Puzzled no more!

Back in November, I blogged about finding a teacup-themed puzzle I thought would be fun to put together over the holidays. Now, all I want to say is, friends, why didn't somebody stop me? What I *thought* would be a fun little two- or three-hour activity ended up taking me about a month to complete, consuming far more of my time, craft room and brainpower than I wanted. No more puzzles for this girl!

Why? Well, for one thing, I didn't realize how difficult it was to put together a 1,000-piece puzzle when so many of the pieces look alike. ("Duh," you are saying!) Here are just a few of the pieces that were all from different gilded teacups. You might see a smidgen of pink or green here or there, but for the most part it was a sea of gilding on those babies. Also, I didn't realize that of the 1,000 pieces in this puzzle, 978 of them were shadowy white teacup interiors or pieces of the green background beneath the teacups. It only *looks* like there are other colors in there. Amazing how they did that …

The one thing that kept me going was the realization that I wanted to hang this as artwork because I actually like some of these images, including this teacup, which was my absolute favorite. Now I'm not normally a huge fan of black and white teacups, but I think this one looks like what Audrey Hepburn would have sipped from in "My Fair Lady." No idea of the maker, of course, so if you ever see this one, holler, will you? Still, I am happy to be done with this thing. Just as I was finishing up over the weekend, I read an article about a convicted stock fraudster who was suing the Bureau of Prisons. He said his First Amendment rights were violated because he wasn't permitted to have a puzzle in his cell block. I say this: Let the guy have his puzzle, the bigger the better. Give him a sheet of notebook paper on which to assemble it. And leave about three of the pieces out of the box. That ought to set anyone back on the straight and narrow path!