Pigsaw Juzzle

Ugh, I'd almost forgotten why I haven't done a jigsaw puzzle in years. They are great for my anal-retentive personality, but they are really just a time-sink of death.

My daughter and I were out on the town Saturday night and wound up at the local Target (same one where I bought the Wii). She has just about every toy and whatnot so I come upon the puzzle section and see a bunch of them for $3.99. I figured a 1000 piecer would do nicely and I let her peruse and select.

I figured it was something we could do together in spurts, though I knew instinctively I would be doing it mostly by myself. Finding a place in the house in which to do a puzzle was a puzzle in and of itself. I bought one of the those roll-up mats for puzzles but it turned out to really suck. The surface was all crinkled and there was no way one could do a puzzle on that thing (I'm taking it back tonight).

I finally settled on an old table in the basement and my only concern is the cat. I have an ancient memory of a cats chewing on puzzle-pieces and I don't think I've ever gotten over that. The cat has free roam of the basement and she hasn't really chewed anything in the last 4 years, but that doesn't mean she won't start.

My first approach to the puzzle was to gather all the edge pieces. On my first pass I had extracted all but 8 of them. Once I had them all together my daughter helped find a few more and over the course of the evening I found all but one. I think I'm missing a piece and the AR side of me may not be able to cope with it.

I attack puzzles by separating out the different sections of the puzzle into baggies. I grabbed a few Ziplock bags and separated out sky pieces, grass, foliage, red brick, white brick, and left the rest in the box.

So far so good. The only thing I will do for the next puzzle is spend a little more to get a bigger box with a better picture.