This puzzle is one of the most ambitious puzzles made to date! This puzzle was cut in my elaborate Creative cutting style, a style itself which has evolved over time dwarfing the complexity and coolness of some of the earliest Creative style puzzle. Five of the "eggs" were partially surrounded by drop-outs, the sixth fully enclosed.

The puzzle's large size, 31.5" by 16.5" made the initial cutting quite difficult - I cannot manipulate a board of this size for the initial cut with the dexterity required for close-in detail cutting, so I made the initial cutting "nice enough" so that it wouldn't be noticeable while viewing the final work - I succeeded here!

As it happened (from my Journal archives)

May 30, 2008

Friday 6:15 pm - Finally a little bit of progress regarding the backlog. I prepared the large board for #794, the puzzle will be cut with panoramic proportions (about 31" by 16"), and I created a high level design for the general location of some "tricky eggs". Cutting starts tomorrow afternoon.

May 31, 2008

Saturday 7:13 pm - After 34 days, finally, I have resumed cutting for a customer ordered puzzle! The longest gap since I moved in 2005 during which time I didn't cut for almost two months. Last night I decided that the board I prepared yesterday was inadequate as each side of the board had a slightly different wood grain pattern which would give the customer clues as to which side is which. I'm down to just about a half dozen four-ply boards and amongst them I found just one board which was satisfactorily the same on both sides and blemish free on both sides in a large enough area to make a 31" x 16" puzzle. So I prepared a new board and then in the usual harrowing exercise did the initial cut, subdividing the board into two sections. That was it. Tomorrow, I go into marathon mode, I expect to make substantial progress with this puzzle, now named Creative Art Puzzle with Six Eggs. I expect to continue cutting on Monday and throughout next week. I may move up the first June puzzle, Mombasa Market so as to give myself a break after #794, relatively speaking, before getting into the Matisse which will be another major Creative style puzzle. I'm still awaiting customer confirmation for #798, Shamanic, the first of the two originally scheduled June customer puzzles.

Tomorrow I'll be adding the July puzzles to The Puzzle Queue (two customer puzzles and the next 100 Puzzles Project puzzle), the last month of two slots for customer puzzles.

A few weeks ago some house finches moved into the first nesting site I set up at Mixed Media. Three chicks were born and as of the past couple days the last of them have left; the nest is now empty again. So that was the forth or fifth set of birds that have nested there since the site was set up last year. I checked the second nesting site today and apparently it is in an undesired location, there is still not a single twig in the nesting bowl.

June 2, 2008

Monday 6:20 pm - Yesterday I went to the shop for about three hours and today for about five hours. Incredibly, I only have about 70 pieces done of the big 500 plain wood Creative Art Puzzle with Six Eggs. There have been some interruptions, but still, my Creative style cutting is going very slowly about 30 pieces yesterday and 40 today. I have cut some nice pieces. I have a lot of work to do on this puzzle and June overall, six puzzles, all of them significant. Looks like it will take at least all week to make the first of the six June puzzles.

June 3, 2008

Tuesday 6:44 pm - Long day at the shop, well over eight hours. Larger piece sized Creative piece puzzles like the one I'm cutting just take longer to cut than ones with a piece size I normally use - I will have to look at pricing at the end of the year as I currently charge a flat rate for Creative regardless of the piece size. I cut just over 90 pieces today plus considerable subdivision of the next major section. Cutting is going well, the puzzle is now about 1/3 done. So if I keep at it each day at the latest rate, I should complete the puzzle this weekend. My goal is to ship it Monday.

June 5, 2008

Thursday 5:35 pm - Quick post here - not a lot of time (cut puzzles, eat, dance, sleep, loop). Yesterday another long day at the shop, got about 95 more pieces done. Today fairly long, maybe 75 more pieces done, slowed down by the need to do some division of the second half of the puzzle. I'm about 63% done. The puzzle has tons of very cool cutting in it. Late yesterday while doing the second to last cut, I had an accident and one piece got away from me, caught in the saw and broken badly into three pieces. I spent about a half an hour repairing it, not perfect but should be very difficult to spot, particular after I sand the puzzle. Today went without incident.

I won't post a picture of the puzzle until the customer has assembled the puzzle (will be very difficult since there will be no way of telling which side is the front, other than by looking at the signature piece). I will post a few pictures of individual pieces.

June 6, 2008

Friday 5:36 pm - Cutting of the massive #794, Creative Art Puzzle with Six Eggs continued today, I spent five or so hours at the shop, got another 60 pieces done, and then subdivided the last big hunk to cut. Did some excellent work today. I have about 130 pieces to go, the final piece count looks like it will be in the 515-520 range, so I'm about 3/4 done and have now reached five of the six eggs. Although I wasn't originally planning to cut this weekend, I've decided yesterday that I will, as I continue to focus on the substantial, never again to be repeated, backlog at hand. My goal is to complete cutting #794 on Sunday. However the sanding, tung-oil process, and possible repairs will take quite a bit of time on Monday, then inspection, counting, etc., so the puzzle may ship on Tuesday.

June 7, 2008

Saturday 6:14 pm - Spent a good part of the afternoon continuing to work on #794, and completed another 65 pieces or so. Cutting continues to go well, with several particularly impressive areas of cutting. With just 65-70 pieces to go, I should expect to the cutting puzzle tomorrow. Eat, cut, dance, sleep.

June 8, 2008

Sunday 10:04 pm - Around mid-afternoon today, I completed the cutting of #794, certainly in the top 10 of my most ambitious puzzles, and certainly an impressive work by any measure. I'm won't be posting any more pictures until the customer has completed the puzzle- a puzzle which by the way, is going to be quite difficult. So counting tomorrow, that's 11 consecutive days of trips to the shop to work on this puzzle!

I think it will take all day tomorrow to carefully sand the pieces, inspect, cleanup and repair if necessary, any pieces. Shipment probably won't take place until Tuesday.

June 9, 2008

Monday 5:24 pm - Spent about five hours at the shop today, wrapping up the work for #794, Creative Art Puzzle with Six Eggs, other than counting the pieces, boxing, packing and shipping. The piece I mentioned a few days ago as "exploding" into three pieces is OK, the piece feels very solid and I feel a "replacement piece" would be rather inferior as the piece would not be shaped exactly correctly, plus the wood grain wouldn't match. I also repaired a couple pieces which had tiny chipouts on the front side, all of them "whirly gear" related. There are a couple chipouts on the back, these happen from time to time and I did not attempt to repair them, in fact I have never done so. One thing is that when the customer assembles the puzzle there will be no way easy to tell which side is the front side, making this puzzle very difficult - the only real clue will be the signature piece, which will be one of the "egg" pieces, signed on the back. The puzzle is huge, about 31 1/4" by 16 1/2". The puzzle won't ship until Wednesday as I've decide I want one day for each side to dry as I applied tung oil today. I suspect the puzzle will not fit in my largest puzzle box due to the large sized pieces, so I'm going to have to shop around to find something large enough and nice enough, could be a problem.

June 10, 2008

Tuesday 10:22 pm - I decided I needed a day off, nothing got done today puzzle-wise except for the drying of #794's tung oil.

June 11, 2008

Wednesday - midnight plus a few more minutes - Some pieces from #794, and my "inspection station".

Wednesday 4:55 pm - Puzzles shipped; #794 just made it in my largest puzzle box, final piece count 571, don't know why I was so far off the planned 500. Customer: I'll have tracking info later, this evening. I'll be mounting #795-6 later, this evening.

I renamed the puzzle from Creative Art Puzzle with Six Eggs to Creative Art with Six Tricky Eggs.

Footnote:

I did not pack the puzzle carefully enough and some pieces were damaged, which I later repaired for the customer
The next puzzle I made like this had each piece individually wrapped, see Puzzle 799