Final piece of the puzzle
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It’s been one heck of an interesting year, to say the least. Now that we’re approaching Christmas, I imagine you’re busy shopping for gifts, decorating or baking cookies – unless you already did that back in October. Ever since the pandemic pushed us into lockdown last spring, it seems as if people are going bananas trying to find ways to pass the time while being cooped up inside their homes. One look at social media and you see people posting all sorts of crazy recipes, trying to concoct things they normally would never try or doing some sort of dance moves. No wonder everyone had the time to Christmas shop before Halloween!
I’ve been fortunate enough to still be working nonstop (either from home or the studio), but I have to admit that I did carve out time during the week before Thanksgiving to put up my outdoor Christmas decorations while the weather was still warm. I still refused, though, to turn on the lights or put the wreath on the front door until the day after Thanksgiving.
Since date night now is pretty much confined to either cooking (who wants to do that?) or getting takeout and a bottle of wine, I broke out a jigsaw puzzle for my boyfriend and me to tackle a couple of weeks ago. It was a Christmas gift from two years prior, and it’s a 1,000-piece panorama view of the huge crowd at a WVU football game at Mountaineer Field from a few years ago. We think it was a photo from the first Big 12 game against Baylor. If so, my boyfriend was there, even though we can’t absolutely identify him in the puzzle despite using a magnifying glass.
The puzzle sat in its box in the closet for two years, and this was the perfect time to bust it open. It was a daunting task made even more difficult by the fact that neither of us had done a jigsaw puzzle in decades! I remembered the trick of sorting like pieces and trying to assemble the perimeter first. That helped immensely, and we toiled away laughing and sipping wine for a few hours. We made good progress, and I spent a couple of hours each night the following week chipping away at it until I finally finished.
Now what to do with it? I was certainly not taking it apart after spending a week putting it together! Instead, I bought a puzzle saver and a 33-inch-long frame online. The trickiest part was sliding the puzzle onto cardboard, then flipping it over to apply the sticky backing that holds it together. Voila! It worked, and I now have a beautiful panoramic puzzle view of my favorite football destination hanging on the wall.
It was fun and I have a huge sense of accomplishment, although I have to say my eyes definitely needed a break by the time it was done!
Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.