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.
Nine
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.
Nine
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