A Quick Puzzle Before Christmas

Despite being the king (oops, I meant jack) of all hobbies, I have to admit, I haven ‘t done a lot of hobby related things lately.  I could blame the weather, or I could blame myself and the fall TV schedule.  Either way, I haven’t had a lot to write about.

I have been writing my other blog, whose links you can find on the right side of this page under the title “cool blogs”.  Mine is called Today’s Perfect Moment.  I have been putting a lot of energy there and have grown a rather large community in a short time.  There seems to be a lot more cross blogging done there and the page is set up to encourage followers.

HOBBY HAPPENINGS

While I haven’t done a lot, I have done some things.  Most recently, I got the itch to do a puzzle.  Maybe it is because I associate puzzles with Christmas.  I am surprised that no one gives these things as stocking stuffers anymore.  Knowing how addicting that can be, I really wasn’t in the mood to tackle a monster 5000 piece puzzle.  I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money.  What was my answer…the dollar store of course.

I found a couple of decent puzzles at the dollar store (Dollar Tree in this case) and purchased them for $1.25 each.  Even with Canadian tax, that still brought in two puzzles for less than $3.

I spent a couple of nights on the first one.  There seems to be no deterioration in my puzzle building skills and I was able to do it rather quickly.  Of course, that first night, I did the usual “just one more piece before I go to bed” thing, and wound up spending a hour or more when I should have been sleeping.  This probably was to the detriment of my students but I didn’t actually yawn while teaching.

The puzzle wasn’t the best quality.  The fit was a little loose and it came apart a couple of times.  Some pieces still had untrimmed edges (there seemed to be extra paper at the bottom layer of some of the pieces) and one was a little crumpled.  However, it only cost $1.25, so I can’t get tremendously angry about that.

When I lived in Japan, I bought frames and puzzle glue for the puzzles.  However, these days, now that I have finished, I will probably take it apart and give it to someone else to do.

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New Deluxe SKY TREE by Nanoblocks

I was checking out the nanoblocks website and I came across something cool, and decided to share it with you guys.  I have done built the deluxe Himeji Castlekit and it was fantastic.  I really want to do their German Castle kit (I am too lazy to look up how to spell it correctly).  What I saw today has made me change the order I want to do things in.  Now I want to do their deluxe SkyTree kit.  It looks fantastic, lights up in many colours and has more than 3800 pieces.  I want it, and I want it now.

 

 

Of course, I am going to have to search high and low all over the web to find it….but I will.

Puzzle Pieces Prompt Procrastination

Just one more piece.  These are the famous last words of anyone hooked on a jigsaw puzzle.  Okay, these aren’t the last words, these are just the words that cause them trouble.  One more piece, then I will go to bed.  One more piece then I will make dinner.  One more piece and then I will… you get the idea.

It is funny how something so simple can cause so many problems.  Maybe that is precisely it.  It seems so simple, but that one moment of searching for a piece can turn into hours.

I remember once, a long time ago in a country far far away, I said to myself, just one more piece and then go to bed.  The next time I looked at the clock several hours had gone by and my eyes were stinging.  I guess that is just the way it is.  I guess that is just what puzzles do.