exclaiming in horror as the jigsaw fell, helps him pick up the pieces

Mr Evans asked for local volunteers to come and help him put the pieces in order so he could re-do the puzzle in time

The jigsaw is so thick that many of the pieces stayed together when they fell, but there are still several thousand scattered around

'I had been streaming footage of me cutting the jigsaw on the internet as people were watching from all over the world and the cameras were still recording.

'So it captured the moment it collapsed.

'It seemed to happen in slow motion. It’s a fully interlocking jigsaw so when it fell it almost rolled down like a carpet and came down in a huge pile on the floor.

An understandably exasperated Mr Evans can be seen on the webcam footage trying to save the jigsaw and then throwing a wooden baton he was holding to the floor in frustration.

A day from disaster: Mr Evans put the last piece in to his hand-cut masterpiece to a round of applause

The professional jigsaw-cutter had wanted to do a world record attempt for some time, and thought the Jubilee was a colourful theme

His wife, Margaret, can be heard in the background saying 'absolute disaster' in a YouTube clip that is bound to go viral.

Mr Evans added: 'I was annoyed to say the least. I had no choice but to sit on the floor and start picking up the pieces one by one.'

He is now in a race to get the puzzle put back together so he can still take it to Sandringham this week - the puzzle is due to be displayed in the Queen’s Ball Room alongside 100,000 cards she received for her Jubilee, and then auctioned off later this year for the Help For Heroes charity.

Luckily Mr Evans had already measured, photographed and filmed his jigsaw for his Guinness World of Records submission

Labour of love: Mr Evans spent more than 200 hours cutting the jigsaw puzzle before he put all the 40,000 pieces together

He appealed for volunteers to help him locate all the broken parts and arrange them in order, but at least did not need to worry about his world record bid - Mr Evans had already measured, photographed and filmed the puzzle and sent the information off to the Guinness World Records before it broke up.

Mr Evans, who trained as an apprentice jigsaw maker for the renowned Victory Puzzles and has cut thousands of jigsaws during his career, had been planning a world record attempt for several years.

He only decided it should feature the Queen’s Jubilee because of the vast amount of colourful photos of the event.

The finished version is made up of a montage of 33 pictures and covers an area of 150 square feet.

Mr Evans said: 'I'm going like the clappers to get the puzzle in sections as big as I can.  It's a pain because of the time more than anything.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316536/40-000-piece-world-record-jigsaw-collapses-floor-Weymouth-creator-turns-back.html#ixzz2RrW77J8z
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Rizzi progress

We made a lot of progress tonight!!

The Sky and buildings are coming along nicely

M's banging out the people on the street

Various Cars and Parts

New puzzles, Cocktails Mounted, Rizzi Update

Today we picked up some new puzzles from the Humane Society. A vintage 2500pc MB Grand Series puzzle (4870-3: Lofoten, Norway) and a Clementoni 1000pc Platinum Series - Raffaello: La Disputa del Sacramento

Both are interesting pieces and we look forward to getting to them someday! The MB puzzle is sealed and someone bothered to bag the edge pieces separately from the center of the Clementoni so I have high hopes our perfect thrift shop record will not go unspoiled. I am especially excited for the MB puzzle because its a throw back to the puzzles I remember doing as a child.

The Clementoni is by the artists Raffaello Sanzio and was completed in 1509 and as a work meaning Dispute of the Sacrament. This work hangs in the Vatican City today. The piece has a fascinating history. You can read more here: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputa_del_Sacramento (Its in italian so make sure you use your google chrome to translate it)


In other news, we finally glued cocktails to foam and it feels like the right way to mount a puzzle! I think we will frame these now, but I feel its good and solid!

Cocktails mounted to foam finally!

M takes on the taxis and yellow cars of James Rizzi: Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City

Our new find: A 1983 MB Grand Series 2500pc puzzle of Lofoten, Norway

We also found this: Raffaelo's La Disputa del Sacramento

Rizzi ready to puzzle!

After about 5 total hours,we are sorted flipped and have the edge assembled. This is so far my favorite puzzle. It just makes me happy to look at all the colors and happy images.

Thats is what 5000 unassembled pieces looks like

A better view, we have sorted in priority edges, anything  pink, then blue, then contains sidewalk (white), contains street (brown) and then everything else. 

The fully assembled border! Good thing we have such a large table!

Assembling the border

Germany's Finest Blue Powder...

So this blog has a lot about puzzles, a bit about sex but utterly lacking on anything to do with drugs. As we were finishing up that last bit of sorting or James Rizzi's Nothing is as Pretty as a Rizzi City, I noticed that there was a lot of blue powder from the pieces on the board...

Germany's Finest Blue powder!

I gotta get my fix!!!

Its gonna be one of those nights!!!

Oh it burns soooooo good!

James Rizzi: "Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City" Ravensburger 5000pc

Last night we started "Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City" by James Rizzi. It is the largest single puzzle (5000pcs) we have started. We are working on larger ones, but then all break down into smaller puzzles (4000ish pieces). James Rizzi was an american pop artists known for his 3d cityscapes and happy objects.

Here are some links: 
Official Site: http://www.james-rizzi.com/en/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rizzi

More artwork: The World will be watching, On The Boardwalk, Mountains of Fun, Birds in a Junk Yard, The best art is a good heart, Take the A Train to Harlem, From New York to Heidelberg, Kohle gegen Kohle, In the Heart of the City, Bon Voyage

James Rizzi: Oct 5 1950 - Dec 26 2011. 

James Rizzi: Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City - 5000pc, Ravensburger 

http://www.seriouspuzzles.com/i12868.asp

Mercedes started sorting the 5000 pieces on our new puzzle table.

Rizzi Happy Houses in Germany (Wikipedia)

Puzzle Table

So we have decided we really need a large puzzle surface. Our large puzzles basically are 5K puzzles at a time which command a lot of working space. We have identified a space on our verandah (outside patio) that fits the mark. Our landlord Paul and I started construction last night. The table is going to be 43 inches by 8 feet long at a height of 29.5 inches with a flat black surface.

The puzzle table being constructed

Table finished and fitting the last few pieces of Cocktails

Cocktails complete

I finished cocktails today. The girls completed the drinks while I did the border and the solid black pieces. It took me three times longer to do black than it took them to do the entire rest of the puzzle. It was super frustrating and prone to fitting pieces that dont belong. On several occasions I had to back track and pull up a series of black piece that fit their neighbors and try again after brute forcing (trying every piece) yielded no results in a fit. This is not fun puzzling in my opinion.

With this puzzle, we are starting our new mounting technique. We have put contact paper on the back and we are waiting to get foam board to glue it to. We need to borrow a truck or get a taxi in order to get the sheets home. I dont like the method of nailing between the pieces to attach a puzzle to the wall. You would not nail a painting you just finished to the wall, and neither will I nail another puzzle.

Cocktails - 1000pc Paitnik
Started: 4/12/2013
Built by: Tom, Mercedes, Tessa
Completed 4/17/2013 in St. Thomas

Support Autism and show your love of puzzles!

I was looking for something for M and discovered this great cause and necklace!

http://www.smiling-silversmith.com/product/puzzle-necklace-about-autism-50-sales-go-to-autism-society

Cocktails, The Puzzle Pimp and the Closet

The bulk of our puzzle collection has arrived and since we have been on island we have been swimming in a sea of rum and sex, it seemed appropriate to take a night of from debauchary and work on a puzzle.

We decided it would be appropriate to work on the Cocktails puzzle (1000 pieces by Paitnik) and to spice up our puzzle life and add a third girl to the mix as well! It was a wild Friday night! I decided to man up and take the edge and black while the girls tackled the drinks. This proved to be really frustrating! The Paitnik pieces suck as far as shape differentiation goes. Solid color pieces are very very difficult to assemble and the girls assembled the entire rest of the puzzle before I had even placed 30 interior black pieces. The first 5 took me over an hour!

The puzzle quality itself is very very good, I look forward to completing other puzzles from them!

In other news, we have been struggling to find a place to keep our puzzle collection. We debated for hours where to keep it and after talking to our landlord about adding some shelves, the told us about a closet we had completed missed! It was hidden behind a door on our verandah! Its huge and we wasted no time in filling it up! Now we just need to order some more puzzles!

Finally, we have come up with a plan for our large puzzle table, we are going to custom build one on the verandah! Pics to come soon!

Enjoy the pics!

                 

Cocktails - 1000pc, Piatnik

http://www.seriouspuzzles.com/i13296.asp

simplepastimes.com 2/15/2013
Started Friday: 4/12/2013
Tom, Mercedes and "Friend"

M and our "friend" get it on.

I told them they had to puzzle naked, but they decided to show me their tits instead.

Thats a very, very bad girl!

Grilled Chicken Break! This is seriously good chicken from the domino club just down the stairs!

Seriously, fuck this puzzle! I am not a fan of these Paitnik puzzles when it comes to large same color sections. The pieces do not have enough shape variation to make doing large same color sections tolerable. The girls complete the whole puzzle leaving me with black. I was only able to complete 28 pieces before they finished the rest of the puzzle.

"The puzzle table of shame" - we didn't finish it that night... 

Our new puzzle closet! I was seriously excited to find this little closet after trying for hours to find a good spot to house our collection.

Beach Hammocks Completed

M blazed through our first Puzzle on the islands this morning! Nice work babe! I cant wait to start the next one. I had to work all day!

Beach Hammocks - Cozumel Mexico. This is the first puzzle assembled in our new home!

Mega Puzzles 1500 pcs puzzles are MEGA SUCK

The title says it all, they are crappy puzzle pieces, they dont interlock well, they dont lie flat and they have a wicked glare. Unless you are in the depths of a puzzle bing and have no other options, do not bother with these puzzles!

I was really bummed as I was looking forward to this amazing photograph by Marc Adamus titled Morning Marvels

Morning Marvels -1500pc, Mega Puzzles. Amazing Photograph from Marc Adamus poorly executed by Mega Puzzles Deluxe series. I am gonna power through it cause I love the photo so much.

New Home - Puzzles started arriving - Thrift Shop Finds

We have moved into our new Virgin Island home and our puzzle collection has started to arrive! The 18,000 world maps was waiting for us when we got here, and now the first box of smaller puzzles has arrived.

Our first batch of puzzles shipped from Michigan arrived today! Finally, we have puzzles. We were getting a bit anxious yesterday but we got our fix at the local thrift shop. People donate their stuff to the Humane Society here and they sell it to support their efforts. We found 4 new puzzles:

Jolly Jellies - 500pc, Puzzlebug
Humane Society, St Thomas USVI - 4/6/2013 $2.00

Beach Hammocks Cozumel Mexico - 500pc, Big Ben
Humane Society, St Thomas USVI - 4/6/2013 $2.00

John Powell: UNKNOWN - 1500pc, Big Ben
Humane Society, St Thomas USVI - 4/6/2013 $2.00

Michael Glinski: Outside the Blue Holes - 1000pc,
Humane Society, St Thomas USVI - 4/6/2013 $2.00