- Friends Dr Kay, Patience Itself and Design Diva lent us this puzzle of some old dude with odd sleeves in a study. It's one of those ones with the picture on a piece of paper rather than the cover of the box, so you don't have to look at the image if you want to make things harder for yourself. The pieces are quirky and the result is that it's almost easier not to look at the big picture.
- This was lent to us by The Luminosity. It's tough. Those floral-type speckled edges nearly finished us off. But we persisted... Similarly to my feelings after completing a Monet puzzle, I may have gone off Escher for a while. I'm not sure I should attempt any more jigsaw puzzle reproductions of famous artwork as I end up swearing at the artist and thinking, 'it's a good job you're dead'.
- This one, lent to us by Miss EU, was a lot of fun: forget what I said above. It is a reproduction of Vertumnus, a painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo; a portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, re-imagined as Vertumnus, the Roman god of metamorphoses in nature and in life. Many of the fruits are the first fruits of the season and, together with the vegetables they symbolize the abundance of the Golden Age that has returned under the Emperor's rule. While we were completing the puzzle, we referred to him rather more prosaically as 'Pumpkin-Head'.
- One of my favourite places made up of whimsical pieces. Another one from the Dr Kay/ Patience Itself/ Design Diva collection.
- Things I learned from this one: Miss EU has an eclectic puzzle collection; some people don't break all the pieces apart when they put the puzzle back; the white dragon was harder to do than the black dragon. That last bit is pretty niche, to be fair.
