Year: 2025
Sierra Range by Charley Harper (Pomegranate 1000)
I love Charley Harper art — nature scenes, plus geometric shapes, bright colors — and love the Pomegranate puzzles of Charley Harper. This one was on my to-do pile, and I’m pushing through a lot of puzzles right now …. I really love running my hand over completed Pomegranate puzzles. Somehow it’s more satisfying than […]
){kind=link}
Merry Wives of Windsor by Peter Church (Ravensburger 1000)
Oh the pain — a missing piece, right from the border! I’m sure this piece is somewhere in my couch or nearby — but on the other hand, the cats the other night were running around like kittens playing hockey with the cork coasters and pipe cleaners, so a single puzzle piece could have gotten […]
){kind=link}
Ravensburger Vintage Games
Another puzzle from my stash! “Vintage Games”, image copyright 2014 Kate Ward Thacker / Next Day Art, published by Ravensburger as a 1000-piece puzzle (No. 19 406 3). This one was such a busy collage-style image that, although I was attracted to the art, I postponed it for a long time … but once I […]
Autumn Wheel (Elena Essex 1000)
Possibly my first Elena Essex puzzle? Very pretty, and very fast — it’s an autumnal-themed color wheel, and was a nice fast assembly.
){kind=link}
Cateye by Pixie Cold (Ravensburger 200)
Pretty little 200-piece Ravensburger (“Cateye“) that Ash and I knocked off Saturday afternoon. Most of the pictures on the box made it look more square, so I posted the one picture that had more accurate dimensions — it’s a landscape orientation rectangle! The artist is only credited with an instagram username, “Pixie Cold“, which makes […]
){kind=link}
Mid Summer Night Dream by Enzhao Liu
I’d had this 1000-piece puzzle (“Mid Summer Night Dream” by Enzhao Liu) from Antelope for a while, and was leery of doing it because it seemed dark and hard, but actually it came together very quickly and beautifully. There was lots of variation in the various birds and tree forms, and even the night sky […]
Lovely Cat Ravensburger wooden
Ash and I knocked off another small Ravensburger wooden (laser-cut) puzzle, cat themed! The whimsies are actually quite nice.
Eyes Full of Stars by Marie-Claude Fournier, cut design by Mark Cappitella
578 pieces, 440x352x7mm (17.5″ x 14″). Canadian artist Marie-Claude Fournier. Victory puzzles, in their “Artisan series”. Puzzle cut design by Mark Cappitella. Loving everything about this — the art, which is gorgeous; the puzzle cut, which is tricky and delightful; the feel of the pieces — thick, solid, curvy. They have the sharpness of laser-cut […]
Freddie Mercury by Lee Topp, Puzzly 527
Just finished an amazing laser-cut puzzle by Puzzly, 527 pieces and really fabulous whimsies — including a super large multi-piece whimsy. All themed! The artist is “Lee Topp”, who is described on Puzzly’s Freddie Mercury puzzle page as: Lee Topp is a south coast based mixed media artist taking inspiration from Music and Legends. Influenced […]
L’Ermitage by Paul Berthon, Sr. B
I love the Sr. B hand-cut puzzles, so it’s a real treat to get one from Hoefnagel. This one is “L’ermitage“, an 1897 Art Nouveau piece by Paul Berthon (1872-1909), used as a poster for the revue L’ermitage. The original seems to be in the Davis Collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The […]
Optimago, Off for the Honeymoon by Frederick Morgan
This 266-piece Optimago (1979-2005) puzzle is listed as an “Enigma”, with no image available. As with a lot of vintage puzzles, and puzzles made of old European art, the colors were a little bit muddy. They look a lot crisper in the photo than they did to my eyes! Maybe it’s my eyes that are […]
Hotel Melrose Lobby by Perkins Harnly
I really enjoyed this 250-piece puzzle from Puzzly (via Hoefnagel). It was a fast solve, with a mix of traditional puzzle pieces and whimsies, like the two Wentworth puzzles I just did — but I enjoyed the puzzling experience more. I think the wood was a bit thicker than in those two Wentworths (they have […]
Apro Vision, “Moon Castle”
Via Hoefnagel, I got this laser-cut 152-piece (“A4 size”) puzzle from “Apro Vision”, which appears to be one of the randomly generated names that Chinese laser cutters create to sell on Amazon. It’s a pretty cool and tricky image — many little doors in various sizes, plus some gears, and trees in various teacups (surrealist […]
Purr-fect Night by Mary Stubberfield
Wentworth Puzzles, 240 pieces, “Purr-fect Night” by Mary Stubberfield, via Hoefnagel. Another thin, MDF wood, mix of traditional pieces with etched whimsies. I liked this art better than the owl puzzle that was also in the Hoefnagel pack, but the puzzling experience otherwise was very similar.
Owlets in the Moonlight, Rosalind Solomon
A Wentworth 250-piece puzzle by Rosalind Solomon, by way of Hoefnagel. Although it was owl-themed, I wasn’t in love with the art — I’m not a fan of works where a large picture has the center hollowed out to have a different scene, or a collage. I did enjoy the multitudinous owl whimsies, though. … […]
Richard Friend, Limberlost Woods
The third of three Artifact / Ecru puzzles that Yael loaned to me. The image looks initially a bit overwhelming, but all the trees have distinct patterns (a small number of repeats) that it made it easy and fun to assemble small pieces, and then match edges to other pieces. This was a 355-piece puzzle […]
Sky Village by Heather Gauthier, Artifact Ecru 409
“Sky Village” by Heather Gauthier, Ecru, 409 pieces. This is the second of a batch of three puzzles I borrowed from Yael. It was a steady, not difficult, solve, with lots of different areas of variously colored fruits, various textures on the animals, beads & ribbons, all on a damask-style background. (Looking at Gauthier’s website, […]
Roch Urbaniak, Unexpected Visitor
My neighbor and I have a lovely little neighborhood wooden puzzle lending program, and she has this Artifact puzzle I’ve been yearning to do — “Unexpected Visitor” by Roch Urbaniak. The Urbaniak image is beautiful, and the cut design by David Figueiras was lovely — geometric rows, plus fun astronomical / night themed whimsies, with […]
Summer in the Tetons, Jan McGuire, Stave
Hoefnagel lets you have the opportunity to do the beautiful hand-cut puzzles that would otherwise be out of range for me — for instance, Stave’s “Summer in the Tetons” (510 pieces, dated 2004). I don’t know why the Stave website doesn’t list the artist, but googling suggests that this is a work by Colorado-based artist […]
The Big Apple, Zen
Ash and I knocked out another Zen Puzzle, this one, “The Big Apple“. Ash and I recognized 4 out of 5 whimsies, but such is our financial innocence that we were like, “why is there a cow in New York City?” “Financial innocence” sounds nicer (& judgy of other people instead of judgy of ourselves) […]
