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Michael Storring’s 12 Days of Christmas, day 3
I spent part of the time I was puzzling, trying to place where this is. It’s likely somewhere in the US, perhaps New York? I don’t see anything that stands out as a landmark. It could be any northern major city. I wonder how many of the big cities have a giant Christmas tree? When I was a kid, I always thought it was one giant tree. Where did they get it from? I don’t know. From the outside, it looked like one tree, so I was surprised one year when I got a closer look at one and realized that it was made of several smaller trees. It doesn’t really take away from the tree because then you have to wonder about the effort that goes into binding all of those together so that they don’t collapse.
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A New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, day 14
I’m never terribly fond of this generational divide argument. Those kids in the picture would have loved to play with the toys the kids in the living room are playing with. I know this can also just be taken as showing the change of technology with time, but it inevitably leads to criticism of how the new generations waste all of their time on these gadgets. It doesn’t do anything but breed discontent and disharmony between the generations. I can admit that sometimes it’s perfectly reasonable to blame the past generations for mistakes, but not when we’re getting down to these types of critiques. Do I envy the youth of today for their easy access to the internet and the electronics they have? No. I think it was cool to grow up in a time when computers and the internet were becoming more ubiquitous. I remember a childhood of having no internet and one of having internet. It gives me perspective. And this has gotten a little rant-y, which it shouldn’t because it’s a puzzle merely showing the evolution of children’s toys.
Generational Divide by Edward Sorel -
Michael Storring’s 12 Days of Christmas, day 2
While I was doing this puzzle, I kept trying to figure out if this was supposed to be the outskirts of Paris or if that metal structure that looks like the Eiffel Tower is something else. Given that yesterday’s puzzle had a little bit of German to signify Germany, I’m going to take a guess that this is meant to signify France to the viewer. I’m not sure why I have such a harder time visualizing such a picturesque scene on the outskirts of Paris and I can see the Christkindlemarkt in Germany. Perhaps it’s from experience. I don’t have any conceptions of modern Paris except for what I see on TV. It’s a nice scene though. Too many people, perhaps, for my comfort but what a sight this would be, playing out in a field with the snow coming down and in the background is Paris and the Eiffel Tower.
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A New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, day 13
You can just barely see the party in the image. I had to look closer. The penthouse looks more like a greenhouse. I love that penthouse because of the views it has and completely uninterrupted by walls. Think about what you could see if the buildings weren’t there. Still, I think that would be a really cool feature to have in your house or apartment. My dream house would make it more like a medieval turret with a glass dome. You could lay there and watch the stars at night or look at the storms coming in during the spring. I see a lot of time spent watching nature and probably eventually dozing off there.
Penthouse Party by Roxie Munro -
Michael Storring’s 12 Days of Christmas, day 1
I’ve been waiting to get to start this calendar from Galison. The brand is relatively new to me. I’ve never really found images from the brand that have been to my taste until recently. This was the first advent calendar that I got this year. The New Yorker one was second even though it was the one I really wanted. I hesitated because of the cost. Still, I’m glad that I got this Galison one. All of the images are on the back of the box so there’s no real surprise when you pull out the puzzle for the day. It’s more of just the joy of doing a puzzle, which is fine with me. The real challenge was getting the bag out of the little opening on the calendar without tearing the cardboard. That said, I do appreciate how much less plastic comes with this puzzle.
When I was in Germany during college, I wasn’t there during the winter, so I never did have a chance to visit a Christkindlesmarkt but I was introduced to them through my high school German classes and the annual field trip we made to the big one in Chicago. Even a couple of decades ago, the Market was always busier than this. I remember one year it snowed while we were there and it was like being in a giant snow globe. The snowflakes were big and heavy. It wasn’t too cold or windy to enjoy it, either. I can’t remember the year exactly, but I remember that snowfall clearly.
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Antique Market
I go through cycles on the images I like in puzzles. Right now I’m really into these colorful, busy scenes. It reminded me some of the Aimee Stewart puzzles. I think that’s probably part of why I picked it up. I liked the variety of items in this puzzle and the color.
Let’s start flipping over pieces!
I’ve been told that my method of puzzling is a little chaotic. I don’t start at the edges or anything specific. Once I’m flipping over pieces, I hold back the ones that seem to fit to make something larger. That’s where I usually start. On this, I was working on the green-ish tin roof with gas written on it. I opted this time to work more on the sky first and then work down. I love doing skies, so I usually save them for the end.
I don’t look at the box once I dump out the pieces, so I’m really just putting things together based on memory and what it seems like should go together. This means that puzzling is usually a bit of an adventure and I have to do some moving around of pieces once I start to see how things connect together.
I enjoyed this one. I’d forgotten about the tractors on the lower right, so I was trying to figure out where these wheels went but I got them in the right place eventually. The image as a whole reminds me some of the town my grandparents lived in for a long time. I’d go to visit them every summer for about a month. They’re some of my best memories as a kid because there was so much to explore and do there that there wasn’t back home. There was a candy shop that I was allowed to walk to that was just full of all sorts of candy and junk food. It was a kid’s dream. We’d go to yard sales and drive out into the country to get water from a well. It always seemed a more laid-back, rural type area than what I was used to.
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A New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, day 12
It’s been a busy day around here and I only got to the puzzle for today in the evening. For as busy as the day has been with errands and random tasks, I appreciated the simplicity of the image. I just set something on the computer to play in the background and started working on the puzzle. Not every puzzle has to post a challenge. Sometimes I do puzzles because I enjoy the journey of a puzzle. I like starting from the chaos of every single piece before you being a possible starting point to the trial and error of finding the next piece to fit in the section to the completed image that you can sit back and enjoy the accomplishment. It’s calming for me.
Reindeer Forest by Charles E. Martin As a bit of a preview for tomorrow, I’m posting an image of the other advent calendar I have. It’s just a 12-day one, which I know that many start on the 1st, but I opted to wait because I knew that work would get worse as the holidays grew closer, so having an extra puzzle to look forward to would help.
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A New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, days 10 and 11
I missed posting yesterday’s puzzle. I did it but with work, it slipped my mind completely. Honestly, I was just happy to have it be the end of my week and have a couple of days off to take care of things I needed to do.
Children’s Choir by Abe Birnbaum Yesterday’s puzzle was a fun little challenge. There’s not much in the way of color variation in the puzzle that would help in putting the pieces together. It meant that it was more about piece shape, which I don’t mind. As much as I love finding the right piece with that little bit of blue or purple that fits in a certain spot, I also really enjoy doing the blue skies because it’s all about finding the right piece that fits. You have to look at the squiggles and turns of the piece.
Santa Puzzle by L.S. Johnson When I saw this one, I chuckled a little. It’s a puzzle of a puzzle. I like the elves helping to piece Santa together. I suppose there’s something more symbolic about Christmas and Santa being more than just single entities but made possible by the hard work of many, but I also liked that Santa is a puzzle. I’ve not done any shaped puzzles, so I’m not sure about the difficulty of one. I imagine that with no clear straight pieces, there is some greater challenge that working on a puzzle that’s a rectangle. Those poor elves, though. The pieces look to be bigger than them. That alone would make the puzzle a challenge.
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New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, day 9
This one looks so different from post offices today, at least the post offices that I’m familiar with. We have PO boxes at our main one, but there are no decorations for the holidays other than ads for holiday shipping. Perhaps this sort of decorating happens at smaller post offices. Still, I like the simplicity and everyday-ness of the image. These are still quite easy to put together and it’s fun to see what image is up next. I think there was one night that I thought about taking a peek at the next day because I was bored, but I didn’t. That’s part of the fun of doing an advent calendar.
“Gathering Greetings” by Arthur Getz
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A New Yorker Cover a Day Puzzle, day 8
This one is the oldest so far. It’s from 1939. I can’t say that I noticed anything different about the image while I was working on it. The image didn’t stand out right away as being old, but looking at it more, you can see how the fashion is older. There’s a lot more long coats on the men and fur scarves for the women. I’m not sure that there’s anyone other than the workers and the one man on the right not wearing a hat. It’s a fairly classic image. Even the angel is classic looking with the wings that look more like a set of cardboard wings on her back and the golden blonde long hair.
“Information Angel” by Ilonka Karasz
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