Pink Floyd Back Catalogue - 1000pc

We finished this little guy a few nights ago. Rizzy the cat tried to help and she apparently stole a piece and stuck it under the stove. It took over an hour to find it and I eventually moved the stove just to check an sure enough, it was there!

I always liked this image for obvious reasons as a young man, it was a lot of fun to assemble. It was our first puzzle from Aquarius and we were happy with the quality of the puzzle!

Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd

Relics - Pink Floyd

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

The Wall - Pink Floyd

Animals - Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd -- Wish they were here!

We are tired if waiting for our puzzle collection to show up! We bought this little guy to keep us company! I love Pink Floyd so this looks like more fun than the Beatles puzzled we found.

Color Palette

M finished her first 1000 piece puzzle all by herself! Color Palette is complete after 11 days! We gave animation another shot this weekend using this puzzle.



I have been making steady progress on The Triumpth of the Spanish Habsburgs. I will finish it this week and finally get back to Wedding Feast!

We had a small incident with the puzzle table. I was trying to re-do the pulley system and ended up breaking one of the pulley's off the table! The table fell about 3 feet and the Triumpth took a spill. It ended up being a few hour delay of game... All is well though, we got it all fixed up.  I really hate it when you are building something and you say to yourself, you know, I should do this because this might happen someday and then you don't do it and that thing happens. Damn I hate that :-)

In other news, M and I spent the whole day at the beach yesterday. We started off with a 4ish mile hike down to "Mermaids Chair". It is a small strip of land (about 15ft) that connects the main island of St. Thomas to the tiny island of "Little St. Thomas". On one side of the strip of land is the Atlantic Ocean and the other is the Caribbean Sea! After a quick snorkel and some rock collecting, we headed to Neltjeburg. This awesome little beach is at the end of the worst road in America. It is partially paved in parts, but will tweak your car so hard in others you swear you will never get out of there! The reward is a great spot to waste away an afternoon or two!

Mermaids Chair, St. Thomas USVI

Neltjeburg Beach, St. Thomas USVI

Unicorn In Captivity / Bridges Update

From the Metropolitan Museam of Art:

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Date: 1495–1505
Culture: South Netherlandish
Dimensions: Overall: 144 7/8 x 99 in. (368 x 251.5 cm)

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The seven individual hangings known as "The Unicorn Tapestries," are among the most beautiful and complex works of art from the late Middle Ages that survive. Luxuriously woven in fine wool and silk with silver and gilded threads, the tapestries vividly depict scenes associated with a hunt for the elusive, magical unicorn.

"The Unicorn in Captivity" may have been created as a single image rather than part of a series. In this instance, the unicorn probably represents the beloved tamed. He is tethered to a tree and constrained by a fence, but the chain is not secure and the fence is low enough to leap over: The unicorn could escape if he wished. Clearly, however, his confinement is a happy one, to which the ripe, seed-laden pomegranates in the tree—a medieval symbol of fertility and marriage—testify. The red stains on his flank do not appear to be blood, as there are no visible wounds like those in the hunting series; rather, they represent juice dripping from bursting pomegranates above. Many of the other plants represented here, such as wild orchid, bistort, and thistle, echo this theme of marriage and procreation: they were acclaimed in the Middle Ages as fertility aids for both men and women. Even the little frog, nestled among the violets at the lower right, was cited by medieval writers for its noisy mating.

We dont have a Goodwill here but the Humane Society runs a second hand store. People donate to the Human Society and they sell stuff to support the animals. We have bought a LOT of puzzles from them for $2 and yesterday I was browsing to see the new puzzles and I came across one that I passed on previously. The Unicorn in Captivity - 500+pc from Gallins Gallery, New York 10001.

If you remember, we have a friend doing some soft time for a tax issue down here, and she truly is a beautiful person; A unicorn in captivity. We recently visited her and took her a puzzle (amazingly, they allowed it), which really helped her spirits. I realized this had to be her next puzzle! I paid $1 ('cause it was half price day) and decided on the way home, to assemble it and write her a letter on the back of the puzzle. 

Well, its a beautiful puzzle, the pieces are beautifully cut and fit well, the colors are great for what is surely a 20-30 year old puzzle. I will actually be sad to let this one go.

I love puzzles with pieces like this. I am going to wish very hard for a large format puzzle with shapes like this (5000 or more pieces). I imagine the trouble lies in the dies needed to create such monsters.

Border almost done and unicorn and fence pieces sorted out.

The Box

Beautiful Unicorn

Our Unicorn in Captivity

Bridge of San Francsico - 1000pc is coming along nicely. M did the upper half, I did the border and the Bay Bridge. We should finish both of these puzzle tonight.

Heronim: Bridges of San Francisco, Update to the Big Boys

Last night M and I wanted to tackle an easy puzzle so we pulled down the 1000 piece Bridges of San Francisco from Mega Puzzles. You may recall, that I lovingly refer to Mega Puzzles as Mega Suck after my experience with Morning Marvels, however we find the hometown series to be palatable.

We didn't get to far, M has to get up pretty early for work these days so we tucked her in and I worked on the Big Boys list for a while. It's gonna take forever to fill it in completely with artists/photographers and release dates. I also found a few more puzzles. I am sure I am missing some early 6000/8000 Educa/Schmidt puzzles. I am fairly certain however, everyone over 8000 pieces is accounted for!

Currently the list is at 943,100 pieces with 100 puzzles! It will cost around $15,000 to collect all these bad boys plus keep up with the new ones that come out! It damn near a million pieces, this will be one large task to build all of these!

                 

Heronim: Bridges of San Francisco - 1000pc, Mega Puzzles

http://bit.ly/WzjGIT

Palpitations 1000pc by Schmidt

I found this puzzle this morning and would really like to but it but I cant seem to find a place to do it... Its a new 1000 piece from Schmidt. When I try to order from their store, the dont ship to the US...

Palpitations - 1000pc, Schmidt

Here is where you could order it in Germany: http://www.schmidtspiele-shop.de/puzzles/erwachsenenpuzzle/herzklopfen

I really need a german puzzle friend who will ship me puzzles from abroad....


UPDATE: I remembered seeing a press release about a US distributor annoucement for Schmidt so a big of google work and I found the new importer Lion Rampant Imports and sure enough, its for sale in the US! http://lionrampantimports.com/product.htm?Product=SCH58154&Source=Category&Category=SCHMIDT%20SPIELE


UPDATE: Nevermind the last update, they are the wholesale distributor and are in Canada..... soooo close.

White Torture

So the name of the puzzle basically says it all. I love it! This is created by Beverly Puzzles of Japan. They make some really fantastic looking puzzles. We will let you know more about the quality of these!

White Torture - 1000pc, Beverly Puzzles
Can be bought here: http://imaginatorium.org/shop/nota.htm

Happy Birthday Mercedes, The Glass of Wine, New Tattoos

Today is Mercedes birthday and to celebrate, we are getting new matching tattoos. Of what you ask? Well, a puzzle piece of course! But wait, it's not just any puzzle piece, its going to be our favorite piece from the James Rizzi Nothing is as pretty as a Rizzi City puzzle! Pretty kick ass huh!

In other news, after about 50,000 pieces, I had my first puzzle accident last night... I spilled a glass of wine and ruined about 25 pieces of the 5000 piece Rizzi puzzle we are getting tattooed today! I was so mad at myself, I know better than to have beverages on the puzzle table. M just said, thank god it was not me! I guess we are going to test the Ravensburger lost/broken piece replacement program.... so sad!

In other news, Mercedes mom bought her a puzzle for her bday! Its so colorful and we cant wait to show this one off!

We are getting this as matching Tattoos for M's 29th Birthday!!! It's a piece from James Rizzi's Nothing is as Pretty as a Rizzi City 5000pc puzzle by Ravensburger

Mercedes Mom got her Color Palette 1000pc from the Master Pieces Colorize series for her bday!

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

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