Wedding Feast at Cana: Day 26

M working on Summer Porch while I a work on the Feast 

Wow, where is the time going? M and I puzzled for the better part of the weekend and I feel like I made a lot of progress! M has been working hard on her Summer Porch and I have completed the bulk of the Wedding Party.

I think I have identified at least three missing pieces. Two are edge pieces and one is a bright yellow piece in the guy pouring the wine from the water carafe. Its going to be tuff to make that piece for sure! I had forgotten about the missing pieces until this weekend when I realized they weren't there!

I really love the Wedding Feast, the colors are just fantastic.

M is really making progress on the John Powell's Summer Porch - 1,500pc by Big ben!

Wedding Feast: Day 5 - Yellow and Blue

Last night I wen after yellow and blue. I was tired after a super long day of work, so I didn't get a lot done. I am falling behind for sure on getting this done in 20 days, but I I hope to rip off the sky in one day which will be about 2000 pieces.

Today I am going to try and modify the puzzle table to fit this beast all at once so I can start placing pieces. I also need to mount our slice of life and oh yeah, we are having a BBQ party and I have to work.....

Anyhow, here are the progress pics from yesterday.

Bits and Pieces coming together after tackling yellow and blue

Blue guy in throne

Servant pouring the wine from the water vessel into a decanter

No feast is complete with music

The Band

The musicians table

Jesus

Wedding Feast: Day 4

Well I finally was able to start puzzling. Today I managed to get 560 pieces together (most of which was the border). The border is 120x76pieces if you are ever wanted to know. It turns out this puzzle is 10 pieces too long to fit on our table in it's entirety. I may think about how to add 8 inches to the table but for now, it is what it is.

Day 4 has come and gone and I am 1,440 pieces behind my goal of 500pieces a day. I guess that's what happens when it takes 3 days to sort it. I have a lot of work to get done this week, so this might not happen, but what the heck, that's what goals are for.

Here are the progress pics:

Miles of Border

The Bride!

The servant pouring the water wine (this was Jesus' first miracle, turning water into wine)

An Uncle maybe? He is inspecting the Miracle

Life: Day 20

Last night I ended up working until nearly 1am and only puzzled for two hours so I did not get a lot done. I started on the camel and ended up getting in around 250 pieces including the camel, donkey, back half of the horse, goat and most of the middle giraffe.

It was really fun puzzling, and this section is wrapping up nicely! Life is a really great puzzle. It is not hard but offers a good challenge and you don't get bored with it because there is so many different things to do. Its immense size means you don't see all of the detail until you assemble the puzzle and there are plenty of surprises on pieces. It's difficulty comes in the shear volume of pieces to assemble so that also keeps it interesting for the serious puzzler.

It was interesting to take a before and after photo because I had a time stamp on the two events. I can see that I managed to place a little over two pieces a minute. It seems my puzzling rate for large puzzles format puzzles seems to be around 100 pieces an hour. At that rate it will take about 10,000 hours to assemble the big boy list. According to the 10,000-hour-rule that should make us experts!

It's time to start building some animals. I like to disconnect the section I am working on and place it on board so I can build the puzzle in the correct orientation and not have to be contorted while putting it together!

.... 2 hours later. Time for bed. 

Life: Day 18

Today I managed to knock out the surface water and most of the animals in it along with the 70% of the sky. (Guessing it was about 1000 pieces). We still may be able to finish section 1 tomorrow but we will have to really work hard at it. The rest of the sky should be pretty easy. When you work on a large section, the last third is way faster!

Off to bed for me.

-Thomas

Starting on the surface water. 

Surface water complete. This is SOOO much easier than the clownfish.

Most of the sky is now done. 

Border Complete 4 World Maps 1st Section

I finished the gold border of the first section this morning after 5 days! All of the pieces are accounted for which was my biggest concern as I thought it might be difficult to reconstruct a gold piece if one was missing (if you recall, we bought this puzzle used off of craigslist and the section we are working was already open and bagged in a garbage bag...)

I came to realize an interesting pattern in the puzzle on the row and column without edges, that entire row and column facing the other section have a uniform small knob in the middle of the piece or a uniform small receptacle for the matching knob from the other section. This threw me off a bit as the matching piece pattern is broken in this row and column. Additional, there are columns of irregular pieces (less or more than two knobs and two holes) and in the top row of the border (where it has uniform small knobs to join the next section, the pattern it has odd shaped pieces all over the place (in order to keep the uniform knob pattern I assume.

So, if you are reading this and attempting to do this puzzle, each section will have two actual borders and two borders with alternating in out uniform knobs. I recommend solving the top (or bottom) with an edge, then the other edge, then the bottom or top adjoining the other section and finally the vertical edge uncompleted. the hardest and slowest is the first section (with three rows of solid gold pieces) but I think you will find it is the best way.

Border Complete!

This is the pattern along the internal borders, the knobs are identical and centered in the piece. The knob receptacles are also identical and centered. The patter strictly repeats in and out all along these internal edges. 

This threw me off at first, Here I am showing the "identical piece" that also fits there, but these edges are modified to fit the other sections. Remember the puzzle repeats horizontally per section, so when solving the hoizontal edges, make sure you solve both halves at the same time! It saves a ton of work. Just beware that the internal "edge" pieces will not have a twin.

This is the whole puzzle, what you see completed is the lower right section.