North Country

Artist: Darrell Bush
Made by: Buffalo Games
Count: 2,000 pieces
Final size: 38.5 x 26.38″
Piece Type/Variety: Ribbon cut, average w/some zig-zags
Piece quality: Good
Skin irritation: Yes, minor

I never thought I would complete a 2,000 piece puzzle in one week- but I did! And all in sections on the public library table, until the last step where I connected them on my largest puzzle board at home.

Actually have a few photos of that, my husband took them.

I think this was more possible because there are nine different scenes in the image. I made it more manageable by sorting pieces at home beforehand. On the first day I sorted as much as I could by the individual pictures- you can see that I got the most pieces picked out for the top picture with the eagle, and the bottom one with the loon. It was just over half the pieces sorted at that point. For the second day I tried to sort the rest by color: all the orange and browns, all the darks, all the whites (including pale blues that were white in shadow), all the lighter blues, all the darker blues, purples, and then a pile of miscellaneous. 

At first I had the puzzle sections on their paper panels stacked, and would rotate through them as I found pieces to put in. But halfway through the week I started laying everything out on the table (it took most of the space) to work the thing entire. Didn’t quite fit, some of the panels had to overlap or hang off the table edge a bit! By the last two days, I had enough pieces in place that those left were all laid out in view on the makeshift paper trays, so then it went faster because I could visualize everything together at a glance- the whole puzzle in view (albeit still in sections), and all the pieces spread out. Hardest parts were the campfire and the lantern. I don’t know if because they seemed a bit more abstract, or just didn’t interest me as much. It felt like quite an accomplishment to be done with this! Definitely got some tweaks worked out in my process for doing a large puzzle in sections.

Most of these photos are from my old flip phone camera again. The last two are better quality because my husband let me borrow his smart phone to take them.