February Challenge: Complete

February’s monthly challenge of completing a 2000 piece puzzle is complete. The last piece was actually placed today, at 10.45am on 1st March, but what’s an extra day between friends!?

It was quite a challenge in the end. Not as easy as I thought it would be.

Here are a few thoughts:

• 2000 pieces is a lot of pieces – most of the time is spent sorting through them all.
• It’s very difficult to do it in the evening – the light reflects off all the pieces – so you need the natural daylight – which means most is done at the weekends.
• Space – you need plenty of room and to put up with it sitting there for the entire time – this puzzle was 38in x 26in – luckily there was a board in the garage it would fit on.
• The actual puzzle, forgetting it was 2000 pieces, was quite difficult – lots of similar blocks of colour: sky, trees, mountains, water, and all spread across the image.

And a few lessons I have learned through the process:

• Sort pieces into the various colours at the beginning, it will save you lots of time.
• The shapes of the pieces are key, when completing big blocks of colour, sort pieces into the different shapes, makes to loads easier.
• Take care of your back! Lots of leaning – take breaks and stretch the back out regularly!
• And finally, the most important lesson I’ve learned, don’t do puzzles.