6000 Piece Jigsaw

Wanted to share with you today another "hobby" of mine - jigsaws. My mum introduced me to jigsaws and I'm very glad she did. I love them and find then relaxing, fun and sometimes frustrating but I love seeing them finished at the end. I hadn't got any of my jigsaws out in the last few years and then towards the end of last year I decided to buy a couple from an online store. One of the ones I bought was a 6000 piece jigsaw.

To my mum and I, that was huge! The biggest I'd ever done before was 1500 (or maybe a 2000); my mum has completed a 3000 piece one before - but 6000 is so much bigger! (I found out later you can get 9000, 18000, 24000 and up to 33000 pieces (well that's just crazy)!)

We had a pretty busy end of year so we decided that we wouldn't start the 6000 until after Christmas. I had 2 weeks off work and mum was going to be able to spend time on it too - so we thought - yep, 2 weeks should be plenty. Wrong! Over 2 months later (68 days to be exact) we finally finished it yesterday.

Now, we didn't spend every waking moment on it, so it could've been completed quite a bit quicker but we did spend the first 2 weeks pretty solidly on it and my mum and dad spent a lot of nights working on it too! My mum and I did write down how many hours we spent on it but I've left the piece of paper at my mum's - so I will have to let you know that later.

To put it into perspective for those of you who may not do jigsaws - I can complete a 1500 piece jigsaw, by myself, in 2 days. So that's why we thought 2 weeks should be plenty. But it turns out - its way more complicated than just "4 x harder than a 1500"!

It took us 2 hours just to sort out the pieces into "colours" and to find all the edge pieces. And then the rest of that first day just putting the edge pieces together (and found out later some of them were in the wrong spot)!

To make things a little more tricky this puzzle does not have unique pieces - so some of the pieces will fit perfectly (and I mean perfectly) where they shouldn't go. But sometimes it's hard to tell if the picture fits or not. So there were some frustrating moments but on the whole I really enjoyed this puzzle and I love the picture :-)

So here it is:

The jigsaw is called "Toadstool Cottage" and is by Educa.

Here is a close-up of the chair just in front of the house - so you can see how many pieces there are just for that small section!

It's a bit hard to see from the photo how large it is but it is 61.5" (1.56 m) x 42.5" (1.07 m). We didn't have a table that large but my dad had a piece of chipboard he placed on one of the tables. And I'm grateful my parents have a huge room! This jigsaw wouldn't fit in my house!

It was tricky trying to get photos of the jigsaw too - this is the setup I had to use (camera is not "on" the tripod in the photo - but you get the idea) - chairs, books - tripod at its max!

This is me and my Dad and Mum - the only three people (maybe except for a few pieces by a couple of others) that completed the jigsaw.

And my kids wanted to have a photo too - I'm very happy they didn't run away with any pieces!

I'm not sure how long it's going to sit on "display" (I think my Dad wants the table back...) so maybe not too long. 

My Mum and I decided that this is a "once in 10 years" kind of puzzle. By then my girls will be old enough to help too :-) I do plan to do it again.....one day.