SPREADING THE GOOD WORD

TITLE: FRANTENAC CHATEAU, MONTREAL
MANUFACTURER:  EDUCA
PIECES: 1000
MOVIES: THE CARRIER, HEAVEN HELP US
PODCAST: CASEFILE

June 14th, 2018

So we are going on a month and a half now of the Covid-19 hanging over us and three weeks of being to to stay at home, and the results have been pretty predictable: lots of time to work on puzzles.  I don't think I'm alone in this either.  One of the places I've been getting my puzzles from lately is a free, neighborhood library in someones front yard.  Until this thing started, the little bird house sized box was overflowing with puzzles and they even had a plastic tub next to it that was also full of puzzles.  Now the tub is gone and the little house is down to one or two small ones. Its not just this quarantine either, apparently there's even a jigsaw puzzle renaissance going on.

This puzzle was from June 14, 2018.  A simpler time when we all lived care free lives full of nothing but whatever our hearts desired.  One thing that was not simple though were these damn Educa puzzles.  I'll do a review or discussion about at the main companies some other time, but to preview, Educa is one of the more difficult ones.  What's most frustrating about them though is that their images are fantastic and their quality is really high, but their piece are so similar and often times even fit together so when you're doing a anomalous area like the sky, you can easily get thrown off by putting pieces in the wrong spot.  Some of my greatest all time puzzles though were from Educa though, so it's an uphill battle that is usually worth the struggle.

EVERYTHING IS NEU

TITLE: NEUSCHWANSTEIN CASTLE
MANUFACTURER:  SCHMIDT
PIECES: 1000
MOVIES: A KILLER IN THE FAMILY, SMOOTH TALK
TV: TALES FROM THE CRYPT

April 17, 2018

Hold on a second, my last puzzle was from November 2016, and now this one is April of 2018, did I give up on puzzles for a year and a half?  No, absolutely not.  I've just decided to switch up the format up a bit and do away with the chronological progression and now I will skip around at my whim.  Why?  Because it's new, that's why, and everything I will do now is new (well, new to me).  I just moved into a new apartment, doing puzzles on a new coffee table under new lights, new housemate, taking a new way to work, writing this at a new coffee shop.  Everything new!  

Ok, obviously not everything is new, but it has been a big change. Precipitating this big change was a lovely 40% rent increase at the apartment I lived at for 8 years by the new owners (gotta love living in Seattle).  It's never ideal having to move when you are not prepared for it, and the first few weeks of searching for a new place quickly dashed my hopes of ever finding anything that was even close to being comparable to my place in either price or square footage.  But being a Bergman, it often feels like we just have a knack at turning lemons into lemonade, and it just so happened that my sister Jolie was juggling a handful of lemons herself and we came up with the idea of getting a two bedroom apartment to share.

So far, it's been an absolutely great decision.  The apartment is amazing, the view is amazing, the elevator is amazing, the actually having a fan over the stove is amazing.  For the first time in my adult life, I'm actually living in a place that I truly love.  It's a place that I feel like I can call my castle.

Oh wow, what an unexpected and totally unintentional segue into talking about the puzzle.  This here is Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.  A very popular castle, not only for tourists, but also apparently puzzle makers too because this is 1 of 5 (yes 5!) puzzles I've done of this place.  Each one is surprisingly different though, so the deja vu feelings are not triggered too much while working on them.  I like this one a lot because its taking at an odd high angle so that there is no sky in the puzzle.  This messes up my usual method of starting from the sky, but everything is new!, so thats ok.  There's also a lot of green, which I've already explained is problematic.  Overall, a pretty challenging puzzle but I remember it fondly.

SOMETHING'S MISSING

TITLE: COBH HARBOR, IRELAND
MANUFACTURER:  KODACOLOR
PIECES: 1000
MOVIES: TOY STORY, THE ROYAL TENANBAUMS

November 29th, 2016

Hmm, feeling a little cheated here, honestly.  Like I said before, missing pieces is just part of the game when getting 99¢ puzzle at Value Village, but this is just disappointing.  A couple of pieces are understandable but this shouldn't be in circulation anymore.  I think there will be worse examples to come, but this is one of the worst examples.

This is also another harbor puzzle.  That makes 3 out of 9, and I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out to 33% on the final tally.  Hope you like boats!

DEALING WITH FREAKS

TITLE: MEERSBURG, GERMANY
MANUFACTURER:  UNKNOWN
PIECES:  1000
MOVIE:  THE ELEPHANT MAN

NOVEMBER 23rd, 2016

This was the first time, but not the last time, that I had to deal with a puzzle that was in the vertical orientation.  When I started working on it, my plan was to just do the puzzle sideways, which seems like a good idea but it turns out it feels very awkward kinda drives your brain a little crazy.  So I decided to just work on an upper half and next to it the lower half, and then turn them sideways at the end and stitch them together.

Title for the puzzle is approximate.  I was never able to find the same puzzle in person on online, but I did stumble across a picture of that same clock tower and apparently its in Meersburg, Germany.