Greer Gilman's Blog, page 14

Watchmaker

Out of the box, the new Stem Cell puzzle is deliciously like a disassembled watch, full of cogs. But it's a living watch, so there are hexes like molecules; there are curious organelles and a sort of nervous system. So cool.









Artifact tends to classify its puzzles in terms of pieces per second solved, and there are records posted—but I think I'll take my time.

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Thwarted

My number still hasn't come up at Liberty. Sigh.

That nice boutique in Whistler, British Columbia that miraculously had the map of Florence still has a handful of Liberty puzzles in stock, so I ordered the last large one. The picture is pretty anodyne, but beggars can't be choosers. Christmas in July!



However, I think the verso is charming, with its five interwoven rings, and those figures look like they came from a toyshop in Prague.






I shelled out for FedEx, hoping to have it in my hands tomorrow—but alas! the nice manager slipped up and put it in the ordinary post. She saw her mistake and refunded my shipping, but too late to recall the parcel. It may wander forever at the border, wailing for entry.

So.

More Internet research disclosed another maker of artisanal wooden jigsaw puzzles with devoted fans. Artifact seems edgier than Liberty—more Wes Anderson, less Merchant Ivory? Their whimsies look blockier and less fantastical; but their pieces are nice and chunky, and their cuts look deliciously devilish. I really love some of their images: they do a nice range of early stuff (Bruegel and Bosch and Archimboldo) and they have a taste for the SFnal-fantastical.

But can I just order The Garden of Earthly Delights? I cannot. It's out of stock. So is The Unicorn in Captivity.   So is every other image I tried. Finally, I counted, and of 338 puzzles in their catalog, just 13 are in stock. Fortunately, this was one of them. Not what I'd think of as a Nine-ish image, but I like the colors and the cut (the connectors are hexes). It's meant to be a stem cell.



Until one of those arrives, I'm doing one of my old English jigsaws that I was once so thrilled to find. It's like going from Toscanini's ice cream to soft serve. The pieces are flimsy, like cat ice on a puddle, and the whimsies scant and primitive, as if they'd been done with a cookie cutter. I could fall forever into Hunters in the Snow, if the puzzle would let me.




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Mazed

Finished the gorgeous dragon puzzle yesterday.



And I've run out of Liberty puzzles. My number hasn't come up yet, and it takes a week to cut, and some days to ship.  What next?  The images I love best have pleasant but unthrilling cuts; while the really exciting cuts tend to have contemporary art that doesn't float my boat.

The Birth of Venus does have some pretty toys in it.  This has Art Nouveau edges and a swarm of bicycles.  I love the ripples and reflections in this Monet waterlilies, though Impressionism isn't my thing.  Love the centaur, nymph, and faun in this crepuscular Maxfield Parrish.  This has Dr. Seuss unicorns.  This calligraphic carpet page is amazingly difficult, but it's too yellow for my blueness.  Stunning ocean life, but I've just  done a sea-themed puzzle.  I like that ox-cart!  I adore these swans, but the puzzle is tiny.  And this picture is silly, but just look at those monster!  And that labyrinth sun!

For now, I have some lesser Wentworth jigsaws with beautiful images but much duller cuts. I guess I could do Hunters in the Snow, for the imagined chill.

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Neowiser

Caught a flicker of the comet's tail, at long last! Only for an ecstatic nanosecond with my naked eye, more like a faint glowworm than a fountain of ice, but still. The nice fellow with the astrophotography equipment let me take a picture of his screen.



I've spent days Neowising: trudging hundreds of thousands of miles in the unspeakable heat to suitable vantage points, only to see the northwest quadrant cloud over just at sunset, breaking my heart. But tonight the sky is clear, and there's a gap in the trees in the nearby park just under the Great Bear/Plough/Big Dipper/Charles's Wain.

As I said, there was a helpful guy out there on the grass who's been tracking the comet for ten days. The other astronomy buff on site gave me much the best advice: follow a straight line halfway down from the front edge of the Dipper, just to the left of Merak. She also found my unbroken glasses in the dark in the grass when I dropped them in my flurry. She had a great big pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod, and delightedly discovered the Galilean moons of Jupiter (it was that clear) and, she half thought, the rings of Saturn. We both saw the International Space Station, which I took for a dawdling meteor.

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Naruto Whirlpool, Awa Province

And while I was working on the vast map of Florence, this Hiroshige arrived...



I sorted out the pretties first of all.

There are, of course, all sorts of people going on about their lives. I especially love the samurai cut from pure sky, with a white gull at his hilt. But the workers (dyers?) stirring up a tub are excellent.  Look at the one poised with a wave's withdrawing strength and legs of seafoam.  And the little scene with diners at a table, a sushi chef, and a server slopping the sake is diverting.




And then there are the undersea creatures, and the lofting dolphins, and the seabirds, and that exquisite ship.




And the marvellous kitsune with five tails.



Beyond all is the whirlpool itself, the dragon.



Now that is a masterpiece.

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a small sample of whimsies

The giglio of Florence (an iris, not a lily) links the halves of the puzzle.



Love all the legends in a beautiful italic hand.



Glasses are provided.



Nature rejoices. Birds, butterflies, and greenery abound.



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Florentines, round two

Fellini. Totally. There's something about that louche muse with the city in her lap. And those elated angels see Creation as a New Year's party. Love the little pink shoes on the woman and her dog.




Hmm. That hennin is in Northern style: perhaps a Flemish banking family, striking a hardnosed deal with Medicis? Johnny Walker struts; the city wall juts, to give the 18th-century gentleman a sword. Oh dear. And there's Lady Liberty, roistering with angels. Love the lutanist's red mask and motley hose.





Vespa!




Fellini hitchhiker.




Allegory of Inspiration.



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Florentines, round one

The puzzle falls into four panels, neatly buttoned together. It comes in two boxes, lined with purple-and-violet or violet-and-purple tissue paper, each (as I discovered) corresponding to exactly half the puzzle. If the halves had been mixed, I'd still be working on this.

And almost every square inch of all four panels is bustling with Florentines.

Galileo, we've met. I've decided that the cherubic fellow in green, pointing heavenward, is Ficino. The man in the mason's apron must be Brunelleschi. The lady in the lower left has drifted out of Fellini.



They come from all centuries, looking martial or merry...







They are frolicksome...




...buccolic...



...and urbane...







I so love the way the artist-cutter uses line and color, to give the lady in green a little Juliet cap and one blue stocking and her partner's dress sway and shadow; to show the wind in the cyclist's face, and the cat made of rooftops in a tree.

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Ecco!

So this is the Liberty jigsaw that I first fell in love with, years ago.




View of the city of Florence from the low wall of the Prato dei Padri di San Francesco al Monte (1650) by Valerio Spada.

I kept mooning over it. But I couldn’t really figure spending that much money on a toy—and then it went out of print. Sigh.

But with the pandemic raging on, I’ve been allowing myself whatever puzzles I can get hold of. Call it a travel budget. I’m certainly not spending much on junketings. Liberty, all praise to their sense of fair play, has rationed orders, with an endless queue. So I started combing the internet for this map of Florence, and at first I found only a used one (somewhat puppy-damaged) sold long ago on eBay, and a ghost request on two guys’ exquisitely curated wedding gift registry. I hope they got it.

Then—O blessed hour!—I found one listed by a little boutique called Get the Goods in Whistler, British Columbia. The curator-manager wrote me a heartfelt email: “Thank you for supporting small business at this time. It means the world to us.”

So they got a beautiful white elephant off their hands, and I got to spend three weeks with Lynon Aksamit’s masterpiece of cutting. I just finished it yesterday.

There are hundreds of his whimsies, and I love them all. The interplay of silhouette and image is marvellous.

There are of course, the set pieces: the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio, like Prospero's stagings of themselves:











An outscale Michelangelo at work on his David:



Dante outbreathing air and fire turns out to be Dante mounting up into the heavens in Ezekiel’s chariot, on wheels and whorls of fire:





Here is Galileo gazing heavenward—but see how his look of curiosity and wonderment is borrowed from some twigs:





I am so happy with this windfall.

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Monumenta Britannica

The summer pudding turned out beautifully, looking just as it should, like an afterimage of Silbury Hill on a sunlit day in June.





It couldn't be simpler to make: simmered raspberries, blackberries, and red currants in a sort of geodesic bread dome. My jigsaw puzzling experience helped with the construction.



Chill overnight with a weight on it. Unmold. Dish up with cream, if wanted. Fabulous!



All praise to lauradi7dw  for kindly bringing me red currants. In better times, I hope to make this for you.

Next, I want to do Avebury in shortbread....






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