The going is slow.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
June 12, 2008
Jen has completed the border and I've done as much as I can with the clouds for now. She started on the water *shivers* and I began work on the buildings.
June 10, 2008
The border is nearly complete! Now we'll have a better idea of where to place large chunks of puzzle we get assembled.
June 8, 2008
Jen worked really hard to get the border laid out. I began on the clouds. The going was slow.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
June 7, 2008 - 2nd Quadrant
(posted by eve)
This afternoon I got a call from Jen with some surprising news: She managed to move the whole rest of the 1st quadrant of the puzzle without me! I was stunned. That was quite an undertaking! She was also as anxious as I was to begin the second quadrant. When I arrived, the dining room was already cleaned and ready for another round!:
It dawned on me that most viewers probably haven't seen the room we're in to puzzle,
so here's a picture of that:
Jen was kind enough to let me open the second bag of pieces!!!
As I'm opening them...
Dumping them on the table...
While Jen sorted I began working on the clouds in the sky. I managed to put the first pieces together!
From the first piece we picked up we both agreed the next puzzle is the New York City skyline. It's right on top of Sydney, so that's perfect!
And after 2.5 hours of working on the puzzle, Jen had all the pieces sorted (picture of all the bags of pieces to come later) and I had just a few pieces together from the sky.
Jen and I both agree that sorting the pieces is key and will really help speed things along now! She plans to work on the border of the puzzle that has both that bluish-purple tint and puzzle picture so we at least have a border to work with. From there she'll move to water. I plan to work on the sky and get the clouds arranged before I move onto the buildings.
This afternoon I got a call from Jen with some surprising news: She managed to move the whole rest of the 1st quadrant of the puzzle without me! I was stunned. That was quite an undertaking! She was also as anxious as I was to begin the second quadrant. When I arrived, the dining room was already cleaned and ready for another round!:
It dawned on me that most viewers probably haven't seen the room we're in to puzzle,
so here's a picture of that:
Jen was kind enough to let me open the second bag of pieces!!!
As I'm opening them...
Dumping them on the table...
While Jen sorted I began working on the clouds in the sky. I managed to put the first pieces together!
From the first piece we picked up we both agreed the next puzzle is the New York City skyline. It's right on top of Sydney, so that's perfect!
And after 2.5 hours of working on the puzzle, Jen had all the pieces sorted (picture of all the bags of pieces to come later) and I had just a few pieces together from the sky.
Jen and I both agree that sorting the pieces is key and will really help speed things along now! She plans to work on the border of the puzzle that has both that bluish-purple tint and puzzle picture so we at least have a border to work with. From there she'll move to water. I plan to work on the sky and get the clouds arranged before I move onto the buildings.
What we've learned so far....
Here are a list of things we've learned from the first quadrant to NOT do on the second quadrant (in no particular order):
- Don't begin with the edge pieces. We ended up taking apart most of the edge pieces we had assembled in the first place, so it's pointless to start there.
-Sort ALL the puzzle pieces first. Jen hopes to shave at least 3 hours of working time off of the second quadrant just because of the sorting. She ended up sorting pieces 3 different times. This time, we'll sort all the pieces from the very beginning.
-Put the top of the puzzle at the other side of the table. We realized, and were also told, how irritating it is for me to take the picture of the puzzle from the same angle and have the puzzle be upside down. We're going to reverse it this time!
-Lighting - It took SEVERAL weeks for us to realize that Eve can't see when it starts to get dark and the only lights were her dining room lights. Therefore, we have the "puzzle hats" and those should really help!
-Transportation - the puzzle cannot be flipped once it's completed. When we get it in the basement, we must move each piece onto the mat in the basement.
- Don't begin with the edge pieces. We ended up taking apart most of the edge pieces we had assembled in the first place, so it's pointless to start there.
-Sort ALL the puzzle pieces first. Jen hopes to shave at least 3 hours of working time off of the second quadrant just because of the sorting. She ended up sorting pieces 3 different times. This time, we'll sort all the pieces from the very beginning.
-Put the top of the puzzle at the other side of the table. We realized, and were also told, how irritating it is for me to take the picture of the puzzle from the same angle and have the puzzle be upside down. We're going to reverse it this time!
-Lighting - It took SEVERAL weeks for us to realize that Eve can't see when it starts to get dark and the only lights were her dining room lights. Therefore, we have the "puzzle hats" and those should really help!
-Transportation - the puzzle cannot be flipped once it's completed. When we get it in the basement, we must move each piece onto the mat in the basement.
Friday, June 6, 2008
June 5, 2008
(posted by eve)
WE DID IT!!! The first quadrant is complete! Oh how frustrating the last couple of sessions have been. Our finish was bittersweet for several reasons. First off, some of the pieces were incorrectly placed, and we had a heck of a time finding them. We thought for sure we'd have to just wait until we were assembling the other puzzles to figure out. Thankfully, Jen has infinite patience and managed to get all the pieces we had in their correct spots. In celebration, she "hugged" the puzzle:
Our completed masterpiece:
Unfortunately you can now see that our puzzle is definitely missing 2 pieces. We've known this for quite some time and figured once we started working on the last part of the puzzle those pieces would turn up. They haven't. I'm convinced they're just in another puzzle bag, but Jen's a bit more skeptical. We are 100% certain that we didn't lose the pieces. We have NOT allowed a vacuum cleaner to be used in that room for 2 months now. (except for sucking up spiders). There is no way we lost those pieces. And we have no extra pieces left over. We're kind of at a loss as to what to do. We'll think of something creative!
TRANSPORTING:
Once the puzzle was completed we began the agonizing task of taking the puzzle into the basement. All of us (including Jen's husband, Tommy) had different ideas of how this should be accomplished. None of them were easy. The good news is, thanks to the Roll-O-Puzz that Jen bought to do the puzzle on she managed to roll the puzzle and at least get it down the stairs:
But even that had its draw-backs:
And after many attempts of trying to get the puzzle off of the mat, and much more damage later, we finally are now going to move the puzzle, piece by piece, onto the backing we have laid out on the floor. It's by far the safest, although it will take a few more hours to do that. Not only do we have to move every piece, we also have to reassemble quite a bit from trying to roll it up a second time and flip it over. This was a very hard lesson learned. When I left last night, this is where we were on moving from the puzzle mat to the backing mat:
It almost looks like the puzzle has been split!
So our total working hours on the first quadrant were 63.25 hours. We aren't counting the transporting into our working time as we're not attempting to make a picture out of the puzzle and figure out where the pieces go. We already know that. Hopefully soon we'll begin work on the second quadrant, which we are VERY anxious to do! We've learned several lessons the hard way with the first puzzle and hope to use that knowledge to our advantage.
WE DID IT!!! The first quadrant is complete! Oh how frustrating the last couple of sessions have been. Our finish was bittersweet for several reasons. First off, some of the pieces were incorrectly placed, and we had a heck of a time finding them. We thought for sure we'd have to just wait until we were assembling the other puzzles to figure out. Thankfully, Jen has infinite patience and managed to get all the pieces we had in their correct spots. In celebration, she "hugged" the puzzle:
Our completed masterpiece:
Unfortunately you can now see that our puzzle is definitely missing 2 pieces. We've known this for quite some time and figured once we started working on the last part of the puzzle those pieces would turn up. They haven't. I'm convinced they're just in another puzzle bag, but Jen's a bit more skeptical. We are 100% certain that we didn't lose the pieces. We have NOT allowed a vacuum cleaner to be used in that room for 2 months now. (except for sucking up spiders). There is no way we lost those pieces. And we have no extra pieces left over. We're kind of at a loss as to what to do. We'll think of something creative!
TRANSPORTING:
Once the puzzle was completed we began the agonizing task of taking the puzzle into the basement. All of us (including Jen's husband, Tommy) had different ideas of how this should be accomplished. None of them were easy. The good news is, thanks to the Roll-O-Puzz that Jen bought to do the puzzle on she managed to roll the puzzle and at least get it down the stairs:
But even that had its draw-backs:
And after many attempts of trying to get the puzzle off of the mat, and much more damage later, we finally are now going to move the puzzle, piece by piece, onto the backing we have laid out on the floor. It's by far the safest, although it will take a few more hours to do that. Not only do we have to move every piece, we also have to reassemble quite a bit from trying to roll it up a second time and flip it over. This was a very hard lesson learned. When I left last night, this is where we were on moving from the puzzle mat to the backing mat:
It almost looks like the puzzle has been split!
So our total working hours on the first quadrant were 63.25 hours. We aren't counting the transporting into our working time as we're not attempting to make a picture out of the puzzle and figure out where the pieces go. We already know that. Hopefully soon we'll begin work on the second quadrant, which we are VERY anxious to do! We've learned several lessons the hard way with the first puzzle and hope to use that knowledge to our advantage.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
June 4, 2008
(posted by eve)
One more session and we should be all done with all the bluish-purple pieces!!!
One more session and we should be all done with all the bluish-purple pieces!!!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
June 1, 2008
(posted by eve)
Technically this first picture was taken on June 1, 2008 but that's because we were working until midnight on 5/31/08. Therefore, for technical purposes, I'll go ahead and post this picture on the 6/01/08 posting. The night before we completed the "picture" portion of the puzzle and started in on the border. This was our progress when we were done:
This is where we were after our session on 6/01/08. I was the one who asked to call it quits as I was so frustrated. We completed the bottom border line with the pieces that are all the same color. From the picture that came with the puzzle we know this is the bottom left quadrant of the complete puzzle, therefore the edge pieces should go on the bottom. I started that task and realized quickly that none of the border pieces fit. Jen investigated further and realized that there's actually TWO layers of the bluish-purple pieces on the bottom. I got irritated and needed to walk away. Just for the night though! We'll pick up again sometime this week.
Oh, and for fun, I've finally updated our profile picture. We haven't had a chance to take a picture of us together, and I'm glad we waited. On our heads are our "Puzzle Lights"!! We've had major issues (okay, I'm the one with the issues) with the lighting and it being hard to see. Someone gave us the idea of flashlights you wear on your head, and wah-lah! Here they finally are, 60 hours into the puzzle. We truly have learned so much from this first quadrant. It'll make the next 3 go very smoothly.
Technically this first picture was taken on June 1, 2008 but that's because we were working until midnight on 5/31/08. Therefore, for technical purposes, I'll go ahead and post this picture on the 6/01/08 posting. The night before we completed the "picture" portion of the puzzle and started in on the border. This was our progress when we were done:
This is where we were after our session on 6/01/08. I was the one who asked to call it quits as I was so frustrated. We completed the bottom border line with the pieces that are all the same color. From the picture that came with the puzzle we know this is the bottom left quadrant of the complete puzzle, therefore the edge pieces should go on the bottom. I started that task and realized quickly that none of the border pieces fit. Jen investigated further and realized that there's actually TWO layers of the bluish-purple pieces on the bottom. I got irritated and needed to walk away. Just for the night though! We'll pick up again sometime this week.
Oh, and for fun, I've finally updated our profile picture. We haven't had a chance to take a picture of us together, and I'm glad we waited. On our heads are our "Puzzle Lights"!! We've had major issues (okay, I'm the one with the issues) with the lighting and it being hard to see. Someone gave us the idea of flashlights you wear on your head, and wah-lah! Here they finally are, 60 hours into the puzzle. We truly have learned so much from this first quadrant. It'll make the next 3 go very smoothly.
May 31, 2008
(posted by eve)
Let it be known that at 10:43 on May 31, 2008 we finished the picture portion of quadrant one! Now the daunting task of putting on the outside border will begin. Remember, each piece is the same color of bluish-purple. The progress we make probably won't be able to be seen in the pictures we post, but we'll post them anyway.
Let it be known that at 10:43 on May 31, 2008 we finished the picture portion of quadrant one! Now the daunting task of putting on the outside border will begin. Remember, each piece is the same color of bluish-purple. The progress we make probably won't be able to be seen in the pictures we post, but we'll post them anyway.
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