Finding Puzzles

My parents have seemingly gotten more adept at finishing puzzles this spring. For the past decade they have been enjoying working on jigsaw puzzles on a high table in their garden room; they can work standing or sitting…and enjoy the view of their garden/birdfeeder outside the windows. There is always a partially assembled puzzle on the table. They began to get frustrated this year; the 1000-piece puzzles were taking too long so they asked that we skew the mix toward 500-piece puzzles. Now that my sisters and I have done that – they need more of puzzles! They are completing more than one per week even with their increased activity this time of year outdoors and away from the puzzles.

Last time I was in Carrollton, they were completely out of puzzles they had not assembled previously.  I bought 8 and they are still working on those but I am being proactive – buying 8 more. I happened to find them on sale at CVS and used all the coupons I had…so the price was good. And I like the pictures. One of my sisters will pick up the baton for the next round…but we must pick of the pace of our acquisitions a little. The puzzles are a great way to add some mental challenge to their daily routine!

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My sister is saving a lot of the puzzles – storing them in her attic – for when she gets older. Maybe my sisters and I will enjoy them when we are in our 80s and 90s!

Wouldn’t it be great if libraries could organize to checkout puzzles just like they do books?

Zentangle Gallery Board, Friendly Downy Woodpecker, Abu Simbel, Iris, and Puzzles

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Visit from a Downy Woodpecker. Just before 8 AM I was sitting beside the window in my office and suddenly a downy woodpecker flew to the screen and made noises like it was trying to tell me something. It flew back to the maple. About an hour later it happened again! This is a bird that comes frequently to our feeder. I’m wondering if she is a little frazzled with nestlings right now.

Making a Zentangle gallery board. I’m prepping for a program I will be delivering soon…wanted something that I could easily use to show many tiles and patterns quickly. The session is short, so I need to make every minute count!

Pictures of when Abu Simbel was moved -  Life Magazine December 1966. I remember being fascinated with Ancient Egyptian history beginning in 1965…so I imagine I was interested in this article from 1966 although I don’t remember it. The pictures are dramatic even by today’s standards.

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Replenishing the puzzle supply for my parents. My almost-90 year old parents are about to run out of puzzles. They enjoyed them pre-pandemic but have gone through their supply faster for the past couple of months and can’t get out to shop for puzzles right now. Most of the puzzles they had were 2nd (or 3rd or…) hand so I got a little sticker shock looking at new ones and then discovered that lots of people are buying more puzzles than usual. I ordered 4 from Walmart am at looking at more now (trying to figure out an effective way of finding out which ones they’ve already done). In January I had planned to travel a week of every month to be with my parents, but the pandemic put a stop to that after one trip…so I’m ordering puzzles to fill parts of their days.

More iris stalks in my office. I am composting the old iris stalks in the garden and cut two more to bring indoors. There is still one left outside. These two stalks seem to have larger flowers. They were growing in a different location and may be happier there than in the front flower bed irises. I have discovered that I enjoy having flowers from my flower beds/garden in my office.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Jigsaw Puzzle of the Moon

Cleaning out a large box that had been in our basement since we moved to our house 25 years ago, I discovered framed pictures and other wall hangings. Several pieces were from the 1980s – a macramé piece made by sister on a large hoop and a collage of astrophotographs my husband made in the late 70s and early 80s. Other things were much older: a picture my husband remembers being in the houses he grew up in from the very beginning of his memories and a jigsaw puzzle of the moon that I remember helping to assemble in the 1960s. The puzzle was very difficult – made possible only because of the labeling of the features; my family was so pleased when we finished it that we glued it to a board. Someone carefully cut the circle and painted the raw edge black. I not sure when I ended up with it because of my husband’s interest in astronomy.

The 1960s were full of optimism about space exploration. It fueled an uptick in science and engineering interest overall. I’m glad to have this memento of the time. But where does this jigsaw puzzle go next?